Opinion: Democracy under attack in North Carolina

(This is taken from the WRAL.com website and is the opinion of Capital Broadcasting Company and the Wake Forest Gazette editor.)

North Carolina citizens should not be deceived. They need to be outraged. The leaders of the General Assembly are making a mockery of representative government. It is no understatement to say democracy is under attack in our state.

Complaints over the decision to bypass open deliberations in the General Assembly on the new state budget aren’t some legislative playground squabble between Republicans and Democrats on Jones Street in Raleigh.

It is a thumb-in-the-eye, a bully’s chest-bump and turned-up nose of disdain directed at each and every one of the state’s voters and taxpayers by the tinhorn cabal of Senate Leader Phil Berger, House Speaker Tim Moore and a couple of their lieutenants.

In their scheming they’ve concocted a way to present a $23 billion budget without any public hearings, committee discussion and deliberation, or ability to amend. They released the 758 pages of budget bill and documents just 13 hours before they’ll start voting on it.

They’ve doubled down on the bad old days in the mid-1980s when Republicans rightly railed against the “Gang of Eight” – the Democratic legislative leaders who controlled the legislature and budget process. Turns out those Democrats were pikers.

This is a gang that no longer is satisfied with its rigging elections districts, fixing ballots, manipulating the boards that oversee voting, and rigging the selection of judges who determine if the laws they pass are constitutional.

News accounts portraying complaints about the dictatorial budget process as partisan bellyaching miss the point. This is not simply about Democrats being shut out of the budget process. This is about manipulation of laws and rules intended to foster citizen participation in their government. It is about silencing, instead of hearing and heeding, the voices of the governed.

This latest ploy is clear evidence that those we’ve elected have abandoned us to form an oligarchy in pursuit of their own agenda. They are stomping on the State Constitution and turning their backs on the oath they swore when they took office.

These legislative leaders make North Carolina’s government more closely represent (sadly this is NO exaggeration) North Korea, Iran, Russia and China, than the democracy our forbearers fought a revolution to create, a Civil War to maintain and two world wars to protect.

State Rep. Chuck McGrady, R-Henderson, as levelheaded a member of the legislature’s leadership as there is, has been the justifier for this latest terrible budget action.

In a May 25 newsletter to his constituents he acknowledges legislative leaders have been “locked away” working on the budget.

“With legislators wanting to actually have a ‘Short’ Session, the process for enacting the budget is different from the process used in past years. The process is and was efficient, but it lacks transparency. A relatively small group of people put the FY 2018-19 budget together, and the process that will be used will allow debate, but will not afford an opportunity for legislators to amend the budget,” McGrady said.

“Lacks transparency” is no ho-hum matter. Concocting a scheme to avoid public participation is, frankly, un-American.

The 20,000 educators and public education supporters visiting the Legislative Building came to talk about the budget. Reply from legislative leaders: Sorry, we’re afraid to present, defend and leave open to debate and change, our budget because there is no coherent basis for our decisions. It’s all hunch, faith and extreme ideology. Reality doesn’t matter. We don’t care if anyone gets hurt.

Is there a good reason, in the United States (and not in a dictatorship) not to allow citizens to participate, as the real legislative process is set up to do, in deciding:

• How public schools are funded?
• How much teachers and administrators should be paid?
• Whether to fund classroom textbooks and other resources so they reflect events and discoveries that have taken place in the 21st century?
• If Medicaid should be extendedto more than 600,000 citizens who now can’t afford access to proper health care?
• Whether to continue state funding for the Durham-Orange light-rail project?
• Does the state do enough to protect drinking water and prevent corporate giants from polluting the state’s rivers?

We can’t imagine there is a North Carolina citizen, regardless of their ideological or partisan points of view, who voted to impose a dictatorship. November can’t come soon enough.