Anne Bryce
When Gov. Josh Stein unveiled his first budget proposal this week, he said $3.365 billion expenditure plan To think he said to lawmakers that he “keeping up North Carolina’s promises — you should never limit where you come from and where you can’t go.”
Stein, a Democrat who served as Attorney General for the past eight years and a former general assembly member, noted that such commitments include health care.
“We need to invest in strengthening our families and reducing costs,” Stein told reporters at a briefing Wednesday. “Too many families can’t afford nude essentials like groceries, housing, health care and so they need to cut costs as much as possible.”
Stein warned of the fiscal revenue cliff, seeing the state approach if tax cuts pushed by a Republican-led general assembly. He urged lawmakers to delay those cuts, but he said it would pay overwhelmingly to wealthy and corporate shareholders living outside of North Carolina.
Instead, Stein recommended child tax credits and cuts for families with low-to-moderate incomes that could reach up to $1,600 for some workers.
Making childcare more affordable for North Carolinians was a theme woven through Stein’s spending proposal, as they were looking for ways to help alleviate the shortage of the healthcare workforce, which many facilities struggle to overcome.
In terms of child care, Stein recommended:
- We were able to raise the state subsidy rate for parenting centers by up to 13%, allowing workers to be paid more.
- Add 1,000 slots to North Carolina, “Like more kids are ready to show up and learn in kindergarten.”
- “Really ready on the first day of school” to create more summer enrichment programs before kindergarten for those kids.
North Carolina’s child care center has struggled to survive for several years. Many have seen registration numbers drop during the pandemic. Even injecting federal money to eat up some of these effects, some centers struggled to keep the doors open. That support was phased out last year The centre has begun to closeChildcare advocates warned of the upcoming fundraising crisis.
Investment in healthcare workers
Christine Walker, the state budget director for the State Budget Management Department, told reporters at the governor’s briefing that there are more childcare centers with 80 people than a year ago.
Stein wants to reverse that trend.
“When investing in the youngest North Carolinians, we set them up for lifelong educational success,” Stein said. “We also help parents who want to stay in the workforce, and it is counterintuitive that North Carolinians can’t afford to go to work. It hurts our business and economy The loss of economic activity led to an adjustment of approximately $5 billion a year. ”
Some of Stein’s suggestions to create dents in the shortage of the healthcare workforce are:
- Invest $5 million to improve recruitment and retention of direct support professionals to help people with disabilities join their communities.
- It spends nearly $20 million to raise primary care and OB-Gyn provider rates in the state’s Medicaid program.
- Allocating $10 million in the first year of the two-year proposal to North Carolina Independent University, strengthening nursing workers and increasing the number of other nurses, such as physician assistants and physical trainers, and other high-demand health professionals. That funding could come in addition to the community college investments allocated by Congress in the 2023 budget to address the long-term healthcare staff shortages across the state.
- Over the next two years, we will provide $1 million to expand the NC Area Health Education Center nursing workforce.
- The overall wages are up by 3% for state-run nurses who work primarily in state-run psychiatric facilities.
- Allocate $1.3 million to create more medical facility testing positions to investigate and eliminate backlogs of complaints about acute care and adult care facilities and nursing homes. It also handles prompt licensing applications for housing mental health facilities across the state.
- A 6.5% salary increases to correctional officers. The state’s prison staffing shortage is cited as an ongoing issue in the provision of healthcare services, mental health, drug treatment and re-entry programming for more than 31,000 people in the state’s incarcerated population.
When Stein was Attorney General, he played a key role in negotiating multi-state settlement agreements with opioid distributors and manufacturers that brought over $750 million over 18 years to North Carolina and help the nation continue fighting from the crisis.
“North Carolina is making progress by reducing opioids, but fentanyl deaths are still dying for many,” Stein said.
He now recommends creating a fentanyl law enforcement unit and a prosecutor’s team.
“Too many North Carolinians have lost their loved ones to drug overdose and meaningless crimes. We honor our victims by tackling this head,” he said.
Improved access to care
Stein said his proposed spending plan, to “ensure North Carolinians have access to the health care they need,” invested more than $770 million in Biennium’s first year and more than $580 million in their second year by leveraging federal funds.
Some of that money will go to rural health facilities.
Some have helped people with disabilities and traumatic brain damage who have advocated for more community-based support for years. Stein proposes spending $35 million by its second year to support the creation of up to 200 innovation exemption slots to enable people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to access community-based services. Another part of that funding will support 75 slots for people to reach the state’s traumatic brain injury support program.
Stein’s proposal is just the starting point for a budget process that usually takes weeks and perhaps months. However, it is not certain to what extent many of his proposals will be adopted in Republican-led general meetings. Over the next few weeks, the state Senate will announce its proposed spending plan, and the state House will do the same. Together, they will develop one budget for the next two years.
Stein had more say in how that financial plan would be shaped in the last two years of his term than his predecessor, the Democratic government.
The governor has the power to deny the budget, and state senators have enough Republicans to overturn the veto if the objection breaks along the partisan line. However, state lawmakers have no veto majority this year, which has led to more room for negotiation.
Stein’s proposal also calls for:
- Using $14 million, it stabilized federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics by providing a refund shortly after the bill is launched, allowing the implementation of the payment structure deployed in 2023 to continue.
- Provide $100 million repeat investments to maintain Healthy Opportunity Program Pay for food, housing, doctor vehicles, and other non-medical interventions. It will also expand the program to more counties in western North Carolina.
- It spends $32.7 million in regular funds for the school’s 330 additional school counselors, nurses, social workers and psychologists.
- We will support the implementation of prison re-entry programs to ensure adults and young people who provide over $150 million to have access to healthcare services 90 days prior to incarceration are prepared to return to the community.
- We have booked $208.5 million to help build a new children’s hospital in the Triangle area, and will support the construction of three rural care centres that are part of the NC Care Initiative.
