State budget on way to passage, sending $1.5M to FFA Center in White Lake

WHITE LAKE — The Future Farmers of American Center here, in operation for nearly a century, is slated for $1.5 million in the state budget Republican-led lawmakers have crafted and gained agreement from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

The news this week of the budget passage was expected to go final by Friday. Both chambers were voting Wednesday and Thursday. Cooper has said when the legislation reaches his desk he will, for the first time since winning election in 2016, sign the two-year bill that spends $25.9 billion this fiscal year and $27 billion next year, not including several billion dollars more in COVID-19 relief from Washington.

The FFA Center has been in operation since 1928. State Sen. Bill Rabon, of Brunswick County and the chamber representative for Bladen County as part of the 8th District, advocated for it and repairs and renovations to the training facility of the Bladen County Sheriff’s Office.

He also pushed for:

• More than $15 million for capital needs at area community colleges.

• $14 million to rebuild the Boiling Springs Lakes dams in Brunswick County.

• Millions in funding for water resource needs in Surf City, North Topsail Beach, Ocean Isle, and Carolina and Kure Beaches.

• Funds for repairs and renovations at the Pender County courthouse.

• More than $1 million to fund career academies for at-risk students in Pender and New Hanover counties.

• $500,000 to the Mt. Calvary Center for Leadership Development.

• $283 million to widen and enhance the Wilmington Harbor.

Lawmakers put together a 10-year, $16.1 billion cash infrastructure and capital plan. Included is a tax cut, reducing the personal income tax to 3.99 percent over six years; the zero-tax bracket for married filers increases to $25,500. The child tax deduction is increased $500 per child; there is no state income tax on military pensions.

There is $100 million in the budget, in recurring funds, for state-funded teacher salary supplements to lower-wealth counties that help them to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue, a Wake County Democrat, voted against the bill citing in a floor speech that this money does not help urban schools.

Raises and bonsues for teachers and state employees are coming in this budget, as is a $15-per-hour pay floor come next year for local school employees who aren’t teachers and $5.9 billion for state agencies and higher education building projects.

Before now, Cooper had never signed a traditional, comprehensive state budget into law since taking office in 2017. During Cooper’s first two years, Republicans overrode his budget vetoes with veto-proof majorities. In 2019, after Democrats gained seats and Cooper connected the budget to an unsuccessful attempt to expand Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of additional residents, his veto couldn’t be overturned by Republicans, leading to a stalemate with GOP leaders that was never fully resolved.

Republicans still lacked veto-proof majorities this year.

Cooper’s wish to expand Medicaid through the 2010 federal health care law is not in the budget.

In the budget are new rules for the governor’s power in the case of an emergency, set to take effect in January 2023. The language says a governor would have to receive support from a majority of Council of State members to expand an emergency declaration beyond 30 days. The General Assembly would have to act for one to go beyond 60 days. The governor vetoed a bill with similar language two weeks ago, complaining in part that it would have taken effect immediately.

The state has been under a state of emergency for the coronavirus pandemic since March 2020, an action criticized by Republican lawmakers.