In less than a month, we’ll head to the polls to decide our municipal leaders in Bladen County.

In just more than a year, we’ll head to the polls to decide our next governor and state lawmakers.

As we continue in overtime of the 2019 General Assembly session, the points are piling up in the state budget stalemate. And they’re not being won by the governor.

He’s more than drawn a line in the sand. Call it a cement-fused, cinder block wall.

There’ll be no budget without his wishes on Medicaid, and more than three months after the budget should have started, there surely isn’t. Neither side is looking any better over this single issue. Democrats and Republicans alike are just plain stubborn.

But rather than sit back and let voters next November choose who is acting in their best interest, the Republicans adopted the mini-budget initiative. They still control both houses, even if not with a veto-proof majority, and a fair number of Democrats agree with them on a number of things inside that budget.

So they’re bringing them out, one by one, or a few at a time. A handful went through in just the last week.

Back in August, the governor went on TV and told everyone its’ not an ultimatum. Back in August.

So here we are, less than three weeks to Halloween, and the compromise — err, the caving in — is nowhere in sight. The fight has raged on, even on Sept. 11 when House Democrats said they were told no votes would be taken only to return to Raleigh and find out they had.

The GOP did exactly what it said it would — when the chamber numbers were such that overriding Roy Cooper’s state budget veto could happen, a vote would be called. So they did.

We can’t definitively say who told who what about no votes for that day, but regardless it’s hard to believe one party would trust and believe the other like that. Making it worse was not knowing the rules and how to stop the vote.

Still, the Senate override hasn’t happened and may not.

What is happening is the Republicans are moving bills through, and getting things done.

When we get a year from now, we’ll see the ads. Each side will paint unflattering images of the other, and the state budget will be a valid point.

Either the candidates worked and got things done, or they didn’t. And those marking the ballots will show how they feel about that.

The budget is stalled, including important money needed here in Kelly. It is long past time to unlock the process and get moving.

Could it last until next fall’s election? We’d be fools to believe otherwise.

They’re making points daily.

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