NC House work slows as members attend ALEC conference

Thursday was an especially quiet day in the state House as there were no committee meetings and no bills up for consideration during a floor session that lasted five minutes — a bit surprising given that a state budget is more than three weeks overdue.

A reported nine representatives, including House Speaker Tim Moore, and one senator were in San Diego for the annual conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council, which pushes conservative policy positions and model legislation that reflects them for adoptions by states. None are from the mountains.

ALEC has been around for more than 40 years, but many in the general public only heard about it when the Florida "stand your ground" law based on an ALEC model became part of the controversy over the Trayvon Martin shooting.

The group funded in part by the conservative Koch brothers has been the subject of criticism by progressives who follow state issues for years, although progressives have recently formed a similar group of their own to push more liberal policy positions in state governments.

On Wednesday, the North Carolina Justice Center said legislators should listen to North Carolinians on budget and tax issues instead of ALEC. The progressive group held a press conference featuring state residents urging funding for schools, universities and child care instead of moving ahead with a scheduled cut in the corporate income tax rate.

"The disproven theory that corporate tax cuts help our economy move forward is economic snake oil that ALEC sells to state legislators around the country," Tazra Mitchell, a policy analyst with the Justice Center's Budget & Tax Center, said in a statement. "These policies are a prescription for poor results that hinder the ability of our state to set up a foundation for future growth."

As it happens, Arthur Laffer, who introduced the Laffer curve theory into American political discourse, was scheduled to address the three-day gathering Friday. The theory says cutting taxes can increase government revenue because of the economic growth it fosters and gained popularity during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Resulting deficits took some of the bloom off the rose, but the idea still has supporters and has come up in discussions of tax cuts in Kansas and North Carolina.

Requests for comment from Moore's spokeswoman Thursday and Friday were not answered.

WRAL quoted Moore as saying Wednesday that, "What I've found is that the meetings are very much just informative. You learn a lot of things. ... I know some of the groups coming out and criticizing ALEC, a lot of them are the same groups that criticize us because we want to lower taxes. But I frankly believe that's what most North Carolinians want."

Rep. Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe, said Friday that she strongly disagrees with ALEC's stances on issues but wouldn't fault legislators for attending a national conference when the General Assembly is in session. (Fisher got some criticism of her own on a related issue a few years back when some objected to the cost of a trip she and other members of the Asheville Regional Airport board took to an aviation conference in Hawaii.)

"I have my reservations about the value of ALEC when you look at some of the philosophies and policies they've espoused," she said.

But at legislative conferences in general, "You get to be in a room with folks who are dealing with many similar issues," she said. "You get good ideas and different approaches and things you haven't thought of."

The News and Observer reported that five legislators have requested reimbursement for the trip from state funds.

Fisher says she is more concerned by the 10-day break legislators took in early July without having adopted a state budget or even with a conference committee appointed to come up with a compromise budget plan. The state fiscal year began July 1.

As a Democrat who voted against the House budget plan, Fisher is on the outside looking in on the conference committee process. But she wonders now whether legislators will have a budget adopted by Aug. 14, when a temporary budget is set to expire. That raises the possibility that school will begin without school administrators knowing how much state money they will get.

Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger have both appointed large numbers of legislators to the conference committee: 82 from the House, 32 from the Senate.

Fisher and others say such a large group is unwieldy and that a much smaller number may actually work out differences between the House and Senate spending plans. What she has heard so far about House members' discussion of the issues makes her wonder when that might happen.

"It sounds almost like starting over," she said.