Democrats to keep budget, lottery votes separate
RALEIGH (September 17, 2002)-- House Democrats have decided against pushing for a vote on a final spending bill that would include a lottery referendum.
Instead, House Speaker Jim Black said the House will vote on a separate lottery referendum bill Tuesday.
Black said the decision to remove the lottery provision from the budget and vote on it separately was made after what he called, "a lot of discussions with a lot of people."
Several legislators were uneasy with placing the referendum in the state's spending plan through next June, saying it was in neither the House nor the Senate version of the budget they passed earlier in the summer.
The House agreed late Monday to roll out a compromise $14.3 billion budget proposal with the Senate that, if approved, would let the voters have their say on whether they want a state-run numbers game.
With support for placing the lottery into the budget uncertain, Speaker Jim Black said he may decide Tuesday morning to delay a budget vote. If that occurs, Black said, the chamber will vote Tuesday on a referendum only.
Lottery supporters were running out of time to get a referendum on the Nov. 5 ballot - election officials have said they needed the question approved this week to print it on absentee ballots.
``We are going to run (a lottery bill) one way or the other,'' said Black, D-Mecklenburg, following a three-hour closed-door strategy session Monday night. ``It has to be run (Tuesday).''
Democratic Gov. Mike Easley has repeatedly pushed a lottery as a way to pay for his education initiatives. A lottery would likely start up next spring if approved by the voters in the referendum.
At least five Democrats have been adamantly opposed to a lottery. Those legislators, when combined with most of the 58 Republicans expected to vote no on any budget, could be enough to kill any spending plan with a referendum inside.
Black said he didn't know if the budget bill with the referendum would pass: ``It's very close, very close. You don't know how people are going to vote until they push the button.''
Several legislators are uneasy with placing the referendum in the state's spending plan through next June, saying it was in neither the House nor the Senate version of the budget they passed earlier in the summer. Anti-lottery groups say that violates legislative rules.
``They're forcing members to vote on one of the most significant issues of the past decade with no opportunity for significant debate or discussion,'' said John Rustin with the North Carolina Family Policy Council.
Other parts of the final compromise spending plan would include a seniority-based salary increase averaging less than 1.9 percent but no pay raises for rank-and-file state employees.
The General Assembly also would give Easley the flexibility in the bill to cut another $111 million in spending as he sees fit to ensure the budget is balanced.
Budget negotiations have been going on for nearly five weeks. Members of a conference committee working on differences in competing House and Senate budget proposals met long hours behind closed doors over the weekend and Monday.
Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This may be good news. My guess is that the Dems counted noses, and determined that they couldn't pass the budget with the lottery referendum in the bill. The whole idea of combining the two, of course, was to force a few anti-lottery Dems to vote yes, or be criticized for thwarting the budget. Since this evidently didn't work, and the lottery referendum vote wouldn't pass with the budget, can we surmise that the lottery referendum bill will fail without the budget?