NC Senate Releases Budget - What it means for social work

The North Carolina Senate released their budget last week, and is vastly different than the NC House budget and Governor Cooper’s budget recommendations. The plans differ in their funding priorities, inclusion of substantive policy changes, and perhaps most significantly in their tax plans.

Tax Cuts:

• The Senate budget cuts taxes by $1.2 billion for all North Carolina families and businesses over the next two years.

• Accelerates the scheduled reduction of the personal income tax, dropping it to 4.5% in 2024 and ultimately to 2.49% by 2030.

Public Education takes a serious hit in the Senate Budget:

• The Senate budget does NOT include restoring Master’s level pay for teachers and instructional support personnel, which would include school social workers. The House’s version of the budget does reinstate Master’s level pay.

• Both the Senate and House budget moves “Instructional Support Personnel” into the “School Health Personnel Allotment” with school nurses, school counselors and school psychologist and adds a total of just 120 positions for all for professions for the entire state.

• The budget allocates about an additional recurring $27 million more to expand private school vouchers through the Opportunity Scholarship Program over the biennium than it does to implementing its proposed teacher salary schedule.

• The Senate proposal includes a raise of just $200 a month for teachers with 0-5 years of experience in 2023-24, which decreases with years of experience, until teachers with 14 years of experience or more would only receive $20 a month, essentially a 0% raise. This includes school social workers since they are paid on the teacher scale.

• In the Senate budget, teachers will receive an average raise of 4.5% over the biennium, and starting teacher pay will increase by nearly 11% over the same period. The House budget proposed much higher raises for teachers and other state employees. That proposal included a 7.50% across-the-board pay raises for teachers over the biennium, with an average pay raise of 10.2% for teachers slated to get step increases. In comparison, the budget proposal from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper included an average raise for teachers of 18% over the biennium and would have spent $3 billion more than the budget proposed by Republicans.

Other items of note:

• Includes $110 million to increase behavioral health provider rates on a recurring basis.

• Allocates $60 million recurring each year for direct care worker wage increases.

• $96 million would pay for rural loan repayment incentive programs for primary care and behavioral health providers.

• The Senate’s proposed budget would give state employees a 5% pay raise over the biennium. The House's proposed budget outlines a 7.5% average pay raise over two years for state employees.

•  Enacts Medicaid expansion, however, the budget cuts state laws that regulate hospital competition, placing Medicaid expansion, and health coverage for thousands of low-income North Carolinians, in conflict.

•  Prevents state funds from being used in the performance or in support of the administration of an abortion unless certain exemption criteria are met, such as the mother’s life being in danger or the pregnancy being the result of rape.

Now that both the House and Senate have approved their budget proposals, the two versions will enter the conference stage to iron out differences. Both chambers will appoint conferees to negotiate and resolve differences. The final conference report will be the result of these negotiations.

Then the House and Senate will vote on the Conference Report. If passed, it will be ratified and sent to Governor Cooper for his signature or veto. Both chambers desires to have a budget complete before the 4th of July.

NASW-NC will be advocating to the conference committee members to reinstate Master’s level pay for school social workers, increase behavioral health provider reimbursement rates and expand the loan forgiveness program for behavioral health providers. Please stay tuned.