RALEIGH (July 9, 2025) – Congress spent weeks recently debating a work requirement for Medicaid recipients – poor people.
Well maybe we need a work requirement for state legislators.
After six months in session, the legislators North Carolina elects to adopt a state budget every two years went home two weeks ago without adopting one.1
Virginia has a budget. South Carolina (the state with which, sadly, NC legislators most like to compare themselves) has a budget. Georgia has a budget. Tennessee’s legislature approved a budget in April.2 And the governor signed it.3
WHAT MAKES North Carolina – with a legislature where both houses are controlled by Republicans – so “special” that it doesn’t need to adopt a budget in time for the start of the fiscal year? (Or as they say on Jones Street, the ‘physical’ year.)
Is it simply a lack of self-discipline on the part of legislators? Is it because legislators know the previous year’s budget will continue at the previous year’s levels if they don’t have a budget in place by July 1? Or because voters – you – have come to accept it?
As a commenter on a recent Public Ed Works post put it:
“This is your basic duty. The most important thing that you legislators have to do. It is totally unacceptable that you take a break from duties without getting this done. You were elected to do this.”4
Legislators say they might not come back to session until after Labor Day.
That means teachers at year-round schools that started this week and teachers at traditional-calendar schools will open their doors next month without raises.
In a state with a desperate shortage of public-school teachers, one that ranks 43rd in the nation in average teacher pay.5 More than 10,000 teachers (11.4%) left the state’s classrooms in 2023.6 Nearly 9,000 (9.9%) left last year.7
Yes, if our take-our-own-sweet-time legislators ever agree on raises for teachers and state employees, they will likely be retroactive to July 1.
But to start the school year without a raise – as state legislators decide they need a break – is hardly a motivator. These folks who profess that government needs to be run like a business don’t know squat about how to motivate employees.
Think that might make a difference for the kids in our classrooms?
It’s not at all complicated. Hypocrites never see their hypocrisy.
TO BE SURE, these delays have occurred repeatedly under both Republican and Democratic majorities in the General Assembly.
And sadly, North Carolina voters seem to have come to accept it.
Don’t.
Hold them accountable. And if they predictably say, “That’s what leadership has decided,” tell them they need new leadership.
Tell them to get back to Raleigh and do the job they were elected to do.
THE STATE HOUSE has shown a willingness this year to listen to economic forecasts, moderate planned tax cuts and give K-12 public school teachers a much-deserved, long-overdue raise of 8.7% over the next two years.
In a legislature dominated by Republicans, the House’s budget proposal even won support from a majority of Democratic House members and the Democratic governor’s praise.8
The obstinate state Senate has not listened, ignoring the economists they pay to advise them9 and suggesting paltry raises for teachers and state employees.10
Rep. Donny Lambeth, Senior Chair of the House Appropriations (that means budget) Committee, seems perfectly willing to discuss and negotiate the differences.11
It’s the stubborn Senate that yearns for the North Carolina of the early 1950s that appears unwilling to recognize an economic landscape loaded with uncertainty for North Carolina. And for that matter, the world.
So let’s think about about adopting that work requirement for North Carolina legislators to do what they were elected to do, as all the legislatures in our surrounding states have already done.
Get back to Raleigh and do your job, legislators.
1 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article309506565.html.
2 https://tennesseelookout.com/2025/04/17/tennessee-legislature-approves-59-8-billion-budget/.
3 https://www.tba.org/?pg=Articles&blAction=showEntry&blogEntry=125675.
4 https://publicedworks.org/2025/07/lambeth-on-state-budget-itll-be-a-while/.
5 https://publicedworks.org/2025/05/nc-teacher-pay-now-ranks-43rd/.
6 https://www.dpi.nc.gov/documents/files/state-teaching-profession-2022-2023/download?attachment, p.6; https://www.wral.com/story/nc-teacher-turnover-hits-highest-mark-in-decades-new-report-shows-changes-in-who-is-leading-classrooms/21361469/.
7 https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/a2/b5/378df24c469bb5f2381aee292657/2023-24-state-of-the-teaching-profession-report.pdf, p.6.
8 https://publicedworks.org/2025/05/house-budget-shows-promise-for-teacher-pay/.
9 https://publicedworks.org/2025/06/budgetary-storm-clouds/.
10 https://publicedworks.org/2025/04/paltry/.
11 https://publicedworks.org/2025/07/lambeth-on-state-budget-itll-be-a-while/.
Leave a Reply