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Navigating NC's Budget Challenges · The SEANC View

• 0:00
  Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm Jonathan Owens, your communications director here at Scenic.
• 0:07
  Got a little bit of a short crew in here today. Well, not that you guys are
• 0:11
  short or anything. Y'all are actually very tall people. Yeah,
• 0:13
  we're a lot of things, but we're not short.
• 0:15
  But we're short one. Not that it would matter if we were. Yeah, it's okay to be short.
• 0:21
  Suzanne Beasley is out today, but she sends her love. But we have Artis Watkins,
• 0:28
  the executive director here, and also Sam Klein.
• 0:31
  And we're going to try to muddle through without Suzanne, but we miss you,
• 0:34
  Suzanne. Let's have a great show.
• 0:37
  Music.
• 0:46
  What do y'all think about our theme song? Like, is it time to maybe think about
• 0:50
  getting a new one? I kind of like it. I think it's still good.
• 0:53
  We could shift. Any thoughts, Artis? Hell, you're making a face.
• 0:57
  You know I'm really funny about songs. I don't like it. Oh, okay. It is very generic.
• 1:02
  But I mean, at the same time that I say I don't like it, because we can't use
• 1:05
  copyrighted music, I couldn't come up with something different as a suggestion.
• 1:11
  Maybe we'll spice it up. We'll take a look at it. I can try and find something
• 1:14
  that's like a little more CNN, Fox News, den in it.
• 1:20
  Today is July 10th. It is a Thursday. We're back to our normal day of doing the old podcast.
• 1:27
  And it's a hot day. It's going to rain even more from what I understand this
• 1:31
  afternoon. And we'll get in a little bit of that talk a little later.
• 1:34
  But as always, we start with the budget.
• 1:37
  Not a whole lot going on in budget world yet again.
• 1:41
  I guess official information, right, Artis? Yeah. I mean, the question is,
• 1:45
  or is there? We don't know.
• 1:47
  The legislature has taken a bit of a hiatus, and they definitely took last week
• 1:52
  off. Are there people who are in the corner offices working on this budget right now?
• 1:57
  I can't help but think that they are and that the entire delay was almost surely
• 2:02
  based around not just their disagreements over how to implement tax cuts,
• 2:07
  but the fact that the federal budget hadn't come down.
• 2:10
  And yeah, and now it has, as we talked about last week.
• 2:13
  So here we are and folks in the House and Senate have to figure out how to put
• 2:17
  together a budget with a whole lot less availability from the federal government. Yes.
• 2:22
  On that point, NC Newsline had a story yesterday.
• 2:27
  NC lawmakers urged to act as federal cuts threatened state services.
• 2:31
  I thought this would be a good starting point for us because we are the state
• 2:35
  services they're talking about, right?
• 2:37
  So I guess it's a group called the Patriotic Millionaires.
• 2:41
  Interesting name there. Sounds like a dance troupe.
• 2:44
  It's a flash mob. Yeah, like they do parades, like they come and they— It kind
• 2:49
  of sounds like that, yeah.
• 2:50
  Well, who are the Patriotic Millionaires? I think they're millionaires who just love this country.
• 2:55
  They have a members of the patriotic millionaires, a group of high income earners
• 3:00
  who advocate for more equitable tax system,
• 3:03
  echoed their concerns and called for lawmakers to raise taxes on the wealthy
• 3:08
  to ensure. I can't even say that without.
• 3:11
  Yeah, it's. So insure investments and critical services.
• 3:15
  So I guess they're kind of saying the same thing we did last week.
• 3:18
  Now that we do have a federal budget, we probably we need some action pretty
• 3:23
  soon to cope with it. Yeah, and I think you hear that message sometimes.
• 3:26
  I think you just said it's raise taxes on the wealthiest to provide for public services.
• 3:31
  We have always at Scenic chafed at the notion that it's either charge people
• 3:38
  more in taxes or not be able to provide services.
• 3:41
  There's a way to do this, obviously, without having to pit state employees and
• 3:46
  retirees against taxpayers, because that's what that equation does.
• 3:50
  So we talked last week about the fact that we don't want to see,
• 3:54
  with the changes coming down in the federal budget, we don't want to see the
• 3:58
  choice come down to whether you give children health care or whether you give
• 4:01
  state employees and retirees something.
• 4:03
  And it doesn't need to come down to that. There's places where we're spending,
• 4:07
  and I'd start there if I were them, and the one that we keep bringing up because
• 4:11
  it's such an enormous amount of money and that makes the least sense to most
• 4:15
  people that I talk to casually is the expansion of those opportunity scholarships
• 4:20
  to where no matter how rich you are,
• 4:22
  the state will give you money if you send your child to private school.
• 4:26
  That's a giveaway, and I don't think the state is going to be in a position of giveaways.
• 4:30
  This was, I guess it was an online news conference hosted by the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center.
• 4:36
  They warned that the new federal budget bill would trigger deep cuts in Medicaid
• 4:41
  and strip health care coverage for 600,000 North Carolinians and saddle the
• 4:46
  state with $438 million a year in food assistance costs.
• 4:51
  There's no way to make all that up. Well, I mean, again, there are ways.
• 4:55
  Number one, you can't spend on issues that are giving money away without a need.
• 5:02
  That just doesn't make sense. And again, we've talked about the fact that these
• 5:06
  private schools have increased their prices.
• 5:08
  Yeah. So it's not even changing the game in terms of choice.
• 5:12
  Only 8% of the people in the first year of those scholarships actually chose
• 5:17
  to move their kids from public to private.
• 5:19
  The rest had already made that choice when it was fully on their own dime.
• 5:22
  And I'll be honest, I kind of, I'm disappointed that this topic isn't out there
• 5:27
  more, that people aren't talking about this. People are, though. I mean, casually.
• 5:31
  Yeah. I mean, casually, yeah. When they read about it, but most people don't know.
• 5:36
  They really don't, yeah. That the government is doing that. They like the idea of school choice.
• 5:40
  They hate the idea of paying for really wealthy people's school choice because
• 5:45
  they were doing it anyway.
• 5:46
  Yeah. Like, you've always had school choice. You know?
• 5:49
  There was no barrier. You know, cost wasn't a barrier to that choice for patriotic millionaires.
• 5:56
  What's the equivalent of state pride? Is there like a word for that? There's not, right?
• 6:01
  They do it every day. I mean, state pride. No, you wouldn't call it patriotic,
• 6:05
  though, if it's just about your state. Yeah. Well, it is. It is a little bit of patriotism.
• 6:10
  North Carolinian pride. Yeah. North Carolina pride.
• 6:13
  So we would expect them to have a little more urgency about this budget right now, right?
• 6:19
  I'm sure they do have urgency. They are going to have to recalibrate everything
• 6:23
  and figure out what can go in here properly.
• 6:27
  Programs, there's a lot of programs people wanted that might not cost all that much.
• 6:31
  But if you add all those up, it's like anything else. If you do a bunch of little
• 6:35
  subscriptions to, you can do your own personal budget death by many,
• 6:39
  many cuts of small expenditures.
• 6:41
  And so they have to make sure they don't increase spending in any way that doesn't
• 6:46
  benefit the public in a broad way.
• 6:48
  Going back to my first comment, I think it's kind of interesting,
• 6:51
  though, that we weren't invited at all to this. Like, we weren't even... What do you mean?
• 6:56
  Why would we have been... Well, I mean, like, you're talking about state services.
• 6:59
  Obviously, we're advocating for state services. It seems like they could have brought us in on that.
• 7:04
  Probably because Scenic has not taken a position that tax increases are the
• 7:09
  way to pay for public services because you don't necessarily have to do that.
• 7:14
  And there's so many ways to provide for your public services.
• 7:18
  And if you do provide appropriately, you bring in enough business to your state
• 7:23
  that it will pay for itself if you have a proper infrastructure. Okay.
• 7:27
  Well, as always, we'll continue to watch the budget as the state budget turns soap opera.
• 7:33
  But along the same lines, North Carolina, once again, topped the list of America's
• 7:38
  top states for businesses, according to CNBC.
• 7:42
  And that was published today, three hours ago. So congrats to the old North
• 7:46
  state on that, whatever that victory means.
• 7:50
  Tell us, what do you think about that and what does that really mean?
• 7:54
  I mean, I do think businesses like to come here.
• 7:57
  Now, depending on what study you see of why they came, oftentimes you'll see
• 8:01
  the things about quality of life. And we have a good climate.
• 8:05
  Right now, our climate is like acting up a bit here in North Carolina.
• 8:08
  We're having a bad week. But our climate is generally really, really good.
• 8:11
  And by climate, I don't mean economic. I'm just talking about the weather.
• 8:15
  And literally, businesses in the past have said, that was a big factor.
• 8:20
  Do their top brass want to be here?
• 8:22
  They ranked the states by seven factors. One was economy, infrastructure,
• 8:27
  the workforce, cost of doing business, business friendliness,
• 8:30
  which all the southern states probably swept. Oh, yes.
• 8:34
  Quality of life and technology and innovation. And North Carolina ranked 29th
• 8:39
  in quality of life, and that was our lowest ranking. So I wonder what's wrong
• 8:44
  with our quality of life.
• 8:46
  Well, we don't have an MLB team.
• 8:49
  That could include our health care. It does.
• 8:51
  It said it takes into account per capita crime rates, environmental quality, and health care. Yeah.
• 8:57
  And we are the worst in the nation for health care costs. Most expensive health
• 9:03
  care in the country is here. So that's bad.
• 9:05
  So all these quality of life issues, crime rates, environmental quality,
• 9:09
  and health care. There is a direct corollary there between state services and
• 9:15
  how much you put in them, and then what kind of quality of life you get out of that on the other end.
• 9:19
  That's why I say if you pay for state services.
• 9:22
  Make sure you pay people enough to want the jobs, keep them filled.
• 9:25
  And with quality people, it pays off and businesses wanting to come here.
• 9:29
  But if you look at per capita crime rates, you know, we think a lot about the
• 9:33
  police officer on the street.
• 9:34
  That's what most of us, if you say crime rate, we think about the police officers.
• 9:38
  We don't think about the probation parole folks.
• 9:41
  We don't think about the clerks of court and their staff, which if they're not
• 9:45
  making sure those courts run efficiently, it has absolutely has an impact on crime.
• 9:51
  There's so much that goes into running your criminal justice system,
• 9:55
  and most of those are state positions.
• 9:58
  And so we need a better investment in that.
• 10:01
  And certainly probation parole, we've seen how dangerous that is,
• 10:06
  and we're not paying them enough.
• 10:07
  And clerks of court and their staff are, like so many state employees,
• 10:11
  doing so much with not enough, but they're doing an amazing job of it so far.
• 10:16
  But they need to be funded better. for environmental quality. That's, I mean, DEQ.
• 10:22
  If you want to talk about the environmental quality, you have to have a North
• 10:25
  Carolina DEQ that is well-funded and well-staffed.
• 10:29
  And if the last one being healthcare, in addition to just the fact that the
• 10:33
  cost of healthcare is so out of control and the state health plan paying too
• 10:36
  much kind of leads the way since it's 10% of the market. The other thing is DHHS.
• 10:41
  So much about healthcare in this state has to be touched by DHHS in some way.
• 10:48
  And people sometimes hate the idea of regulations. But without regulations,
• 10:54
  it's a free-for-all, and then you have a health care system that is deemed inadequate.
• 10:59
  So it was interesting to me that where we didn't do well, we're in the bottom
• 11:03
  half on these rankings, is stuff that can very directly be tied to not putting
• 11:09
  enough money into those kinds of public services.
• 11:11
  Whereas overall, for our quality of public services, it seemed like our ranking was pretty high.
• 11:17
  We've been number one three of the last four years, go North Carolina.
• 11:22
  But so infrastructure, to me, seems like it would also include a lot of state
• 11:27
  employees, a lot of public services.
• 11:29
  That is, that's who provides your infrastructure. We're 11th in that,
• 11:32
  so that's pretty high up there.
• 11:34
  Workforce, we're fourth in the nation. I guess that probably has a lot to do
• 11:39
  with our, you know, our education system and our university.
• 11:43
  Yeah, the investment that we have traditionally had in our universities pays off.
• 11:47
  It's always going to pay off. How can you continue to argue for decreased taxes
• 11:54
  when we're already the number one state for business in the country?
• 11:59
  Because it's popular? I mean, I really, I don't know.
• 12:03
  I have not sat down with legislative leaders and asked that question.
• 12:06
  I would assume it's because it's politically popular to reduce tax rates,
• 12:10
  whether it's corporate or personal income.
• 12:12
  And maybe those states are also in a constant, you know, all the states are
• 12:17
  probably in a constant competition with one another to see how low they can
• 12:21
  make the costs for business to do.
• 12:23
  But at the same time, we do throw
• 12:25
  too much money at businesses in terms of incentives at the same time.
• 12:29
  And to me, you shouldn't be able to have it both ways.
• 12:31
  I wonder if that comes into business friendliness, which is a category. Right.
• 12:35
  It seems to me they'd want to, if a business located here, they would want their
• 12:39
  employees to be able to go to the DMV without, you know, standing in a five-hour
• 12:42
  line. But, you know, it'd call me crazy.
• 12:44
  I've actually seen with a DMV, I saw that they're doing extensions on people's driver's license.
• 12:51
  Yeah. If you have an expired driver's license in North Carolina,
• 12:54
  they're giving you like a two-year extension to get it renewed because of how ridiculous things are.
• 13:00
  But again, I mean, this didn't just happen.
• 13:03
  The legislature's been told for years exactly how many people were needed to
• 13:08
  make DMV optimally operational.
• 13:11
  And I think they must have just believed, well, no, you don't need more people.
• 13:16
  You just need to be more organized. I don't know.
• 13:17
  I'm not sure what they believed because they were literally told in committee
• 13:22
  for years by multiple administrations. You're right.
• 13:27
  Multiple administrations have asked for positions. Pat McCrory ran on it.
• 13:31
  Yeah. And they haven't gotten them. And then the new person comes in,
• 13:34
  which I'm not bashing him. He's probably great.
• 13:37
  But the first thing he said was, let's get more positions. Yeah.
• 13:40
  And they were like, oh, brilliant idea. You know, it's the messenger,
• 13:44
  as are most things in this world. And certainly in politics, it's the messenger.
• 13:48
  Yeah. We always get off on DMV
• 13:50
  for some reason. Because that's what people think of as government. Yeah.
• 13:54
  So, yeah, we're definitely going to need that infrastructure right now.
• 13:58
  As you said, we're having a difficult time weather-wise.
• 14:02
  We had lots of flooding from the tropical storm that just, was it Chantal? Chantal.
• 14:07
  Yeah. And that really snuck up on me, by the way. I did not know that was happening.
• 14:12
  And, you know, the state's been walloped.
• 14:15
  Yeah. In the last week. We've had a lot of rain all summer compared to normal,
• 14:19
  but Chantal did get my attention because I thought if this is the beginning of July.
• 14:24
  Yeah. Oh, my goodness. It's way, yeah. What is hurricane season going to be
• 14:27
  like this year if this is, we're not even in it, really?
• 14:30
  It really doesn't kick in until like August or September. Usually on the Atlantic
• 14:34
  seaboard, right, it's later.
• 14:36
  Like in the Gulf of Mexico, I know for Texas, and June and July could be their
• 14:41
  sketchiest times, but for us, it's later. September, October.
• 14:45
  Because that's when my brother, we always called it hurricane break for him
• 14:48
  because he went to UNCW and they would always have, every year he had a hurricane.
• 14:53
  And they were sent home for like a week. So I'd be sitting at my college and
• 14:57
  he'd be like, oh yeah, I'm at home for hurricane break.
• 15:00
  That's funny because I kind of know when hurricane season is from when Katrina
• 15:06
  hit, wasn't it? In late August.
• 15:09
  I think so. Yeah, and that was like school starting back time.
• 15:12
  And I just remember seeing it. The convention happens the week of Labor Day,
• 15:15
  and there's been so many times where some people couldn't come.
• 15:20
  I remember just a few years ago, we had a lot of DOT folks who were out there for the weekend. Yes.
• 15:26
  Will say, I always feel safe in the Quarry Convention Center,
• 15:28
  though, with the rain and everything going on around, because I'm like,
• 15:32
  I don't got to drive anywhere. I got everything I need right here,
• 15:34
  and it's a safe building.
• 15:36
  True. So not to minimize what's going on in Texas, obviously,
• 15:40
  they've had tremendous flooding and our heart. That was a massive tragedy.
• 15:45
  And you said you have family close to there, right?
• 15:48
  It's not their primary place, but yeah.
• 15:51
  Okay. What is that? It said it was, I'm not really that familiar with Texas.
• 15:55
  It's the hill country. Near San Antonio, is that right?
• 15:58
  Yeah, kind of north of San Antonio and west of Austin. Okay.
• 16:03
  Is that near College Station? College Station.
• 16:07
  I mean, nothing's near in Texas, to be clear. But yeah, it's not that far from College Station.
• 16:13
  You've got San Marcos is in that area.
• 16:16
  Big college, huge college town. I mean, the university there is,
• 16:19
  gosh, it'd be the size of Chapel Hill.
• 16:21
  It's just devastating to hear the story of those children at the Camp Mystic.
• 16:27
  We'll all know that now. Yeah, you can't even comprehend that grief.
• 16:32
  Yeah. And I believe they had yesterday, I think they had a kind of memorial
• 16:36
  service where they invited previous campers and people who've been going there
• 16:41
  for the past like 30 years to come and just honor.
• 16:45
  Because not only was it little kids, the camp director was swept away while
• 16:49
  trying to save little kids. Yeah.
• 16:51
  There's a lot of camps in that area. You know, Hill Country is beautiful in the summertime.
• 16:56
  It's kind of a microclimate like it is up in Boone where it's a little cooler. Yeah.
• 17:01
  So along with the flooding in North Carolina,
• 17:05
  the insurance commissioner, Mike Causey, who was just on our podcast last week,
• 17:10
  he is in Durham today providing assistance with the Department of Insurance
• 17:15
  team to residents who were impacted by the flooding.
• 17:18
  And according to their Facebook page, they are also setting up a victim assistance
• 17:23
  center in Carrboro that will be available tomorrow as well, July 11th.
• 17:31
  Artis was just on a meeting with our president who lives in,
• 17:34
  he works for the city of town of Mebane.
• 17:36
  Yeah, he runs IT for the town of Mebane. Kirk Montgomery, and he said,
• 17:39
  we've heard too, that there's a, was it two-day supply of water?
• 17:43
  Right. Their water system is limited right now, so everybody's rationing water there.
• 17:49
  They're taking, you know, if anybody hears this and wants to take water to Mebane,
• 17:55
  they need it. They need bottles of water for drinking and for brushing their
• 17:59
  teeth so they can ration it. I don't know.
• 18:02
  You know, it's supposed to be a lot more rain tonight. Yeah,
• 18:05
  more rain tonight. I have no idea what that's going to mean.
• 18:07
  The dam is what they're watching there. For Lake, is it Michael?
• 18:12
  I'm not sure. There's a dam there in Alamance County that they're watching.
• 18:16
  There was actually a dam near where I live.
• 18:19
  My wife takes that road for work, and it washed out the road there.
• 18:23
  When we had that huge rain, I guess, over the weekend.
• 18:27
  So, yeah. There's probably a lot more to come.
• 18:30
  Our thoughts are with people who are in Durham or Alamance or places that have
• 18:34
  been affected so much here in the last week. It's awful.
• 18:38
  And thank you to all the city and county employees dealing with that.
• 18:41
  And thank you to the state employees dealing with it. Yeah.
• 18:44
  Because it's a lot to try to keep everybody okay and to keep things running along. Yeah.
• 18:51
  All right. Artis, you came straight over to these podcast studios from our retiree
• 18:56
  council meeting. How are those fine folks doing?
• 18:59
  They are good, as they always are, but they are concerned.
• 19:03
  They don't know if they're going to show up in this budget at all.
• 19:06
  They don't know how the federal budget is going to impact whether they show
• 19:10
  up and they feel very overlooked.
• 19:12
  Well, we got a little bit of good news this week, I guess, from State Treasurer
• 19:16
  Brad Briner, who reported that the plan had yielded $8 billion in return since
• 19:22
  January 1st. I guess that's when he took office.
• 19:25
  Approximately $3.5 billion more than our soon return.
• 19:29
  Yeah, I mean, that's excellent. And you have to have returns beyond your expectation
• 19:34
  to have generated enough revenue to fund things like a COLA.
• 19:38
  I know Treasurer Briner at the Council of State meeting this week made a remark
• 19:42
  about how it's a good thing to bring in more money from our investments so that
• 19:47
  the legislature could reduce the employer contribution.
• 19:50
  Yeah, that's fine. But it's more important to make sure you give those retiree
• 19:54
  colos before you talk about reducing that employer contribution.
• 19:58
  So this is a discussion I actually had with Brenda Williams,
• 20:01
  our CFO, this morning. And, you know, it's fine to tout your gains like this,
• 20:06
  but at some point, retirees are going to say, well, where's my cost of living
• 20:10
  adjustment if you're making all this money?
• 20:12
  Because remember, when times were so exceptionally tight, every time that happened,
• 20:18
  you saw the legislature go down at one point to 0% employer contribution,
• 20:23
  while employees consistently put their 6% in.
• 20:27
  So you can't, again, you can't have it both ways. You can't say,
• 20:30
  well, when the state's short on funds, you keep paying the full freight,
• 20:34
  but we're not going to pay anything.
• 20:36
  But when we've got money, we're going to reduce our amount. But you still keep
• 20:41
  paying the full thing. No, that's not that's not right.
• 20:44
  It's also a relatively short period of time, you know. Correct.
• 20:48
  And investors always want you to think long term, you know, always don't look
• 20:53
  at small drops in your portfolio, but also don't look at huge gains in your portfolio.
• 20:59
  Well, you know, ad hoc funding where you decide your employer contribution every year.
• 21:04
  There's a school of thought out there in retirement funding that ad hoc funding
• 21:08
  is dangerous because you are kind of counting on things to be a certain way.
• 21:13
  And obviously the market is anything but predictable.
• 21:17
  What is ad hoc funding? The ad hoc is just as you go.
• 21:21
  So this year we might put in 18 percent, but next year we might put in 2 percent. Gotcha.
• 21:27
  And some states believe you should have an even number or tie it to something every year.
• 21:32
  But if you kept it consistent, we wouldn't be in the position we're in now where
• 21:36
  the number's high that the state's having to put in.
• 21:39
  If the state hadn't, for years back when, put in zero and as close to zero as
• 21:45
  they could for multiple years running, because you can't do that.
• 21:49
  You do so much damage in that time, you never catch up.
• 21:53
  Again, not to poo-poo the report, that's, I mean, obviously,
• 21:57
  we all like gains, but we are also realists.
• 22:01
  That's great, and I respect the fact that Treasurer Brunner does feel he's got
• 22:05
  a responsibility to a lot of different constituencies.
• 22:08
  And one of those is the legislature.
• 22:10
  So of course, one of his jobs is gonna be to try to make sure he makes enough
• 22:14
  money in that system that it does relieve some of the pressure they feel.
• 22:18
  You know, we're talking about how they're gonna be bringing in less money for
• 22:21
  all kinds of reasons. Some they chose, like the taxes.
• 22:25
  Some they've not chosen, like the federal budget. But less money will be coming in.
• 22:30
  So he feels a responsibility to make enough money in the system,
• 22:34
  they don't have to commit as much of the general fund.
• 22:37
  And that's not... I get that, but I can even live with that if you also say
• 22:42
  in the same breath, and retiree COLAs. Yeah, exactly.
• 22:47
  It says here that the fund estimate for June 30th is $133.8 billion.
• 22:54
  The retirement system is a difficult thing to deal with because there's going
• 22:59
  to be more and more retirees in coming years because the workforce is aging.
• 23:03
  The gains are going to be more unpredictable, I think, than ever.
• 23:08
  And so I'm glad it's been a good six months, and let's hope that keeps up.
• 23:12
  But whatever gains there are, let's not think that we can still not do right by the retirees.
• 23:17
  Because, by the way, that doesn't just hurt retirees when we don't give a COLA.
• 23:21
  It hurts our ability to retain the workforce we have. Yeah.
• 23:25
  Because when they see that the retirees aren't getting a COLA,
• 23:29
  they're like, why am I going to stick around to not get a COLA either?
• 23:33
  Yeah, it's common sense. I mean, you've got people in the workforce who think,
• 23:37
  I haven't heard of them getting a cost of living adjustment in my entire time
• 23:41
  in state government because it's been since, I think, 2017 or something.
• 23:45
  Yeah. So they're at that pivotal point where they either stick with the state
• 23:51
  and we have their experience and all the money we've put in training them and
• 23:55
  developing them as an employee, or they take all that experience out the door.
• 24:00
  We lose the money it costs to develop that employee and they go work for private industry for more.
• 24:05
  Anything else you want to talk about before we get to the Gen Z minute?
• 24:09
  Are we having a Gen Z episode next week? Oh, yeah.
• 24:12
  I hope so. I have not gotten any responses from the people I reached out to yet.
• 24:17
  So this is an all call for anyone who wants to be on our podcast.
• 24:21
  Next week is the time to do it. If you're, what are we saying, under?
• 24:26
  Under 35. 35? Yeah. Okay. We'd love to have you join us and Sam will take good care of you.
• 24:32
  But yeah, definitely let us know and we'll be putting that out to everyone as well.
• 24:37
  All right. Now it's time for everyone's favorite segment, the Gen Z Minute.
• 24:42
  Sam, you have the floor. What's going on? Yeah. So last week,
• 24:46
  I feel like everyone was very interested in hearing about how Gen Zs are in the workplace.
• 24:50
  And so I found something kind of still relating to that, but it's a Forbes article
• 24:56
  talking about six tips for communicating effectively with Gen Z in the workplace, because in this,
• 25:02
  a researcher notes that weak communication between employers and employees can
• 25:09
  actually cost nearly $37 billion at a average company because miscommunications
• 25:16
  slow down production and relationship building in the workplace.
• 25:19
  Which is why searching for solutions and generation gaps is a major objective
• 25:24
  within organizations. Yeah.
• 25:26
  So the six things that they had on here, we can kind of do it like last week,
• 25:30
  and I'll run through the six things that they say, and then we can kind of focus
• 25:35
  in on some of them, were focus on output, not behavior.
• 25:39
  Use the channels that Gen Z feels most comfortable with. Recognize what's important to Gen Zs.
• 25:45
  Prioritize transparency and honesty.
• 25:47
  Understand how they interpret silence and be aware of their fears.
• 25:52
  Interesting. I want to know about the silence part. So that one is actually
• 25:57
  really interesting to me because I feel this even just with friends.
• 26:02
  Many Gen Zs expect to hear from their managers on a regular or daily basis.
• 26:07
  And when they don't, they assume that there is something wrong,
• 26:10
  that they've done something wrong or they've missed something. I'm sorry, Sam.
• 26:16
  Is this directed at me? Like not directed.
• 26:21
  It can be. But you could call me more. It can be accepted by you.
• 26:24
  And so it kind of suggests to try scheduling short daily check-ins to give them
• 26:30
  a regular point of contact, whether that's face-to-face, video call, messages.
• 26:35
  Whatever is their most comfortable form of communication, which kind of connects
• 26:40
  to number two, which is using channels that Gen Z feels comfortable with.
• 26:46
  It's not a phone call. No. For Gen Zs, face-to-face meetings are very much preferred
• 26:51
  because phone calls and text, they can't read your physical body language and recognize social cues.
• 26:59
  And so it kind of gives them a little bit of anxiety when you call them and
• 27:03
  they're like, how serious or intense is this? I've had millennials before that
• 27:08
  said, ooh, phone calls give me anxiety, text it.
• 27:12
  Yeah. So that was interesting to me because we don't really care if you pick
• 27:16
  up the phone or if you text.
• 27:17
  I will say that I don't like talking on the phone. I never have liked talking on the phone.
• 27:22
  But just before you move on, I think that that's the worst part of working from home.
• 27:27
  And for that. I like to be in the office so we can talk.
• 27:31
  Yes, run into people. And as a manager, I think it's easier to work with your
• 27:36
  people when they're here with you.
• 27:38
  So maybe a lot of this stems from working from home. Oh, yeah.
• 27:41
  Because I feel like I have an easier time being able to talk to you when I can
• 27:45
  just walk down the hall and be like, hey, I got a question.
• 27:49
  But they also put in that one that for a digital workplace communication,
• 27:53
  they usually prefer text messages.
• 27:55
  And not a giant, long wall of text message, because that can overwhelm them,
• 28:01
  and they're like, this is too much, I don't know what I'm doing.
• 28:04
  But smaller messages so that they can intake the information and process it
• 28:08
  a little bit better. That makes sense.
• 28:10
  Sam and I had an interesting moment this week, actually.
• 28:15
  I started just, like, peppering her with things to do without really realizing it.
• 28:20
  It was on Monday morning, I was, like, fresh, I had ideas.
• 28:24
  And she was like, uh, can you, like, prioritize this list for me?
• 28:29
  It's just a whole lot. And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry, Sam.
• 28:32
  There was just a lot all at once. And I was like, okay, what's the most important
• 28:37
  thing that needs to get done first?
• 28:38
  I think that's an ADD thing. Yeah, I do. We all do it. Yeah.
• 28:41
  I do the same thing. I came in Monday morning with a fresh slate of ideas and
• 28:45
  I overwhelmed Sam with them. So I had to apologize for that.
• 28:49
  But she got them all done. She got most of them all done. Actually,
• 28:52
  now that I'm looking around the room, this could be an ADD podcast. It really could be.
• 28:56
  And you can tell it listening to it.
• 28:58
  And then some of the other ones that I thought were a little more interesting
• 29:01
  was the focus on output, not behavior.
• 29:04
  Because many Gen Zs are more hypercognitive than previous generations and are
• 29:09
  able to process information a lot quicker, which can be frustrating for both
• 29:13
  the manager and the employee.
• 29:16
  Hypercognitive. Oh, are they like cyborgs or something? So it's more like it
• 29:22
  kind of has to go with ADHD and ADD in the sense that sometimes we process what
• 29:27
  you're trying to tell us before you've finished explaining it to us.
• 29:30
  Maybe that's an age thing, too. I was going to say, we're just processing it slower just because.
• 29:36
  Because we're old. That's natural, yeah. It also might be because of our attention
• 29:39
  spans are so short due to TikTok and YouTube videos. Yeah.
• 29:42
  Because additionally, Gen Zs are more attached to their phone.
• 29:46
  And it says that doesn't necessarily affect their productivity levels.
• 29:50
  Which is why they prefer to be evaluating on meaningful metrics,
• 29:54
  such as completing assigned tasks and working well with teammates rather than,
• 29:59
  oh, well, I walked past your office and saw you were on your phone. Well, I did everything.
• 30:04
  I don't know what else you want me to do right now. So I thought that was an
• 30:08
  interesting one. Those are interesting things.
• 30:10
  And with state government looking to get more and more young people interested
• 30:14
  and taking positions, because it is a great place. I mean, certainly if you
• 30:19
  want to be trained and have somebody pour into you, state government's a great
• 30:22
  place to start in the workforce.
• 30:24
  So we need to understand more and more about what makes young people tick.
• 30:28
  And not that we want people to leave state government and go find other jobs,
• 30:32
  but I bet other employers see that you work for DOT or something like that.
• 30:38
  And they're like, oh, that's probably a really trained person.
• 30:41
  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sure. You're going to poach from wherever you can poach from.
• 30:44
  I like to poach from state government at Scenic. Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:47
  That's how you guys got me.
• 30:49
  I was an intern at the DOT and then we came over here. Poached some great people
• 30:53
  from state government. That's right.
• 30:55
  With the be aware of their fears ones, it kind of goes with,
• 30:58
  so Gen Z's biggest fear primarily in the workplace is not being respected by older colleagues.
• 31:05
  Because we grew up hearing that we are lazy, emotionally fragile,
• 31:09
  and don't want to work, it kind of makes
• 31:12
  us feel like that's how the older generations perceive us more often.
• 31:17
  Even though a lot of Gen Zs are working two jobs or have a job and a side hustle.
• 31:22
  And it's just that Gen Zs measure their goals and job satisfactions differently.
• 31:28
  I feel like the older generation always looks down on the younger generation throughout history.
• 31:33
  I think when I started, there was a whole group of older folks at the newspaper
• 31:37
  who were like, you don't work hard.
• 31:39
  And when I started in state government way before you started work,
• 31:43
  John, it was the same way. I mean, I remember if we got a position where we
• 31:48
  could make any decisions at all, people were like, why are the children making the decisions?
• 31:54
  And then you get older and they're like, why are the old people making the decisions?
• 31:57
  Like, when was I allowed to make a decision?
• 32:00
  I don't remember that. Yeah. It is kind of funny if you think about it.
• 32:03
  Like, maybe we've done that as older employers because we, like,
• 32:08
  Jameson and his T-shirts, I did this. With the blue flame? Okay.
• 32:12
  Even I can say that we have talked about those blue flames too much.
• 32:16
  We're not going to make sense to anybody, but we had the first Gen Z podcast Sam ever did.
• 32:22
  One of our young employees who's got so many ideas, I mean, rapid fire good
• 32:27
  ideas, but he suggested some scenic shirts that would appeal more to a younger demographic.
• 32:34
  And he, for some reason, blue flames were important, but they had such a long
• 32:38
  discussion over T-shirts.
• 32:40
  That was so odd to me.
• 32:42
  And I remember almost telling y'all to cut that part out and then realizing
• 32:48
  I just needed to let the whole thing go because clearly I didn't understand,
• 32:53
  but that's OK. That's something they care about. Right.
• 32:56
  And maybe that's the whole point. Me not understanding is OK.
• 32:59
  And that's what we. Yeah, we have to shift that topic.
• 33:03
  But I think y'all's point was well taken, though, which is the way you might
• 33:08
  advertise a group to get somebody's interest in the first place is a very different way.
• 33:14
  We'd have put out flyers or something.
• 33:16
  Y'all don't want a flyer with a bunch of words on it. You might look at a T-shirt
• 33:21
  and say, that's cool. What's that about?
• 33:23
  Yeah. So I get it. Y'all are more visual, I think, in that way.
• 33:26
  Or just a T-shirt gun where you shoot off the T-shirts. I still want a T-shirt gun. Those are fun.
• 33:30
  We should get one of those for convention. Good luck editing this.
• 33:34
  We're all ADHD in here. It's out of control today.
• 33:38
  All right. Well, that was Gen Z. Is there a pop culture reference you want to
• 33:42
  talk about or anything or nothing?
• 33:45
  I feel like I've been focusing a lot more on, like, there's a lot on the internet
• 33:49
  that's been surrounding the Texas floods and the North Carolina flooding.
• 33:54
  And fortunately, there's just not much pop culture-y fun.
• 33:58
  Yeah. Yeah. I guess I went a little too far. Happiness in the world.
• 34:01
  Not much fluffiness out there right now.
• 34:04
  Well, with that in mind, let's go to John's Wacky Weird Question of the Week.
• 34:09
  Music.
• 34:15
  So today, my question is a little open-ended, and I ask it just because I want
• 34:20
  to give you one fact that I learned on TikTok.
• 34:23
  And I think we could create a whole other segment that's like John's weird thing
• 34:27
  he found on TikTok every week.
• 34:29
  Because it seems like I bring it up every week. Hey, I found this out on TikTok.
• 34:33
  I think you like TikTok more than I do. I am kind of obsessed.
• 34:37
  So we've been getting a lot of hits on our TikTok, by the way,
• 34:40
  with our videos and our podcast clips. So search us out, by the way, TikTok Scenic.
• 34:45
  But our question of the week is what's a fun or unusual fact that you've learned recently?
• 34:50
  And I bring this up because I just watched a TikTok about the Appalachian Mountains,
• 34:54
  which are obviously North Carolina mountains.
• 34:57
  And everyone probably knows the fact that the Appalachian Mountains are very,
• 35:03
  very old. They're the oldest mountains in the world.
• 35:05
  They're 300 million years old or something like that. There's a huge number,
• 35:08
  and they're so old that they were on Pangaea, which was like the one continent on Earth at the time.
• 35:16
  And when it broke apart, the mountain range split, so the Scottish Highlands
• 35:21
  and the Appalachian Mountains are the same mountain range. But that's not my fun fact.
• 35:25
  Everyone probably knows that one, right? But the fun fact was that the Appalachian
• 35:30
  Mountains are older than trees.
• 35:32
  They predate trees, apparently. And so when John Denver says,
• 35:38
  older than the trees, that's what he's talking about.
• 35:41
  Oh, in Take Me Home Country Roads. Yeah. John Denver song.
• 35:44
  So there's my fun fact of the week. That is interesting.
• 35:48
  What's funny is as soon as you said that, that's where my brain went to with
• 35:52
  the songs that the mountains are older than the trees.
• 35:54
  I was like. And I got to sing a little bit on the podcast.
• 35:58
  So life is old, they're older than the trees. So the mountain range existed
• 36:02
  before trees. So that's what that means. Holy cow.
• 36:06
  Is that not an awesome fact or what? I had to figure out a way to get it onto
• 36:10
  the podcast. Now I just got that song playing in my head.
• 36:14
  We can put it in the background. What's a fun fact that you have, Sam?
• 36:18
  The only fun fact I can think of right now is moving is not as fun as I thought it was.
• 36:23
  When you have time to move and you're not doing it all in one day,
• 36:28
  not everything gets packed up and moved at once to where you're just like,
• 36:31
  oh, I can sift through the boxes and get everything.
• 36:33
  So I woke up this morning with no coffee, no food, and did not get any of that
• 36:39
  until I headed over here.
• 36:41
  No happiness. So let's investigate this. Let's break this down just a little
• 36:45
  bit. How far are you moving?
• 36:48
  20 minutes down the road. Okay, so that's kind of a little distance,
• 36:51
  though. Yeah, so you can't just, like, go back and forth.
• 36:54
  How are you doing it? Like, one car load at a time? Did you rent something?
• 36:58
  Pretty much one car load at a time. I might have to rent a U-Haul to get the
• 37:02
  rest of the furniture that I have there. Yeah.
• 37:05
  Just because I have like some desk
• 37:06
  chairs, a desk. So that's literally the worst way to move to me. Yeah.
• 37:10
  Is like one little carloader. I'm basically doing one room at a time. I got my bedroom.
• 37:15
  Yeah. I don't have my clothes. I got my bedroom.
• 37:18
  But like. Today I think I'm going to try, depending on the weather,
• 37:22
  because last night I did have to drive back from my new place to my other place to get my dog.
• 37:27
  And it was pouring down rain. It was.
• 37:30
  Atrocious. Depending on the weather, hopefully I get my kitchen moved today
• 37:35
  so I can actually cook in my apartment.
• 37:37
  Well, good luck with that. I hate moving. It's like the worst thing on earth.
• 37:42
  I learned that now. What about you, Artis? You have a fun fact?
• 37:45
  I think I learned one from Commissioner Causey last week when he was on the
• 37:49
  podcast, which, by the way, if you haven't listened to that, please do.
• 37:52
  I thought he was really riveting at times.
• 37:56
  But what I really didn't have in the front of my brain until he put it there
• 38:00
  is that the Department of Insurance is kind of like some of the receipt-supported
• 38:05
  pieces of other agencies. Yeah.
• 38:08
  And that their funding, you can cut positions there without necessarily saving
• 38:13
  a dime in the state budget because they come from that special fund set up from
• 38:19
  people's purchase of insurance.
• 38:21
  I think that, yeah, that was the main. Well, he said so much.
• 38:25
  He says a lot of great things.
• 38:27
  Yeah. Educated us. But that was really eye opening to know that it's almost
• 38:31
  like the highway fund with the. It is kind of like that.
• 38:34
  You know, I guess that's about as close an analogy as you could make,
• 38:37
  but I don't, well, I know, it had never hit me, the things in that agency that are just not.
• 38:43
  I think about the obviously fee-supported things that are in Department of Labor,
• 38:48
  places like that, but I don't think a Department of Insurance is not being out
• 38:53
  of the general fund to the degree it's not. Yeah.
• 38:56
  I don't know how to say this, but how safe is that, though, that by safe,
• 39:00
  I mean safe from legislators?
• 39:02
  Like, at some point, could they say, well, we're just going to take that money
• 39:05
  and cut those positions? Or I'm sure it's probably in statute, right?
• 39:10
  Well, how they're funded is just a budgetary function.
• 39:14
  Okay. If they're not, you know, there's not many positions outlined in statute.
• 39:18
  It's just your council estate, things like that. Your cabinet positions.
• 39:23
  Other than that, the statute rarely tells you now.
• 39:26
  Back to the DMV. Oddly, that tells you how many employees you can have.
• 39:31
  Okay, so I understand. It's a cap on them.
• 39:33
  Yeah, maybe that was a non-issue. Yeah, but that was a good, interesting.
• 39:37
  And when Sam just said that he was somewhere during the flooding.
• 39:40
  Yes, he's in Durham today, and they're setting up a center in Carrboro.
• 39:46
  So I had a thought. That man gets around. He goes to everywhere.
• 39:50
  He always is popping up. He does. He's full of energy. He's a people person.
• 39:53
  He is. He came in here and just commanded the route there. Yeah, it was great.
• 39:57
  So, yeah, take a listen to that podcast. I was proud of it.
• 40:01
  I thought it was very informative. You see the title, Insurance Commissioner,
• 40:05
  and you don't think it's going to be as exciting as it is. I think it's going
• 40:09
  to be dry, very dry conversation. And it was not.
• 40:11
  He really is very good at relating the work those state employees do to the
• 40:16
  everyday lives and pocketbook of North Carolinians. He's a very effective communicator.
• 40:20
  I was about to say something very much not my age.
• 40:24
  What's that? He was a hoot and a holler. A hoot and a holler.
• 40:28
  And on that note, we'll leave it there. And thank you for joining us this week. Have a great weekend.
• 40:34
  Music.