Latest / The SEANC View / Budget Delays and State Employee Protections

Transcript

Budget Delays and State Employee Protections · The SEANC View

• 0:00
  Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Jonathan Owens, Communications Director here at Scenic,
• 0:07
  along with Artis Watkins, our Executive Director, Government Relations Director
• 0:12
  Suzanne Beasley, and podcast producer Sam Klein. Let's have a great show.
• 0:18
  Music.
• 0:28
  Today is Wednesday, June 18th. I'm not very good with dates.
• 0:32
  I usually get them all mixed up. It's a weird week anyway.
• 0:34
  The 18th. It's a little nicer today than it was yesterday. It seems like a little.
• 0:39
  No, it is. Well, at least the sun is shining. Yesterday was kind of overclocked.
• 0:43
  If you're listening to this from another place, North Carolina, pray for us right now.
• 0:48
  It's a hundred and ninety seven degrees.
• 0:51
  It really is. It feels very much like like New Orleans, Houston, like the Gulf Coast.
• 0:56
  This is like the time of the year where everybody's like, why do we live here?
• 1:00
  And then the other nine months of the year, we're like, oh, this is why. That's why.
• 1:05
  We just hide for three months. More yard when we can.
• 1:08
  I actually saw something on the news that said in the next few weeks,
• 1:12
  the heat index and the way it'll feel will be in the 100s.
• 1:16
  And at least in Wake County, they have set up some cool-off stations throughout
• 1:19
  Wake County with like water kind of spritzing areas to just keep you cool.
• 1:24
  I remember the first time I saw one of those things at the...
• 1:28
  I think it was at Carowinds, and we just went nuts in it. Well,
• 1:32
  I worry about, yeah, I worry about homeless people because I don't know how
• 1:35
  you hydrate enough when it's like this.
• 1:38
  Yeah. We won't go on weather talk. We digress already. We could talk about weather
• 1:42
  forever. Weather and food, I've noticed.
• 1:44
  We're just old, old people. Well, and Sammy.
• 1:48
  And Sammy. Sam likes talking about weather. I do enjoy weather. She's an old soul.
• 1:52
  So we'll start with what we always start with, the state budget.
• 1:55
  We had a News Observer article. I think it came out today, wasn't today's issue?
• 2:01
  I think, well, Dawn put it online last night.
• 2:04
  Yeah, that's right. It went online last night, but it was quoting things from Tuesday.
• 2:09
  So I guess I'm still in like a newspaper mindset where news is always a day late.
• 2:15
  So Dawn Vaughn from Dawn Bungardner Vaughn, I guess we should call her middle name out.
• 2:22
  We just always call her Dawn Vaughn. But y'all know, if you're listening and
• 2:26
  you follow North Carolina politics, you know Dawn Vaughn.
• 2:28
  Dawn is like the preeminent reporter down there now, it seems like to me.
• 2:33
  I mean, there are a lot of great ones down there, but she's stuck it out, I think.
• 2:36
  She and Colin Campbell write a lot in a week.
• 2:41
  I've seen a lot of articles with those two names attached to them.
• 2:45
  Yeah, the press corps down there maybe has dwindled a lot.
• 2:49
  Maybe, but they're still awesome. Yeah, still great. Anyway,
• 2:52
  so she had a story with House Speaker Destin Hall and Senate Leader Phil Berger
• 2:57
  pretty much saying that the budget is going to be delayed.
• 3:02
  Doesn't look like it'll be anytime soon. Berger said that they were both pretty
• 3:06
  far apart still, and there's no reason to really act like they're close to a compromise.
• 3:13
  That's what we're hearing. We're not getting a budget by the end of June.
• 3:16
  Yeah, and the sticking point doesn't even seem to be as much about how to spend
• 3:20
  it as how you can agree what the revenue coming in should be,
• 3:24
  and that's all around tax cuts.
• 3:26
  And I guess they have to start there before they move anything else.
• 3:29
  But I think the best thing that we saw in that article by Dawn Vaughn is that
• 3:35
  Speaker Hall said, look, we know we need to get the raise in the hands of state employees.
• 3:41
  And I'm hoping he means retirees, too, if you're listening, Mr.
• 3:43
  Speaker, you know, as soon as possible, because they're going without a raise.
• 3:48
  The new fiscal year will start July 1, but nothing changes for these state employees.
• 3:52
  So we're hopeful because he told her he would want it to be retroactive.
• 3:57
  There's no guarantee that it's retroactive, though. That's what we were just
• 4:00
  discussing, that, you know, it's at their discretion whether to do that or not.
• 4:04
  Totally. They would have to agree on that as well.
• 4:06
  Every detail of it would have to be agreed on. But I think it's a really good
• 4:09
  sign when you have one of the two corner offices saying, yeah,
• 4:13
  these people deserve their money.
• 4:14
  And if we're a little slower in getting this thing out, we just need to make
• 4:18
  sure we do it retroactive. And Speaker Hall said, folks continue to get paid.
• 4:23
  Obviously, I think our position on the budget is much better.
• 4:26
  And I think we need to try to get these raises to folks as quickly as possible.
• 4:30
  So does that suggest that maybe there'll be like a mini budget in the works?
• 4:35
  So we've heard chatter, you know, I mean, mini budgets always come up in conversation
• 4:39
  in every session since, you know, the discovery of mini budgets.
• 4:43
  Maybe people listening don't know what a mini budget is, though.
• 4:46
  So it's when they break out pieces. You don't know? I don't really know, no.
• 4:49
  Instead of passing a whole state budget, they break out pieces of it that need
• 4:53
  to be addressed. So you'd have a mini budget, a little budget.
• 4:56
  Yeah, like instead of the big budget bill.
• 4:58
  Specific. Just be the segment dealing with specific issues. So the budget is
• 5:03
  essentially like just a huge change in legislation, like actual statutes, right?
• 5:08
  So this would be the part that deals with state employees.
• 5:11
  Well, this would also be a change in the statute, but it would be limited in
• 5:15
  what it addresses. I've always thought, though, those have to be difficult to
• 5:18
  do because... Yeah, because they affect other parts. Yeah. Yeah, it would be.
• 5:22
  But in the past, state employees have done well in many budgets.
• 5:27
  Okay. There were times in recent memory where they literally,
• 5:30
  the legislative leaders, approached us and said, we want to make sure y'all
• 5:34
  get your money for your people, so we're putting it in a mini budget.
• 5:38
  I mean, that's what we would love to see, something like that,
• 5:40
  because that's prioritizing the public workforce and those who did spend their whole career.
• 5:45
  But I guess I would caveat that I would say that like spending on raises and
• 5:51
  salaries is such a big budget issue that you would probably need to have the
• 5:56
  tax plan finalized before you enact something like that.
• 6:00
  So maybe it's not as possible or. Well.
• 6:04
  Yes, yes and no, because people do think the spending for raises is much more enormous than it is.
• 6:12
  So, for instance, the opportunity scholarships, those are six,
• 6:16
  seven hundred million dollars.
• 6:17
  You know, a couple percentage point raise for state employees doesn't come anywhere near that.
• 6:21
  Yeah. What's one percent for state employees? 130 million, maybe, I think.
• 6:26
  Right. That's just that's not roughly not teachers.
• 6:29
  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Just agencies. So it'd be if you did two and a half,
• 6:34
  you're still not busting 350, right?
• 6:36
  Yeah. I know it sounds bigger than it actually is. Well, people assume,
• 6:40
  oh, yeah, the state employee raises are going to chomp up the whole budget. And they're not.
• 6:45
  Yeah. I mean, this is literally it's the most important money you can spend
• 6:50
  because you keep people training and refilling positions cost you.
• 6:54
  According to the most recent OSHR numbers, it was well over half a billion dollars
• 6:59
  a year that turnover costs the state and the taxpayers.
• 7:02
  So, really, you're going to spend it either way.
• 7:05
  If you don't give raise and keep people, you're going to spend it in turnover
• 7:09
  costs, which does nothing for the taxpayers.
• 7:12
  This way, at least you try to keep some of your people who are already trained
• 7:15
  and have that institutional knowledge and have stayed with the state out of
• 7:19
  a commitment to the taxpayer.
• 7:20
  It seems like from just further reading this story here that Hall is very interested
• 7:26
  in doing a mini budget because he says part of wanting to give substantial raises
• 7:31
  to teachers and state employees is not making them wait on them.
• 7:34
  And would you think that the Senate would be opposed to something like that?
• 7:38
  No, I mean, I think Senator Berger has always, when he talks to us,
• 7:43
  I think that he's very clear that he's supportive of state employees.
• 7:47
  He wants to see state employees get recognized in the budget in an appropriate
• 7:51
  way. So I don't think they would have so much of a disagreement about that.
• 7:55
  I do think the gulf between the raises for most state employees and then teachers and principals.
• 8:01
  Yeah, there's always that. That gulf was bigger on the House side.
• 8:04
  Yeah. And that has historically been an issue.
• 8:07
  And, I mean, let's just be really. We've preached equity for so long.
• 8:11
  Let's be really frank about this. for years and years, the people teaching in
• 8:16
  this state would get a raise multiple times that of the rest of state employees.
• 8:21
  And we're here for teachers getting everything they should.
• 8:25
  We're just here for everybody else getting recognized too, because not having
• 8:29
  good quality teachers is a very obvious thing to citizens, that that's horrible.
• 8:35
  That's going to affect my kids or my grandkids or my neighbor's kids.
• 8:38
  But people don't know what the rest of state government is doing for them. That's the problem.
• 8:43
  So as one lobbyist who used to lobby for teacher raises told us years ago,
• 8:48
  I'm lobbying for mom and apple pie.
• 8:51
  And you're lobbying for stereotypes.
• 8:54
  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, looking at the two plans, the Senate and the House budgets,
• 8:59
  the story kind of seems to say that the House's budget is way better for state
• 9:05
  employees, which it is twice as much on an annual raise.
• 9:08
  It's 2.5 as opposed to 1.25.
• 9:11
  But the Senate's budget also has a bonus in it.
• 9:15
  So they can't be too far apart on those two things. And those was for the two
• 9:20
  years. Yeah, it would be $3,000 over two years.
• 9:23
  And again, I think one of the issues you have there, because as Suzanne said,
• 9:27
  we've been preaching equity now for years.
• 9:30
  Treat everybody decently. Because even with the teacher-principal raises, that's awesome.
• 9:36
  But everyone else in a school is left out of that. So the best thing in our
• 9:42
  mind they can do is take whatever pot of money they were going to spend and
• 9:45
  even that out a little more.
• 9:47
  Because, yeah, you're having trouble getting and keeping teachers, no question about it.
• 9:51
  But you're having trouble everywhere in state government. And so many of those
• 9:55
  positions are public safety, health, you know, services that people would scream if they realized.
• 10:02
  If they weren't getting those services. And they are in some cases,
• 10:05
  DMV being the quintessential example.
• 10:08
  DMV has not been funded like it should. We talked about it last week.
• 10:12
  And the raises haven't been there for folks.
• 10:15
  Just a little bit at a time, couple percentage points if you're lucky and you're
• 10:19
  a DMV employee every year. You're not going to keep people like that.
• 10:21
  So you're going to have bad vacancy issues, which means long lines,
• 10:26
  which means angry taxpayers who definitely know who runs DMV.
• 10:31
  I was thinking about the DMV last week when I was, I think, at Target or somewhere.
• 10:36
  Now stick with me. Stay with me here. Okay. So like when you're at like Target
• 10:40
  and there was one register open, right?
• 10:42
  And that line was like huge. That's why there's only one register open.
• 10:47
  This is exactly what's happening at DMV. It's not the person running the register's
• 10:52
  fault. He's doing all he can.
• 10:54
  Right. Yeah. And really, people don't run around going, that's Target employees.
• 10:59
  Yeah. I was about to say, who do you get mad at when you're in that situation?
• 11:03
  Well, what you do is you go down the street to Walmart or somewhere else,
• 11:06
  which, by the way, you're going to run into the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.
• 11:09
  And that's something Senator Berger and some others have pointed out as well.
• 11:12
  Look, we're not alone in vacancy crisis.
• 11:15
  Private sector has this, too. The difference is I can choose not to go somewhere
• 11:19
  in the private sector. You have to go to the dealer. But I need my government.
• 11:22
  You know, I have to have them. Yeah. But the difference with just in this comparison,
• 11:27
  you're not getting mad at the cashier the way that some people get mad at state
• 11:31
  employees for things moving slow.
• 11:33
  You're like, ah, they should have given you more people to work with.
• 11:36
  Your manager met the higher up. You give a little more grace.
• 11:40
  Yeah. If anything, you're like, you feel bad for that person,
• 11:43
  you know, having to do all these things. Yeah.
• 11:46
  But instead in DMV, people are going in and unloading on these people working
• 11:50
  in DMV. It isn't their problem.
• 11:52
  It's not your fault. Yeah. Yeah. And they're only human too.
• 11:55
  Yeah. They're stressed beyond measure. Perception is everything and nothing
• 11:58
  at the same time. So, you know. Is that a Prince lyric? I don't know. It is not a Prince lyric.
• 12:03
  It's a Suzanne lyric. But, you know, you're also going to progressively get what you pay for. Yeah.
• 12:10
  So you're no question. People who work at DMV have told us, people who've been
• 12:14
  there a long time, we're starting to get people in here that I don't love being in here.
• 12:18
  You know, they want people who have the same attitude towards the work that they've always had.
• 12:23
  Well, you can't get them because in the job pool, they're going to go to where
• 12:26
  there's more money and more respect and less abuse. So exactly.
• 12:30
  And to throw another wrench into it, you mentioned Walmart.
• 12:33
  The Walmarts now are mostly like self-checkout. I know. Yeah.
• 12:37
  But you can't really do that at DMV, right? I mean, I guess they could have
• 12:40
  some function. I think they've got some kiosks that they've established in a couple of places.
• 12:44
  Maybe that's part of a pilot. Right. There are some kiosks. But you wouldn't
• 12:48
  be able to do everything in this kiosk. You can, you know, renew your license, for example.
• 12:52
  But it's not like you can do a driving test at a kiosk. That's right.
• 12:55
  Right. Exactly. So there's still things you're going to have to go face-to-face to DMV.
• 12:59
  Maybe they could do like a racing simulator in there.
• 13:03
  And you could like go in there and drive. Like the one at rush hour?
• 13:07
  Yeah. Yeah. Check it off.
• 13:09
  That's the future. We should invest in that right now.
• 13:13
  All right. Well, it looks like we're going to be talking about the budget for
• 13:16
  another two or three months at least, right?
• 13:18
  Well, from what I was told by two legislators yesterday, they've been told to
• 13:23
  keep their calendar clear all the way through November. Wow.
• 13:26
  That's a long... And, you know, they're giving themselves plenty of time.
• 13:29
  That's not even fair. They don't make, but, like, they make pennies.
• 13:32
  About $14,000 a year. So there's another thing.
• 13:36
  Lawmakers are not making a ton of money. Not your rank-and-file lawmakers,
• 13:39
  though. Yeah, when we get comments on scenic social media that what they need
• 13:44
  to do is not give themselves a raise, they never do.
• 13:47
  And as we've said on this podcast, that's actually part of the problem.
• 13:50
  It is. It is. Because you can't get working people who know working people's
• 13:55
  struggles to run for office.
• 13:56
  They cannot afford to. Because they've got to work. Right. They can't take care
• 13:59
  of their family, work a job that may be hours away from here, and get $14,000 for it.
• 14:05
  For basically a full-time. I had that same exact fight in Lee County where I live last week.
• 14:11
  There was a board of education member who suggested that they give raises to
• 14:16
  board members because they're making very little, you know.
• 14:20
  And it was just a huge hornet's nest, a huge controversy amongst the social
• 14:26
  media in San Francisco. I imagine.
• 14:29
  Yeah. And you can just, it's like the same argument. But I digress.
• 14:32
  So also this week, I guess we had a little movement with the SHRA bill for state auditors.
• 14:40
  Yeah. So House Bill 549, that's the bill we've told you guys about that would
• 14:44
  remove the State Human Resources Act protections from all of the employees with
• 14:49
  the state auditor's office.
• 14:50
  So it's been through some changes. But yesterday it was heard in Senate Judiciary.
• 14:55
  The entire provision that would affect State Human Resources Act protections
• 15:00
  was amended out of the bill.
• 15:03
  So that's done. The bill passed committee yesterday.
• 15:07
  It was sent to rules and there was still one little piece that needed to be
• 15:11
  fixed in another section of the bill. So it had to go back to Senate Judiciary
• 15:15
  this morning. They made the correction.
• 15:18
  It's going back to rules and it'll go to the floor. So that was a great win.
• 15:22
  That would have affected a lot of people in a negative way.
• 15:26
  So we had members go down and discuss this with legislators a few weeks ago.
• 15:31
  That was a very, there were some vigorous conversations that day.
• 15:35
  Sam, you were talking about your experience watching what was happening on the
• 15:38
  floor of the House right before it passed. Yes. And went to the Senate.
• 15:42
  Yes. And you were surprised by the comment that we kept hearing.
• 15:46
  Yeah, the comment of, we will fix this once it gets into the Senate.
• 15:51
  And Artis was sitting right next to me. Every time I was squinting, just like, huh?
• 15:57
  It's like submitting an assignment and saying, nope, it's not done yet,
• 16:00
  but I'll get it done later. Yeah, this is not good work I'm submitting. But hey.
• 16:06
  Let's fix it later. We're just going to send it through anyway.
• 16:08
  So you can give me a B or a C right now.
• 16:11
  I'll find a way to get the A later. Most of the time, we, you know,
• 16:15
  you kind of take that with a grain of salt because chances of it happening are usually pretty slim.
• 16:20
  So, you know, it was nice to be able to work that out, you know,
• 16:23
  and take care of some people.
• 16:24
  And not open that barn door to every other agency saying, hey, you know what?
• 16:30
  I want all my people to be political appointees, too. So were they able to just
• 16:35
  increase the amount of people exempted or is none of that?
• 16:38
  So the agency is getting some more exempted positions.
• 16:42
  So yesterday I talked to the auditor staff, the folks that we've been working
• 16:46
  with, and they're getting some more positions. So right now they're okay.
• 16:51
  Not such a broad sweep. Yeah.
• 16:53
  Was our issue with that, you know, making your whole agency exempt.
• 16:56
  That's huge. And we've worked with other agencies, the UNC system before,
• 17:00
  when there are specific positions where they may need some flexibility to address pay classification.
• 17:06
  And, you know, we're happy to work with anybody. Those situations exist.
• 17:10
  So we're always open to having those conversations when there are particular
• 17:13
  places where we need exempted employees.
• 17:16
  But just wholesale across a whole agency?
• 17:19
  Uh-uh. I don't think you're going to find a taxpayer that would say,
• 17:22
  yeah, I think that's good. Let's have one person determine who can be there
• 17:26
  and who needs to leave there as an employee, maybe lose all your experience.
• 17:32
  And yeah, I just want to leave that to one individual. I think more and more
• 17:36
  you're seeing citizens saying, we don't want one politician deciding any of these things.
• 17:42
  We want checks and balances on everything. And that's why you're seeing.
• 17:46
  Things like the efficiency efforts, where there's an attitude in the public
• 17:51
  that they feel like a lot of stuff has been federal and state level kind of
• 17:56
  controlled by too few people and that a broader look needs to be had.
• 18:01
  Well, it would be the opposite if you allowed one politician to just across
• 18:05
  the board, bring in their people, and then the next one behind them,
• 18:09
  bring in a whole different set. That's not good for anybody.
• 18:12
  It wasn't good. I was thinking about the employees because we started getting
• 18:14
  phone calls when that bill was filed.
• 18:16
  Yeah. People at the state auditor's office knew that this was bad news and they
• 18:22
  already didn't feel comfortable speaking out loud there. So that's obviously why they call us.
• 18:27
  We're your voice when you aren't able to speak out.
• 18:30
  But, yeah, you know, imagine being an, you know, admin, too.
• 18:34
  And every four years you're concerned about your job because you're working
• 18:38
  in an agency of political appointees and the administration is going to change.
• 18:41
  So you could, you know, possibly lose your job. Yeah, so
• 18:44
  it's a win for efficiency and for transparency because you want employees to
• 18:49
  feel like they're not constantly at risk of losing their job because of personalities
• 18:54
  or because they share things that need to be shared that they know are going on.
• 19:02
  So I think it's some good public policy took place.
• 19:06
  Me too. So speaking of personnel fears, the UNC, I'm good at segues.
• 19:13
  You're very good at it. So the UNC system has a lot going on right now.
• 19:17
  It seems like all of a sudden with some personnel issues, the UNC system has
• 19:22
  implemented a personnel cap on both salary spending and headcount.
• 19:28
  I guess that means hiring, right? And at UNC.
• 19:32
  Chapel Hill in particular, they've started a new initiative called Service First,
• 19:37
  which is it's an administrative restructuring plan that has prompted concerns
• 19:42
  among staff that a possible layoffs amid growing financial pressure on colleges around the country.
• 19:49
  Guess this is kind of in response to what's happening both at the federal level
• 19:53
  and with the state budget.
• 19:54
  So what's going on at our universities, Artis? Well, I mean,
• 19:58
  I think it's, they're a microcosm of what's going on absolutely everywhere in
• 20:02
  any government right now, which is the money that was there to fund things is not going to be there.
• 20:08
  We know that no matter what happens with the federal budget.
• 20:12
  Less money is going to funnel through to grants,
• 20:14
  to programs, and less money is probably going to be retained by states in many
• 20:20
  other ways that the federal budget affects, which is going to reduce state revenue,
• 20:25
  then your state budget is going to shrink. And you have to figure out what are
• 20:28
  you going to do with that.
• 20:29
  So the UNC system, it seems like President Hans has said, and we've heard this
• 20:33
  for months, you know, that he was getting indications from the legislature,
• 20:37
  you're going to have to figure out how to tighten up even more,
• 20:40
  which, by the way, don't forget that the university system has had to tighten
• 20:44
  up in every way for years, years.
• 20:47
  Even when we had huge surpluses, they have to fight for all their capital money
• 20:52
  when their buildings need to be fixed or redone,
• 20:55
  and they have had to fight so hard to be able to even pay enough to recruit
• 21:01
  employees, and particularly because some of our.
• 21:07
  You know, and you want to have universities in every part of your state.
• 21:11
  But a lot of our state is tourist area.
• 21:14
  So to have your employees be able to live within an hour of where they're working.
• 21:20
  Or even urban areas like Raleigh. Chapel Hill and. Expensive markets.
• 21:25
  So, I mean, Charlotte, right? That's. Right. I'm sure it's really expensive
• 21:29
  around UNC Charlotte because that's a nice area anyway.
• 21:32
  So, you know, I don't know how chancellors are getting it done right now,
• 21:36
  to be honest with you because it's been hard on them for years.
• 21:40
  And they have been sounding the alarm.
• 21:42
  You know, we're not able to get people for some particular types of jobs,
• 21:46
  especially because we just don't have the money to compete and they can't afford to live here.
• 21:51
  So you've got all of that as a challenge to the university system.
• 21:55
  And now they're saying, yeah, we need to consolidate a bunch of this stuff, get rid of positions.
• 21:59
  And I think the big question we're hearing from people right now,
• 22:02
  and we hope to talk to President Hans, you know, soon to kind to get more detail about this.
• 22:07
  Are we talking, you know, high up in the administrative world of the university
• 22:12
  or teachers? You know, what are we, professors?
• 22:15
  Yeah, like I think about the communications offices at a lot of these colleges,
• 22:19
  like I'm in another organization in Cajio, which is like, you know,
• 22:23
  government information officers group. And we have a lot of members from NC
• 22:27
  State who are in various different departments.
• 22:30
  And it seems like this approach is going to be like a top-down restructuring,
• 22:35
  like they'll maybe all be under one roof.
• 22:38
  Well, the UNC Chapel Hill issue, it's maybe different.
• 22:44
  It sounds like it's probably born out of those same budgetary concerns,
• 22:48
  but it's very specific about centralizing the functions, the administrative
• 22:52
  functions at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
• 22:56
  And so definitely, I know the
• 22:57
  employee forum over there had some administration folks come talk to them.
• 23:02
  My understanding is that there is great concern among employees there because
• 23:07
  right now they don't feel like they have all of the answers to questions that they have.
• 23:12
  Because if you start talking about centralizing functions and what the overlap
• 23:17
  is going to be, you're taking out the people who have very specific skills for
• 23:23
  one thing. And you're saying, hey, we're just going to lump it all together.
• 23:27
  Yeah. And then there's the consolidating services. Yeah.
• 23:31
  Usually that means. People are going to have more work. Less people. Less people.
• 23:34
  Yeah. Usually that means the person is doing more. Yeah. Yeah.
• 23:38
  Which they're already doing more with less. Yeah. And I feel for them.
• 23:41
  Again, I don't know how any of these chancellors are making any of this work,
• 23:44
  but I think, you know, they're going to need to tread carefully over there at
• 23:48
  UNC Chapel Hill so that people don't feel like they weren't kind of engaged
• 23:52
  and informed in the process. And I'm not saying they're not informing people.
• 23:56
  I'm saying it's very clear there's still a lot of questions out there,
• 23:59
  and that would be the case anytime you make a programmatic change.
• 24:05
  And just one more note on that. Yeah. People who work in Chapel Hill or Raleigh
• 24:10
  or Durham have a lot of options.
• 24:11
  You know, they have other employers here that probably pay more and probably,
• 24:16
  you know, I mean, so they have to remember that they are in competition with
• 24:20
  a lot of different employers.
• 24:22
  And I mean, we hope that Chancellor Roberts can get everything perfect over there.
• 24:28
  We especially. Yeah, you and I, John and I, we're rooting for you,
• 24:32
  Chapel Hill. It's always perfect in Chapel Hill. It's always. But.
• 24:35
  Do think these are going to be very, very bumpy times. And I hate for when you
• 24:41
  start seeing the UNC system employees expressing some of the similar things
• 24:46
  to what we heard from DMV folks. You know, we're worried.
• 24:49
  They're wanting to just kind of shrink us, have people do more,
• 24:53
  maybe without the skill set they need for some of those jobs.
• 24:57
  Hopefully that will not be the case, but we're just going to try to make sure
• 25:01
  we look out for folks that are members who work over there, But also,
• 25:05
  we would love to, you know, hey, Chancellor Roberts, you get the invitation
• 25:09
  this week. We're always inviting people.
• 25:11
  We would love to have him come on and talk about that. Or we could go over there.
• 25:14
  We would go to him for sure. It's just a short drive.
• 25:17
  We would be happy to go to Chapel Hill. I've never been to their campus.
• 25:20
  Oh, we've got to take it. Sam.
• 25:22
  Field trip. You did go to Spring Fling over there, didn't you?
• 25:26
  Spring Fling. Okay, maybe not. Never mind. No.
• 25:29
  I thought we had an event over there and you went. But, yeah,
• 25:32
  we could take you over there. It's a very, very awesome place.
• 25:35
  I've been to near Duke's campus.
• 25:39
  It was the most inconvenient time, too, because it was a Duke versus UNC football game.
• 25:44
  Oh, gosh. And I wasn't there for the football game. I was there.
• 25:48
  I had a tattoo appointment.
• 25:51
  And I had to drive. It was right next to Duke campus.
• 25:55
  And I was like, bad move. Speaking of Sam, it's time for the Gen Z moment.
• 26:00
  What's going on in Gen Z world?
• 26:03
  Well, a big thing that happened over the weekend was the No Kings protest.
• 26:08
  Do you think that was, and just for everyone, do you think that was like Gen
• 26:11
  Z driven, like younger folks driven?
• 26:14
  Or I guess it just seemed like there was a lot of people like I've all walked. I think it was from.
• 26:19
  I don't think it was necessarily Gen Z driven or motivated, but there were a
• 26:24
  lot of Gen Z's and younger millennials who did show out for it.
• 26:28
  Because there are a lot of Gen Zs who want to get involved in politics and are
• 26:33
  very passionate and outspoken about politics. Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:37
  Well, and a lot of people are just concerned. It doesn't matter what your age
• 26:40
  is. You know, lots of people are concerned.
• 26:43
  You know, we talk about this a lot, but going back to such a fractured country
• 26:48
  politically, and in fact,
• 26:50
  to the point where we had several state legislators in Minnesota who were,
• 26:56
  they and their spouses were shot and two of them died.
• 27:00
  You know, again, I can't imagine being a very young person and seeing all this.
• 27:05
  You just didn't see that kind of thing.
• 27:07
  Back of the day. So I wonder what lawmakers think of it.
• 27:10
  I wonder what young people think of it who might have ever considered going
• 27:14
  into public service because it's looking more and more dangerous. Yeah.
• 27:18
  Yeah. I personally did not attend, but I did have friends who attended because
• 27:23
  they're very passionate and outspoken.
• 27:26
  And I feel like the more that people do continue speaking out about things that
• 27:30
  are upsetting them in this area, some things might get better.
• 27:35
  Yeah, I agree with that. And I think,
• 27:36
  I think communication is a big part of it. Yeah. Well, I mean,
• 27:40
  our country's built around. Young people standing up.
• 27:43
  Right. Going out and saying what you think and you don't get hurt for it. Yeah.
• 27:47
  And protests is a change maker. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that we have an older
• 27:53
  president. We had an older president last time.
• 27:56
  If your generation is going to save us, you have to step up and do it.
• 28:00
  Because it's always the younger folks who step up. And someone.
• 28:04
  I got about 10 more years before I'm even allowed to do something.
• 28:08
  You can vote. I can vote. And I do vote. Can't be president until I'm 35, though, so.
• 28:14
  So what else is going on in Gen Z world? I saw something really cute at the North Carolina Zoo.
• 28:20
  Tell us. There is a bison named Annie who has to wear a face mask because she
• 28:27
  is allergic to a lot of things.
• 28:30
  She has. I didn't know they could be allergic to things, which I thought this
• 28:33
  was. I was going to say, how do you even determine that she's allergic?
• 28:36
  Maybe it's like watery eyes and like runny nose kind of thing.
• 28:39
  But she has to wear a face mask because she's allergic to hay and a lot of grass
• 28:44
  and also a lot of animals, a lot of other animals.
• 28:48
  And she's just the cutest little bison. She looks so happy. She has her little
• 28:53
  face fly mask on and it's just adorable.
• 28:55
  And that is at the North Carolina Zoo. So if you guys want to see Annie the
• 28:58
  bison, she's a scenic. That's another zoo club. I was at the zoo recently.
• 29:02
  Yeah, we were. Oh, wait before last. Yeah. So shout out to the people working at the zoo.
• 29:07
  Yeah. The zoo always has an amazing turnout whenever we go out there for an event. Yeah.
• 29:11
  Yeah. And I did go down a TikTok rabbit hole a few nights ago on the difference
• 29:16
  between bison and buffalo.
• 29:17
  So if you have any questions, I'm your man. Well, what is it?
• 29:20
  Apparently, bison are here in America, right? And they have that big hump on their back. Yeah.
• 29:25
  And their horns are little. whereas buffalo are in Africa and Asia and they
• 29:31
  have long flowing horns and they don't have a bump on their neck.
• 29:34
  Oh, I guess I think of buffalo as water buffalo. Wait a minute.
• 29:38
  That's a water buffalo. Water buffalo.
• 29:40
  But buffalo. That's not in America. We had to have had buffalo because.
• 29:43
  No, we didn't. We had bison.
• 29:45
  Really? They're just so similar and they're kind of from the same family that
• 29:49
  people get confused. So like the buffalo beals, that's a bison.
• 29:53
  The bison beals. Oh my goodness. We just always call them buffalo.
• 29:56
  But they also live. I was today years old.
• 29:59
  I'll send you that rabbit hole. You can just go down. Dive into that.
• 30:03
  But there are a lot of TikToks explaining the difference between bison and buffalo.
• 30:09
  I used to love going to Land Between the Lakes in Tennessee whenever we went
• 30:13
  camping there. It was like Tennessee-Kentucky border.
• 30:16
  And they had a trail that you could ride along and they had a bunch of wild
• 30:20
  free bison. It was so cool. So cool. I loved it.
• 30:23
  That's part of the prairie exhibit. at the NC Zoo.
• 30:26
  Go visit the Prairie Exhibit in the NC Zoo. All right, so let's do Question
• 30:30
  of the Week. John's work eight.
• 30:32
  Music.
• 30:38
  So in honor of, what's the name of the bison at the zoo? Annie.
• 30:42
  In honor of Annie and our recent event at the zoo, which was well attended,
• 30:47
  and we did get some new members, and we love the zoo, and we have the puffin
• 30:51
  over here, if you want to hear the sound.
• 30:52
  Good time for Petey. Petey Pablo. Petey Pablo, the podcast puffin.
• 30:57
  All right, we're going to have several different questions you can answer.
• 31:00
  You can answer, when was the last time you were at the zoo?
• 31:04
  Or what is a zoo memory you have of the Asheboro Zoo or the North Carolina Zoo?
• 31:09
  We call it the Asheboro Zoo because I grew up like 10 miles from it.
• 31:12
  Anyway, or what's your favorite area at the zoo?
• 31:15
  Who wants to go first? I'll go ahead and go. Okay.
• 31:18
  My favorite memory from the zoo was when I was in college. I came home on spring break.
• 31:23
  And this, I think, was right before COVID shut everything down.
• 31:27
  And my mom and I were the only ones home. My brother was out doing college spring break things.
• 31:33
  My dad was on a work trip. And so she was like, hey, let's drive to the zoo for a day.
• 31:37
  And me and my mom just drove up and explored the zoo all day by ourselves,
• 31:41
  had some drinks, like some sodas, slushies.
• 31:44
  Oh, I was starting to say, do they sell alcohol now? I was 19 at the time, too.
• 31:49
  So, but we just had a bunch of... A mom day. Yeah, it was so cute.
• 31:54
  The zoo is good for a day trip. It was strategically located in the center of
• 31:59
  the state. So it's a good day trip for anyone and it's cheap.
• 32:03
  Too. I mean, it's not like... Relatively speaking. ...care wins prices or anything,
• 32:07
  so... I haven't been in a long time.
• 32:09
  I remember going with Garrett and maybe third when he was in third grade. I mean, it was just fun.
• 32:14
  I'm always fascinated by the giraffes. But, you know, grandbabies now,
• 32:18
  so I expect there's a trip for me in the future. There you go.
• 32:20
  You gotta take to the grands. The grands.
• 32:22
  Yeah. So, like I said, I did grow up about 10 miles from the zoo,
• 32:26
  and lots of my friends worked at the zoo in the summer.
• 32:30
  Oh, gosh, I bet. I wasn't allowed. I had to work at the pottery shop. Right.
• 32:34
  But, yeah, my friend Dave, my friend Shannon, we all would go up to the zoo
• 32:39
  and sneak in and hang out.
• 32:43
  But, yeah, so those were great memories. But I think obviously taking your kids
• 32:47
  to the zoo is a lot cooler than just going when you're a teenager.
• 32:51
  Yeah. It's an amazing zoo.
• 32:53
  It really is. We're blessed. Well, yeah, it really is. And, you know,
• 32:56
  we have the polar bears. We have lions.
• 32:58
  We have gorillas. It's amazing. I'm old enough to remember when zoos were kind
• 33:02
  of sketchy. Yeah. They were mean back in the day. Yeah.
• 33:07
  You know, it's the largest natural habitat zoo in the world.
• 33:10
  And it really was kind of ahead of its time in doing that because,
• 33:14
  again, things were kind of mean.
• 33:16
  Yeah. And all the animals are, I mean, they have that huge savanna.
• 33:19
  Yeah. All the animals just kind of live. And it's amazing. Shout out to the zoo.
• 33:25
  Using that as like a selling point for me and my brother when we first moved
• 33:28
  to North Carolina. They were like, we have the biggest natural habitat zoo.
• 33:32
  And I was like, I haven't gone to the zoo since first grade.
• 33:35
  I went to the one in Washington, D.C.
• 33:38
  And this is like a totally different experience. I mean, it's still nice.
• 33:42
  It's still like nice little habitats and stuff.
• 33:44
  But that's not what I think of as a zoo because I grew up here.
• 33:48
  You have to walk if you're going to our zoo. This is true.
• 33:51
  We went to the Denver Zoo in Colorado when I went snowboarding a couple years ago.
• 33:59
  And a lot of the animals were in their like enclosures because it was snowing at the time.
• 34:06
  But the animals that were outside, they were having so much fun.
• 34:10
  The sea lions were out playing.
• 34:12
  But they did have much smaller habitats and I was looking and I was like, well.
• 34:16
  I love a zoo and I love an aquarium and we've got awesome aquariums.
• 34:21
  I got to go back to the Fort Fisher Aquarium.
• 34:23
  Yeah, it's been such a long time for me. It's awesome.
• 34:27
  Yeah. So, shout out to the, is
• 34:29
  the zoo part of the natural and cultural resources, or is it? Yeah, it is.
• 34:33
  Shout out to that department and everyone who works at the zoo and our aquariums.
• 34:37
  And we had a great episode this week. Thanks for tuning in.
• 34:42
  Music.