Latest / The SEANC View / Odd Couple, United: A Republican and Democrat Sound the Alarm on NC Tax Amendments

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Odd Couple, United: A Republican and Democrat Sound the Alarm on NC Tax Amendments · The SEANC View

0:11
Welcome back to the Scenic View podcast. I'm Samantha Klein,
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our podcast producer and host for this week, joined by Executive Director Artis
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Watkins and Director of Government Relations Suzanne Beasley.
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This week, we have a very special interview with former Representative Paul
0:26
Stamm and Senator Greg Meyer. I think it was an awesome interview.
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What did you guys think? It was really good. It was. It was great to see. We call him Skip.
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Representative Stamm, he'll always be Representative Stamm to us.
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But, you know, always a wealth of knowledge, always has been.
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And Senator Meyer, he left the legislature this year to go lead the North Carolina Justice Center.
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So it was interesting to have Republican and a Democrat on the same page where
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these constitutional amendments are concerned. So stay tuned and listen.
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I referred to them as the odd couple because people wouldn't expect to see them together on an issue.
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And yet, if you really think about it, it's like Skip Stam said.
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There's a lot of folks who are to the right or to the left in the General Assembly,
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who agree on a lot more than you would think.
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It's the mushy middle, he said, that has trouble and is easier captured by like
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big corporate interests rather than the interests of the people.
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And these two gentlemen, when they served, were always about your average North
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Carolinian going to work, raising a family, doing their thing.
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So they were, and both of them are and were a wealth of knowledge.
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So I thought it was, they were great. I loved having them.
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Yeah. And we also have some updates about the Atrium State Health Plan situation.
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What kind of insight can you give us there?
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Well, the Treasurer announced today that, and I'm sorry, this is,
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when I say today, this is Tuesday the 27th that we're recording.
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So today, Treasurer Briner announced that Atrium and the health plan had reached
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a multi-year agreement by which Atrium can have access tier status. For all of their.
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For all of their facilities. Yeah. Moving into this new calendar year where
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we go to the tiered system.
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So if you're a patient of Atrium, you've been worried about not having access, you will have access.
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If you're somebody who was worried that the treasurer would cave in to some
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bad deal, you don't need to worry about that because he held firm.
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And we congratulate Treasurer Briner, Thomas Friedman, and the rest of the staff
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at the health plan for looking out not just for today but for the future of the plan.
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And we congratulate Atrium for coming to the table and working with them to
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get what was needed and what was fair so that we can take care of not just patients today,
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but have the health plan be there in good shape for years to come.
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Because today, Suzanne, the health plan board of trustees met and we learned
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a lot more about why it was so critical that the treasurer not engage in any bad deals.
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Yeah, the cash on hand is going to be an issue, which we've talked about this
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a lot anyway. The sustainability of the plan is why the change in the benefit
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structure, you know, the things that the plan has been trying to do to keep.
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The plan going and provide decent coverage for folks. So, yeah, there's more to come.
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I think we keep saying this, but we really mean it. We understand if you were
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a patient at Atrium and you're like, I do not care about the future of the plan.
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I care that I can still go to my doctor.
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I get that. It's our job to care about the plan, the future of your plan.
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You know, we need to look at today and the future. So.
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Not to discount that you aren't important. You absolutely are,
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but, you know, the health of the plan is important.
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But at the end of the day, if everybody was doing what they needed to do and
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if everybody meant it when they said they care about the members,
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you know, we know from experience, if people did what they were saying,
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it was going to work out. So I'm glad it did.
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And this board of trustees meeting was pretty sobering about the financial condition
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of the plan that made it so imperative that the treasurer stick to his guns.
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But we will get into that more at a later date because we don't want to chomp
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up too much time here at the beginning because this segment about the two tax
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amendments that are on your ballot this week now,
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while you're voting, if you've early voted already, okay.
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But still listen to this because you need to talk to your friends and let them
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know what really is coming from a Republican and a Democrat.
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Who have had to deal with the state budget in their time in the General Assembly
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and who are together against the income tax amendment and the property tax amendment. Give it a listen.
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So that is all we have for this week, and I hope you guys enjoy the interview.
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So today we have two very special guests joining us to talk about constitutional amendments.
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Joining us today is former House Representative Skip Stamm, who served 16 years
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as a Republican in the General Assembly across two periods.
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During that time, you served as a minority leader, majority leader,
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Speaker Pro Tem, wealth of experience here with us today.
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And we also have former Senator Greg Meyer, who served 12 years as a Democrat across both chambers.
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You were appointed to your seat in the House in 13, I think, 2013.
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And you wrapped it up this past year in the Senate. Yep. So welcome to both
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of you. Thank you for having us here. It's good to reconnect with state employees.
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Yeah, always a good friend to us. We appreciate that. So y'all are an odd couple to have in here.
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You are, and yet you are not. So what brings the odd couple together today is
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to discuss two of the amendments that are on your ballot, everybody.
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You've got an income tax proposal and a property tax proposal that are on your ballot right now.
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And if you haven't voted, please listen. If you have voted, please listen anyway
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and talk to folks you know afterwards.
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But it sounds like y'all have some common ground.
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We do. And it's often said that the parties are in opposition to each other,
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but the House and Senate treat themselves as enemies.
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Yeah. And in this particular case, although this did pass the House this time,
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the House has rejected this same thing several times in the last decade or two.
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And this thing, I'm sorry, I still didn't do a good job. This thing is dropping the cap.
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The cap on income tax rates.
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It used to be 10 percent in 2018. It went from 10 percent to 7 percent.
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But at that time, we had a lot of experience with the income tax at 5%.
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This time, the cap, we've had no experience at 3.5%, and we won't have any experience
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with it until a year from now when we see the revenue coming in with estimated tax.
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So it's a very risky bet that the proponents are making.
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I still call you Senator Meyer because I just... It's just great these days. I lose it.
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So why do you think the legislature wanted to do something drastic and say our
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cap will be half of what it is
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now? It's not as though they can just spend whatever they want right now.
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I mean, to the point that Representative Sam was just making about this was
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a Senate priority. And so the politics of this is that with Senator Berger leaving
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after he lost his primary, this is an attempt to lock into the Constitution.
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What his priorities have been on taxation.
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And as Representative Stamm pointed out,
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constitutional amendments are permanent. And so it is really an attempt to lock
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in the legacy of that leader, that person, in a way that will be almost impossible to undo later.
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And Representative Stamm used the word risky. I will also point out for the
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vast majority of state employees who might look at this at first and say,
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oh, good, lock me into lower tax rates, I'll take that.
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I will say that this is likely going to be incredibly unfair to you because,
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you may end up paying lower income tax in the long run than you would have on this,
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but you will end up paying higher taxes on just about everything else.
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Because when the state needs revenue, you're going to have to go and get it
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from something like a sales tax, even on groceries.
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And what that means is that people that pay taxes directly out of your paycheck
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every week, you can only pay as much taxes you make. If that's the type of person
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that you are, this is more likely to mean that there's going to be more and
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more taxes hitting you in more and more areas.
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For the people who pay taxes out of their wealth, the people that are the richest
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in the state, this is going to dramatically limit what they will ever have to pay in tax.
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So you are going to get hit in the pocketbook in a way that wealthy people are not.
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So, Representative Stamm and Senator Meyer, each of you, when you were serving,
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one of the first things I would tell anybody who asked me about what you were like to work with,
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both of you very much, A, cared about what happened to the public servants, but B,
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cared about what happened to the everyday North Carolinian, not special interest
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groups and not the ultra wealthy or big corporations.
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Y'all were not doing anybody's bidding.
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You literally were there for the people.
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And I think what you were just talking about, Senator Meyer,
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kind of makes me understand the coupling here on this issue a lot more because
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it really is a regressive idea if you have to go find more money from fines
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and fees and all kinds of other things.
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Right. During the real bad recession of 2008, 9, 10.
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Y'all remember that? Yes. Very, very vividly. Yeah. They were just getting money
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wherever they could find it, putting it on.
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That's right. Everybody in crazy places.
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But let me just give a couple of examples. The income tax, nobody likes to pay
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income tax. It's very transparent what you're paying.
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If you pay attention to your check stubs, you see how much goes out,
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so you know what you're paying.
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But there's so many taxes that are not transparent, but are much less efficient,
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than the income tax and less fair. I mean, the income tax itself is slightly progressive. Right?
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It's not regressive, but this amendment would force the assembly to raise all
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the other taxes that are less efficient, more regressive, and bad.
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Just a couple examples. The income tax takes about one cent on the dollar to
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raise as the cost of collection.
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The lottery tax, and there is a.
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And by all the transactional costs, the sports betting is much more regressive
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and much more inefficient.
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The Senate plan is to raise sales tax on services.
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And that's saying, oh, people who just, they should pay a sales tax too.
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But the sales tax is on gross income, not net income,
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which means the person, your friendly CPA or accountant or dentist or whatever,
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they don't even get, if they're taxed on their services, they don't even get to deduct that.
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Cost of doing business on the sales tax end.
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So it's moving it to very unfair taxes. In the last assembly,
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and I'll end with this, there are even proposals to let's put an excise tax on pornography. Okay.
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And then I've raised this question with the Senate. I said, well,
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if this is where you want to go, you know, gambling taxes and all this kind of thing.
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All the sin taxes. All the sin taxes.
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Why not tax prostitution while you're at it? Yeah.
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And they say, no, we never do that. But they're going to have to do bad tax
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policy if this passes because we cannot fund the state government at 3.5%. No.
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And I'll have to talk too long, but I'll come back to why we can't.
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No, that was good. That was helpful. Well, I mean, on that last point,
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relevant to your members, to scenic members. Yeah.
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When a Republican and a conservative says to you, we cannot fund state government at this tax level—,
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You know it's true, and you know who they're talking about. What they're saying
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is we can't afford to employ people.
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We can't afford to pay those people a reasonable wage.
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And you think about where we have employment shortages in state government right
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now, folks in the prison system, folks over at DHHS, where we have just massive shortages.
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You lock this in, and those shortages are not going to go away.
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Does that mean that there will be more money for people currently working because
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you're not able to fill the position so that money gets shifted to raises?
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Hasn't ever worked that way in this state government, no matter who's in charge.
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Right. So for actives, raises are definitely, or the jobs themselves, are definitely at risk.
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Retirees are facing a lot. That's right. The employer contribution would almost
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certainly be one of the first things that would get slashed.
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A farmer helped me explain this better.
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The Senate position is, and it was correct in my opinion,
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that when the personal income tax was almost 8% and we reduced it in the early
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years to about 6%, we brought in more money.
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Because we were more competitive with all our surrounding states.
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And I believe that when we went from 6% to 4%, we kept getting even more money,
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revenue from it, for the same reason, because it induced better and more profitable economic activity.
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But the Senate's position is, well, if we reduced it from this to this and from
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this to this, therefore, if we keep going down to zero, we'll keep getting more of the same money.
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Well, Farmer Representative Jimmy Dixon.
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Y'all all know Jimmy D. Very well. And he is a farmer, had been,
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a turkey farmer. He explained it this way.
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You know, you're growing, let's say, asparagus or corn, let's say corn,
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and you're over fertilizing it.
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And you say, okay, I'm going to cut down on the fertilizer.
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You may get more money. I mean, more crops the next time for the same amount of fertilizer.
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And you go down another 10%, then you've hit the perfect thing.
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You're still getting more money, more crops.
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But if you just say no fertilizer, no food.
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Well, small amounts of food. Right. You're going to. And that's the economic
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fallacy that the Senate is locked into, which I do not understand.
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I don't either. So last week when we did this podcast, I want to ask y'all's
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thoughts on this, because to me, having been around that place for a lot of years,
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if the economy was as strong as everyone would like for it to be,
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and it stayed there, there was some magic way for it to stay there.
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You could probably get away with this.
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But the economy is not near as strong as it would take to support something
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like this. If it were, we would have more money for raises for state employees.
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We could do the right thing by the retirees.
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We've been told there's not enough money for all that.
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So, you know, I think that's kind of pointing to Representative Stamm's statement.
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It is, absolutely. And I mean, the way that I always think about when politicians
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talk about the economy, they generally are using that phrase to cue something that's different.
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Than what is in your pocketbook. Saying, oh, don't look at your pocketbook.
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Look at these big numbers over here.
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They'll tell you that things are better than what you're experiencing in terms
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of when you pay your grocery bill.
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And so if you say, well, what about beyond the economy to what's happening in
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people's back pockets? The real problem right now is that in an era where we've
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had significant inflation, we have not kept up with wages.
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And given that wages for state employees are set by the state budget,
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this locking in revenue at this level basically means we're never going to be
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able to keep up with wages compared to inflation.
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Never. And what we know, the economy in North Carolina is not bad,
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but we know that the economy goes up and down.
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If you've lived long enough, you've been, well, I've been through three or four recessions.
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We survived, but there were times hard. And we know that's why we were in such
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bad budget trouble in the 2007, 8, 9, 10.
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We were spending right before that recession as if the good economy would go forever.
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And then when we got slammed by the huge financial crisis of 2008,
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it was just worse because we had no reserves. Right.
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And we already have the same number of employees, more or less.
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Working in North Carolina now that
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we did in 2009, but the population's increased by 19% during that time.
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So that's one of the reasons I say, you can't tell me we've got a great economy.
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What's the average state employee wage right now?
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It depends. You usually hear somewhere around 60.
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I mean, that's counting, you know, Bill Belichick, everybody.
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So it's a bit skewed. If you want Bill Belichick to pay more taxes than you,
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vote no on the amendment. And it's concentrated in the triangle where the cost
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of living is the highest.
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Yes. As opposed to teachers who are spread out equally around the state because
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students are spread out equally. Right.
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Okay, so that brings me to my next thing. I really want to ask you all about
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this because I know you've got some questions, but I have some I'm dying to
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know. It's my last one I really need to know.
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What if we had a Helene, God forbid, a big disaster, but when you do a constitutional
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amendment, you can't just override it with your decision as a lawmaker.
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Right. You have to go back to the people. That's right. So how do you help people?
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So we wouldn't, if we needed emergency cash generated at the state level,
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you would not be able to generate it from the income tax, which is the easiest
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way to generate the most money and in many ways the most fair because it's coming
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out of everybody's paycheck.
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And so you would have to go to consumer taxes. You'd have to go to sales taxes,
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both on goods and on services. And you'd have to go to those sin taxes,
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which are consumer taxes.
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And so likely in a case where people are hit by a major natural disaster where
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their incomes are limited, right? Because you can't work.
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If you're in Western North Carolina, everybody's out of work.
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Then you're going to actually pay for your own recovery because you still got
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to go to the grocery store even when you're not working. Whereas if you could
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raise the income tax, it wouldn't hurt you when you're out of work because you're
20:00
not paying on your income.
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Now, the good thing is that prior to Helene, we had paid down a lot of our debt.
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We had a lot of reserves, rainy day funds. We had rainy day funds for the rainy day.
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And some of that has been spent. Not enough, in my opinion.
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But it will get worse.
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If this amendment passes, you will not be able to build up those reserves.
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That's the big problem. And for what it's worth, a big chunk of those reserves,
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over a billion in one year, went into reserves just by taking jobs that were
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unfilled because we weren't competitive. Right.
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So state employees gave that money to the reserves and did the work of more than one person and,
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So I do worry, how in the world could you build reserves in this scenario?
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I think that's the problem. Not that we didn't have them, but will we be able
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to continue to have them?
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So, for example, the gas tax relief that was provided just a few weeks ago came,
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I mean, the relief came from non-recurring money,
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but the money to fill it comes from recurring money.
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The inflation adjustment fund. So you're setting yourself up for.
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I don't even remember the amount that was set aside for this gas tax relief.
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I thought it was around $300 million. $350 million. It's a lot of money.
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$300 million or $400 million is now less in the inflation reserve,
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which the source of that is recurring money.
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Right, which retirees have always been told we can't do that.
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We can't give you a COLA with one-time money because it basically is recurring for 10 years.
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Apparently, we can do it to lower, temporary lowering of the gas tax, but not for retirees.
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One other thing before you hit the other kind of tax, we are able,
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in Wake County, we're AAA county as far as bonds. Apex is AAA.
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State of North Carolina is AAA. The federal government is no longer AAA,
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but we are able to borrow very cheaply.
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Bonding agencies do not like limits on future taxation because it affects the
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certainty that bondholders will be paid.
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That's significant. Yeah. I mean, right. In back pocket economics,
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it's like if you went to the bank and you said, well, this is how much I can
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pay you today, but I already know that I'm not going to get a raise ever again,
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then the bank would be like, we're not as likely to give you the loan.
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And that's the same thing that Skip is talking about in the bonding.
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I think that our bond rating will go down somewhat, and I'm not saying it'll
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become junk bonds, okay?
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Right. But we have a real risk of losing our AAA credit status,
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and therefore what we do borrow when we have to borrow. Cost a lot.
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Will be more expensive. Yeah.
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And at the same time, this amendment, if let's say we had another Helene,
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well, one way you could do it is borrow the money to pay for that relief.
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If you didn't have reserves, you'd have to. You would be stuck with having to
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borrow for current expenses at a higher rate.
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And then once you're paying that interest, you once again have less money for
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pay raises, colas, et cetera.
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And that's the bottom line. And what I want people to walk away from this podcast
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understanding is that you're not going to feel something in your paycheck by
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voting for these amendments,
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you know, and hurting the state by being locked into the Constitution.
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But you're not going to feel this in your paycheck because we're currently at
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3.5 percent, slated to go down to 3.49 next year.
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So it's, you know, this is where we are right now. So, and I think that's a,
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you know, a little bit of misunderstanding out there that people,
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it sounds good at face value and, you know, they're going to not question it enough.
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And we really need folks to educate other people that they know to say,
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hey, look, we know this looks good,
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but this is a situation where you got to think twice and you got to understand,
24:20
that in the long run, this is going to hurt people in our family,
24:24
families that we work with that we know.
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And we need to say no to this right now and so that we can go back to getting to a better place.
24:32
There's plenty of work to do on taxes in North Carolina, a lot of things that
24:35
we need to change and get right.
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And this would just make all of it really difficult.
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It's just, you know, it's a very scary prospect, I think, for a lot of us.
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And I do get it, Suzanne. You're right that people hear it and they think,
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how in the world could I not want to cap what these politicians can charge me?
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But it's like Senator Meyer was saying earlier, you're going to pay that money
24:58
plus some one way or another. But the problem is, can your community get immediate help if we need to?
25:03
And we hear a lot of things about, you know, I support law enforcement.
25:07
If you do, then you need them to have the equipment they need in addition to
25:10
the personnel that they need.
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And we know for a fact that's not happening. Well, I'm really worried about
25:16
the combination of these two tax caps on local law enforcement,
25:20
because especially if you think about fire and EMS service and the way that
25:24
they're paid for in North Carolina, and it's a little bit different in the municipalities
25:27
than it is where you have volunteer fire departments, but in either case,
25:30
both of them are paid for by some combination of state and local taxes.
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And we're going to cap those state and local taxes here.
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And as local law enforcement's costs go up, and they do go up like any other
25:43
industry, and they don't have enough revenue to pay for it, you can't stop sending
25:47
ambulances and fire trucks.
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So how do you start to pay for that? They are going to have to shift to a fee-for-service model.
25:54
Think about how afraid we are to already call EMS, call 911.
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I'll drive you to the hospital because I can't afford to pay the ambulance bill.
26:02
That number is just going to go higher.
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But what about fire service?
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Fire services do not generally pay people for any type of house call right now.
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You should not be afraid to call
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the fire department, even if it's because your cat is stuck in the tree.
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But they are going to have to go to a fee-for-service model if they can't generate enough revenue.
26:22
And you just imagine the worst-case scenario of the fire truck showing up and
26:25
being like, have you paid your annual fee yet this year? Oh,
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we can't turn on the hoses. Or to pick up the trash.
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Trash, there you go. I mean, that would scare me to death. That would be a complete disaster.
26:36
Yeah, that's sort of a segue into the other amendment, the one that limits the property tax.
26:43
I voted against it, but it's so hard to understand that I don't campaign against it.
26:49
Property taxes are way too high in Wake County, but the amendment does not actually
26:56
set any limit, and the law already allows every county, every city to set a cap.
27:03
That part of the amendment does nothing. The part.
27:09
That does something is with exceptions at the end of the sentence,
27:14
and it's almost never discussed. That's the one that's the real kicker of that
27:21
property tax amendment.
27:23
With exceptions means that that changes the Constitution, which requires a uniform,
27:31
valuation where you're not giving favors to one industry as opposed to another industry.
27:38
And it would allow the legislature to give goodies in property tax to favored
27:46
industries. That's scary.
27:49
Data centers come to mind. Exactly. Exactly. And you know what else comes to
27:53
mind? Casinos. Oh, it does. Well, we've got them everywhere at this point.
27:57
We'll have them soon everywhere.
27:59
Well, which one, the big casinos or? Well, so now that the Lumbee have been
28:04
recognized, surely they're going to put one up at some point.
28:07
Well, Aris, did you know that they defeated the Cresinos in June by 62%,
28:15
the Lumbeys? Now, they will come back. That's true. They will come back.
28:18
They will try again. But what we've learned from that, I was involved in that,
28:24
campaign since I have a little Indian heritage that goes back probably 1,000 years ago.
28:32
Not really. But what we learned is people in general don't mind the idea of
28:39
a casino, but they don't want it in their county.
28:42
Which is fascinating. And so, right. So think about where they are right now.
28:46
There's one in Cherokee, obviously. There's one in Kings Mountain.
28:49
One potentially in Robeson County. These are not rich counties, right?
28:53
And so in this shift to what I would say are extractive industries, right?
29:00
A casino is extractive, a data center is extractive. I think of any industry
29:04
that you don't want in your backyard because it doesn't make your county,
29:08
your community a better place to live.
29:10
It makes it a worse place to live. Think about dumps, think about mines.
29:15
All those industries under this new tax system with these amendments passed,
29:20
will actually have a much greater incentive to pass those because you will get
29:25
tax revenue from those extractive industries and they are not going to go in Wake County.
29:30
They're going to go in the poorest communities in the state.
29:33
Out of desperation. Out of desperation because the people there are less organized
29:37
to be able to stop bad things from happening. Or on the interstates.
29:41
Right. Yep. 85, 95. You know, and I know that, Rep.
29:47
Stam, when you were in the General Assembly, you were very much about limiting
29:52
government from intruding into people's lives as much as possible.
29:55
So this one is making a lot of people scratch their head Like.
29:58
Why is the state leaning on counties in this way, trying to—because,
30:04
first of all, the state is having to shove down costs to the counties as a result
30:07
of the big, beautiful bill.
30:09
So counties are already being pressed on. So to press on them even more—.
30:13
Seems odd. Like, why are you limiting the power of city and county governments?
30:19
I don't think it's an appropriate amendment to do that, but it's come because,
30:26
so many of your listeners probably live in Wake County.
30:30
A lot do. We have had huge property tax increases at the county level,
30:36
at the city level, and it's become just real increases in people's monthly payments,
30:43
hundreds of dollars extra.
30:44
And I wrote an article about this. I said, hey, I happen to live in a big spending
30:50
county and city, but that's democracy.
30:54
You voted for these people.
30:56
You should stop voting for these big spenders.
31:00
Yeah. I mean, Wake County, we do have a lot of listeners, but we have a lot
31:04
of listeners, ironically, in the western part of the state. There's a huge listenership.
31:08
And those counties are still trying to put themselves back together. Yeah.
31:13
Yeah. And I worry particularly about them in this whole thing.
31:16
They're handing off decisions and powers that municipalities and local governments
31:21
have off to the General Assembly with no parameters, no formulas,
31:27
no nothing, something that would require legislation at some point. Yeah.
31:31
And I mean, in a way, ultimately, that comes down to you're taking away powers
31:35
from the voters, which is what Skip just said of the voters are able to vote
31:39
out their county commissioners if they raise the rates more than they want to be.
31:42
But you start to put these things in the Constitution and your local folks don't
31:48
have it and you're stuck. Your vote means less.
31:51
I live in Apex, which for many years had the lowest tax rate of any of the 12
31:58
municipalities in Wake County.
32:00
Now we're about the highest. But the people voted for the council members that
32:07
required that spending.
32:08
Yeah. That's a ballot box issue. Yeah.
32:11
You know, one thing that I'm not sure if Skip and I agree on, you can tell us.
32:16
But, you know, when you do point out, you did point out artists that,
32:20
well, and Skip pointed out, too, that like counties are spending more because
32:23
they had to pick up the shift from the government, et cetera.
32:25
And you've seen places that have voted for higher taxes to pay for schools or
32:30
county services or whatever it is.
32:32
Part of the reason why counties are having to pay more is because the state
32:36
government has not kept up with funding things the state had traditionally paid more of.
32:42
And that is because in this last era where we've had decreasing state income
32:48
taxes, that burden has started to shift some.
32:52
I don't think we've had decreasing income taxes yet.
32:56
But we will. We will. I meant when we've decreased the rates, right?
33:02
And so we haven't, there's been a decrease in rates and we haven't been able
33:05
to have enough increase in revenue to have the spending that local,
33:10
that some counties have wanted.
33:11
And so they've offset it with county revenue instead. Well, and there's the
33:14
age old question. I know that you battled this and you battled,
33:17
everybody's battled this, when we would incentivize businesses to come here.
33:22
And then so many of them picked up and left when the incentive was over.
33:26
Well, let me give you two examples of that. The House and Senate pretty much agreed,
33:33
that we should claw back a half a billion dollars that had been allocated to
33:38
this new business incentive thing, NC Innovation.
33:42
I proposed that they should claw it all back and put that to be a one-time thing.
33:48
So use it on a one-time thing for extra Helene relief, another half a billion.
33:53
That would have been good. But they could not agree on what that money,
33:57
that clawback money, should be used for.
34:00
The Senate, or Phil Berger at least, wanted it to be used for a baseball stadium.
34:06
You may have heard about that, but the House didn't want that,
34:10
and so they couldn't agree.
34:12
So that money is still out there for NC Innovation.
34:17
To Representative Stan's credit, when I first got in the House,
34:20
this is why we're the odd couple are here today, is when I first got in the
34:23
House and I joined the Finance Committee, he was one of the senior members.
34:27
And among other folks, Skip helped me understand how do you do tax policy?
34:32
Because it's something most people don't know before you get to the General Assembly.
34:36
And I remember specific debates where he was running amendments to make sure
34:42
that on those economic incentives deals that there were clawback in them.
34:46
And you think about a big case like VinFast, which clearly has failed at this point.
34:51
The only reason why we're going to be able to claw back some of our tax incentives
34:54
on that is because of legislation that Representative Stamm made sure got passed.
35:00
I remember one debate on J.D.G. You've heard of J.D.G.? Yes.
35:04
That's the one that paid for VinFast. Yeah.
35:07
So the rules chair was presenting it, Bill Owens. This was before you were there, I think.
35:13
And he was saying, okay, you know, this doesn't cost us anything because,
35:19
you know, it's only paid for when they come.
35:21
Right. So I proposed an amendment that instead of five people deciding which
35:27
companies would get J.Dig, that we would just make it available to all businesses.
35:33
And he said, Representative Stamm, we can't afford to save that much money. Right.
35:40
Do you remember that? I do actually remember. We were always upset.
35:44
We stayed upset over these things because if they made sense,
35:47
and again, if they made our economy so robust that it brought in enough money to pay adequate,
35:53
for the agencies to perform services and for the employees to make a living, fine. Right.
36:00
We never saw that in all these different incarnations of all these programs.
36:04
I mean, ask the people of Canton, North Carolina, how that went.
36:09
Yeah, Canton. Yeah. Yeah, perfect example. It was one of the last things I had to vote against.
36:14
I'm still hot about that. But let's just use one example of Governor,
36:20
soon to be Senator Cooper, was always railing against decreases in the corporate income tax.
36:28
He would say, oh, you know, wealthy people and whatever.
36:33
If you add up all the corporate income tax that was being collected,
36:37
it was much less than the big items of corporate incentives to Apple and VinFast
36:47
and all the other, Wolfspeed, all the other ones that he approved.
36:52
Yeah. So it wasn't that he was against big corporations. He just liked to pick the big corporations.
37:01
Well, I think there's been a lot of bipartisan support for corporate welfare.
37:05
Well, in the last 10 years since I've been gone, that's really picked up is corporate incentives.
37:16
Somebody said to me recently, and I hadn't thought about this while I was in
37:19
office, was on both ends of the political spectrum, You have people with ideology,
37:23
you know, with a belief system that drives how do they make their decisions.
37:28
And sometimes those belief systems come together as an example of it here today
37:32
with me and Skip sitting here putting that the belief system that we share is that,
37:37
tax systems should be robust enough to take care of people, but not take advantage
37:42
of people, right? Not screw them over.
37:45
And so that's an area where his
37:46
belief system about taxes and mine are different, but where they overlap.
37:50
But that's maybe only 40% of everybody in any elected body. the rest,
37:55
the 60% in the middle are not usually acting from some belief system.
38:00
They're making decision by decision. They haven't formed a belief system.
38:04
And when that's true, they just get rolled like logs over and over and over
38:08
again. And so then when the corporate powers come in, and especially when you
38:12
have people who are above you in the hierarchy, including governors who say,
38:16
hey, this is what we got to do. We got to do this for North Carolina.
38:19
We got to let this hospital merger happen, we got to do this,
38:23
then the people that don't have any belief system, they just get rolled over and over and over again.
38:28
No, it's true. I mean, and it's kind of sad.
38:32
I could give you many examples where the true conservatives and the true liberals
38:37
either joined to win or joined to lose, but it was the mushy middle.
38:46
That went almost completely by who asked them last to do it.
38:52
I 100% agree with that statement. I think, you know, our political action committee
38:56
here at Scenic, people always scratch their heads when they see the endorsements.
38:59
But the bottom line is the people around the state know if their elected person,
39:05
if it's an incumbent running, has been on their side or not.
39:09
And it is all over the place in terms of where you can find support for public
39:13
employees and retirees.
39:14
And credit to your, to MPAC, to your political action committee that unlike
39:19
lots of other political action committees who only are giving to the people
39:23
that they believe will do what they want or rewarding the people who did do what they want,
39:28
Your committee was always really good, I'm sure is still very good,
39:31
at thinking about who are the people that are consistent and we can trust,
39:36
even if sometimes we're in disagreement. I had some major disagreements with you all in my terms.
39:40
You can't possibly agree with anyone all the time. It's not possible.
39:43
But we were able to recognize it like, okay, there's enough consistent things
39:47
that we will work with you on because we're coming to this from a worldview.
39:51
This year they were cranky.
39:52
They're cranky with everybody this year. And PAC was cranky this year.
39:54
Yeah. They only did to endorse us. Yeah, they voted not to endorse any incumbents.
40:00
So these are two fresh new candidates that they endorsed. Who are they?
40:04
You should give them a shout out. People deserve a shout out.
40:06
Balthoudis and Taylor. Yeah, Ian Balthoudis and?
40:09
Charles Taylor. And Charles Taylor. Charles Taylor from Sanford?
40:13
Those are the only two. And who is Balthoudis? He's running in,
40:16
you know. He's a Democrat in Alamance County. He's a former Burlington mayor.
40:20
Okay, and then the Republican in Lee County.
40:23
So, but Impact at the same time did the first county endorsements I've seen
40:28
them. And it was around the Wake County atrium merger.
40:31
Impact got really mad. They said, this affects all of the state employees and
40:36
we're really mad. Yeah, not just Wake County.
40:37
So they endorsed John Adcock in District 2 against Sophia Jackson and then endorsed at large Chris.
40:44
Christine Kushner. Christine Kushner and Mona Singh. Yeah, yeah.
40:48
And so they got active. But see, I mean, they're clearly not picking by party,
40:55
right? No, they're all in place. Right. Yeah.
40:57
Yeah, it's been an interesting go with Impact this year.
41:00
Never a dull moment. No. Good job, Impact.
41:04
So, okay, is there anything else y'all wanted to make sure we got into this segment? No.
41:10
I can tell you where a long explanation of why we're against that tax amendment is available online.
41:17
If you would like me to do that on my website, which is not my legal website,
41:22
paulstam.info, articles for 2026 have this paper that I've prepared with all the problems.
41:31
And we've been able to have it published probably since about 20,000 people by now.
41:36
And I've got a couple of pieces on the tax caps on my sub stack.
41:40
Just a sub stack. Look me up. Greg Meyer. Spell it the way my mama did. G-R-A-I-G-M-E-Y-E-R.
41:47
Yeah. Okay, cool. And we thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks for having us.
41:50
It's great to reconnect with Scenic. It is.
41:53
This was really educational for me, and I've been involved in this.
41:57
I've just sat here listening. I learned a lot from y'all.
41:59
So thank you so much. Get some old timers. We can come in and tell you everything
42:03
that we learned, everything we failed on when we were trying to get things right.
42:12
Thank you for listening to our conversation with Representative Sam and Senator Meyer.
42:16
Hope you come away a little bit more informed about these amendments and why
42:19
it's so important for our scenic members to vote against them.
42:23
Election Day is Tuesday, November 3rd. And if you haven't voted yet, make a plan.
42:28
If you'd rather early vote, you still can. Saturday, Halloween is the last day of early voting.
42:34
Right now, scenic members are behind. Only about 36% of our members have voted
42:38
so far. So we've got to pick it up if we're going to make a difference in this election.
42:42
When you vote, go all the way to the end of your ballot and vote against the
42:45
tax amendments. They come after the candidate races, so don't stop early.
42:50
If you live in Wake County, please support our four endorsed candidates for
42:53
County Commissioner, Mona Singh, Christine Kushner, Vicki Adamson, and John Adcock.
42:58
We've also endorsed two candidates for the NC House, Ian Baltutis and Charles
43:03
Taylor. If you live in their districts, please vote for them too.
43:06
Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.