Latest / The SEANC View / Budget Battles and Job Cuts: What's Next for State Employees?

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Budget Battles and Job Cuts: What's Next for State Employees? · The SEANC View

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Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
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I'm your host, Jonathan Owens, the communications director here at Scenic,
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joined as always by the executive director, Artis Watkins, government relations
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director, Suzanne Beasley, and podcast producer, Sam Klein.
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It's a big week of house budget talk, so let's dive right into it. I heard that.
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Music.
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Yeah, I heard that much better in my head. I'm sorry about that.
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I think it went pretty well. Okay. I think that sounds cool.
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Well, today is Thursday, May 22nd. Like I said, it is House Budget Week,
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from what I understand, right?
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Yeah. Quite a week for you, Suzanne. It's been a week. We got a whole lot to talk about.
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And let's just jump right in. The house passed its budget this morning,
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right? It did. Budget proposal. It did.
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They were in session for a long time yesterday. There were 36 amendments.
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Two of them passed. None of them had anything to do with state employees or retirees.
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I didn't see the vote count because I was speaking with a legislator today,
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so I don't know what the final vote count was today.
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But yesterday, about half of the Democrats voted along with the Republicans to get this passed.
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Just a quick reminder, it had 2.5 percent for most state employees in the House
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proposal. It had a 1 percent bonus for retirees in year one,
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a 2 percent bonus for retirees in year two.
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Back up a little bit. The Senate budget had 1.25 in the first year for state
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employees and a $3,000 bonus, but that would have been divided across the two
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years. That's a whole lot of words.
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Look, neither budget did squat for active employees. The Senate did nothing for retirees.
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The House did next to nothing for retirees. Thank you.
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That's the way I would summarize. So holding all else equal,
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I think there's a term for that.
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The biggest news this week coming out of that the whole budget debate were the job cuts, right?
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The House saw what the Senate proposal did, cutting, what, 850 jobs?
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And they said, hold my beer. Right. And so it's interesting because,
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well, interesting, maybe not being the right word, but the way they did this.
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So the money report doesn't have specific positions listed.
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It gave a monetary amount, 20 percent, I think the number is,
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that an agency has to cut in positions. So each agency is going to have to make
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the decisions of how many of whatever position to cut and cut until they get to that number.
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What if your agency has so many critical positions and you don't have enough
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fluff to not cut into critical positions?
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Because this is more than one agency.
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Yeah. I mean, we could think of like, you know, DMV off the top of our heads of one agency. DAC.
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Yeah. So, like you said, it's a little murky with some of the wording.
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Yeah. We don't have specifics. So, if you call us, I'm not going to be able
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to tell you if your position or right position is.
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What I'm understanding is the majority of them are vacant. But like you just
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said, Artis, when an agency that doesn't have a lot of fluff gets to the point
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where they're not meeting that goal that was set from the legislature, then.
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Okay, but it's bigger than they're saying, because if you have prisons with
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an over 60 percent vacancy rate in terms of employees, somebody's eventually
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going to die. Yeah. That's not an overstatement.
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We've seen it. We saw it at Pasquotank. We saw it at Bertie.
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And they were at about 32% vacancy, which then was considered extremely high.
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Now it's probably 60. The average in DAC, my understanding, is in the 30s right now.
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So what we used to consider seven years ago extreme vacancies is now average.
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To think that things aren't going to happen, not just to the staff inside those
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walls, but to the offenders as well, It's naivety that is going to end up with disaster. Yeah.
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I mean, we've seen it. And we talk to the people. We talk to the people who
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are working on the ground.
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And I don't think there are many days that go by that someone is not attacked
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in some capacity in a prison. Sure. You just don't hear about that. That's it.
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The public just doesn't hear about it. But that's something is happening somewhere
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in the prison system daily.
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Hey, last week when we were talking to Wendell and Kathy, it became very clear
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that DAC and DHHS, one of the things that affects the public,
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that the public has no idea,
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when you go wait forever in an emergency room and you think,
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oh, it's just that there's a lot of people at the emergency room, maybe.
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Or it might be that we've got somebody from a prison or somebody from an HHS facility.
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And so obviously, they have to secure the perimeter of that,
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deal with that person first, so that those folks can all get back to the job,
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not leaving the rest of that facility as understaffed.
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I don't think, well, I know. North Carolinians have no idea.
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That that's what vacancies mean. It's not just DMV lines. You're waiting so
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many places that you have no idea why.
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Or waiting on things. Right. Small businesses. In dangers that you may not even know you're in.
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There was an interesting, I forget who the sponsor was, there was a bill about
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requiring the Division of Vital Records to get things out within 30 days.
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And I'm over here like, how are you going to do that when you don't have a full staff already?
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You know, they're struggling already to get it out in the time that they get
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it out. I just, I don't know.
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Making it make sense is a challenge this week. So you said that it's not a really concrete number.
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I think the number that was kind of bandied about was 3,000 jobs, right?
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Which is a huge, it's like a shocking number compared to what we usually hear.
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And remember, 15 years ago, we had 25% more state employees than we have now.
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And we had 16% less people in the state. So what the taxpayers are getting is
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a fraction of what they used to get.
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And I will say that judging by our podcast numbers last week, they were very high.
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We had a lot of people. That seems like a lot of people are interested in this story.
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Well, and I think it's really good to hear from the people who are actually
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in the situation. So it was great to have Kathy and Wendell.
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Yeah, so I think that was a popular episode. We'll do more things like that.
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I will say I was very nervous about editing that episode.
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Yeah. I have to say, they did a great job just walking into this room,
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not doing this normally, and just telling it like it is for how it is inside the walls.
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So go back on our feed and find that episode, listen, and please be sure to
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subscribe to us while you're there. Give us some review.
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Yeah, we want people to listen. But back to the job cuts, what does this mean?
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Like, where do we go from here? I know that it goes to conference. Yeah.
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So the House proposal passed this morning. So now it goes to conference.
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Just note that next week the legislature is taking a breather.
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So they'll take the week off. There won't be any votes next week.
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And then they're going to come back the week after and dive right into committees
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and start working on bills that made it through crossover.
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And a conference committee will be assigned to work on the budget.
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So it's kind of weird, though.
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Like, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of I don't know if animosity is the
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word, but like you even have some people from Stein's administration supporting
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some of this stuff. Right. I mean.
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So let's talk about that. Because, you know, policy and the budget should not be partisan issues.
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Obviously, they always are. Somebody's in control. Somebody's writing it.
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And the opposite party could just argue with everything in the budget just because
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to score political points.
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Or they could try to work together in developing it. I don't know what the theory
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is here between either the Republicans or the Democrats.
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I think that, you know, it was reported that Governor Stein went over yesterday
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morning, talked to the House Democratic Caucus and said, you know,
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go ahead with this budget because it's basically better than the Senate's.
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If that's true, I don't really understand that because I don't think the Senate
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is going to be moved by that.
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In fact, the Senate had Democrats vote for their version in good numbers,
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considering the size of the Senate compared to the size of the House.
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So the strategy I'm still struggling with there.
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I can tell you that it definitely left state employees, retirees,
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and anybody in a school who's not a teacher feeling like the Democrats who didn't
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write that budget didn't.
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It's unbelievable to anybody that they would vote with it.
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Because remember this budget does spend the 600
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or 700 million dollars on the opportunity scholarships
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which of course is money to send your
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child to private school as a school choice
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thing instead of sending your child to the public schools and that money can
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be given to anyone no matter what your income right how much of it you get depends
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on your income but anyone's eligible no matter what their income so where we
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came at all of this from is it's fascinating that the Democrats had been so
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steadfastly against that,
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and then they voted for this budget that, among other things, included it.
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But where it crystallized for us is this budget, as Republicans and Democrats
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alike said, is being written at a time of a serious financial pressure for the
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state. We're still trying to recover from Helene.
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The last I heard, the feds are still saying they're not going to pay for as
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much as they originally said they were going to pay for to put Western North
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Carolina back together.
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So if the Republicans had come out this year and said, we're doing a budget
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with no increased spending, period.
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We can't do any of these things we want to do because we got to put North Carolina back together.
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Then that would have been a pill I think everybody could swallow because everybody's
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suffering equally. But that's not how it went down.
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You still have these opportunity scholarships, even for rich people in the budget.
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You do have decent raises for teachers, which I applaud them for doing,
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but if you're gonna do that, you can't cherry pick groups.
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And then there's been bills all session.
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Looking to spend money, and the budget ended up with a considerable amount, Suzanne.
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The list y'all made of expenditures in this budget is huge.
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Including the one you said was for dads.
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Well, I don't know if that one was in the budget. I didn't see that one on the
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list, but there's a mile-long list. Well, let's give some examples.
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Yeah, so there are lots of things in this budget. Johnston Regional Airport,
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funds from the Highway Trust Fund, Weston-Salem Speedway, Purple Heart Homes.
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Sure, that's a wonderful organization.
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Right. So there's things that are probably really good. Yeah.
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Preservation of historical records grants. So things that are probably good,
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but the point is there's money being spent.
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It's not a bare bones budget. No. Right. So if we're in such a financial crisis
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that everybody's got to vote for this budget that cuts 3,000 more jobs to a
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state that's already in a vacancy crisis,
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but you're donating money to the Durham Bulls Miracle League field project,
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which I'm sure is a very worthy project, but It doesn't sound like a critical
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government functioning.
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And when you look at something like DMV, which you did the video on earlier,
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it's so hard to get enough jobs allocated, period, right?
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So when you cut these vacant jobs in five years, you're going to need them.
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And maybe you'll be able to fill them, but you won't have them.
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And they're capped out, particularly at DMV. I think it's 568 employees.
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So the cap has to be lifted in order to hire more folks. So they did get some,
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there were some positions in the budget for that, but it's harder to get positions
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than it is to cut positions.
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You're just cutting into public. The public is ticked off about the places they
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know there's not enough people. Yeah.
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They know that they're getting bad service in terms of not what the employees
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do, but how there's not enough of them.
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And DMV is the only one they really can connect. Oh, that's government.
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There are so many others that they don't really know why. We've been through this example.
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You know, a nurse came up to me after a speech, said, I work in a hospital with
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newborns, and I had no idea why those newborn screening was delayed.
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But that's a big deal. You should know that matters. And, you know,
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I'm like, yeah, we do know it matters, but the public has no idea to connect that to vacancies.
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So we do need to have more and more employees on to explain,
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look, when there's vacancies in my department, here's how it hits the public.
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Yeah, this is how it affects you. And so all of these things that are getting
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big money, if you add this up in the budget, probably mean a lot to specific legislators.
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And they, again, I'm sure they're all very altruistic things that do good work.
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But we either have money or we don't. And if we have money, why aren't we spending
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it on core functions like services over anything else?
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Isn't the rest just gravy?
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So, again, you know, you hear operate government like a business.
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If you're operating as a business, you take care of core functions first.
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And government is not a business, so there's no way to run it like a business.
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No, but if you're even going to pretend you are, you would take care of your... Your workforce.
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Yeah, you'd make sure you had enough people to operate your business before
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you would do philanthropic stuff.
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I saw that you had a minor spat with someone on Twitter this week I was trying
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to get back to. I know. I've been back into those spats lately.
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Brian Balfour? Yeah, he works with John Locke Foundation. So his argument was
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that labor shortages are not just for state government.
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It's across the state and country. But don't you think the government should, like state government?
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Well, what I was pointing out to him is, and he had a link to some information
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about vacancies around the country, including North Carolina.
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But that didn't break it down to where those vacancies are most dire.
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My guess is because the minimum wage in North Carolina is only seven and a quarter,
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I bet a lot of those vacancies, I bet a disproportionate amount,
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are because those wages are not enough for anybody to live on. That's my guess.
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Yeah. You know, I don't think we have trouble hiring IT people,
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for instance, to the degree that we're having trouble getting people to take
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jobs that don't pay you enough to live.
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They're not going to stay in those jobs. I think you won the battle,
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though, when he said that taxes are extracted by force.
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Well, I don't know that there's ever a winner in a Twitter battle, I think.
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And I kind of enjoy going back and forth with him. As a matter of fact,
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if he ever hears this, I think there was value to that kind of back and forth.
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And if he would ever want to come on the podcast, I'd love to have him because
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obviously he's got a lot of, you know, his vantage point of looking at this
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stuff is very valuable to know
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because that's a lot of the public that's going to look at it that way.
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And hopefully our vantage point might be useful to him in his calculus of what's
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most useful for the economy.
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I think it's hard to argue that it's good for the economy to have government,
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which is your infrastructure, be choked out.
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You know, you don't want too much government. You don't want bloat and inefficiency,
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but you also don't want one that's been cut so much that it's not able to provide
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infrastructure because nobody's going to locate their business here.
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Yeah. But I think that when he said something about the taxes,
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state employees are taxpayers.
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And that does get forgotten an awful lot. It does. Yeah.
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But again, you know, if he'd ever like to come on, that'd be great.
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I think a lot more of that would be good.
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Yeah. A lot more debate. Like honest discussion rather than just bomb throwing.
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Well, there was some bomb throwing involved, right?
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Well, Twitter, that's what it's for. I miss the old Twitter.
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Yeah. I digress. Anyway, so any insight into what legislators are thinking or
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which one you think will win out at the end of the day?
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Well, state employees don't appear to be winning anything. Yeah, I don't know, John.
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Yeah. I'm trying. I'm trying. Hard to find a silver line in here.
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I think at the end of the day, there will be a budget.
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One of the big differences between the House and Senate was when tax cuts would happen.
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And, you know, there's been a fair amount of chatter today, too,
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about them going home like they've done before without a budget and then returning later.
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So, you know, speculation just abounds everywhere. And I know we're all just
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we're tired and punchy right now because it's just been a long week.
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Well, hey, if they do that, it means they can't cut those 3,000 jobs,
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right? Yeah. Maybe we can hurt and fill them. Fill them.
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Yeah. There's so much about that. Why do you have all these doge efforts and
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then you just cut on both sides in your budget before you've done any of it?
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Even determine what's. Right.
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Indiscriminate. Because it's a, I don't know if I can even say.
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It's a show. Like it's. Oi, politics is a show. Yeah. Y'all know the show.
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Anyway. Well, unfortunately, the show affects lives. Yeah.
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It does sound ridiculous when you think about it. Let's look at ways to be more
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efficient. But before we even do that, get rid of a bunch of things.
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And they might went in and looked at it and said, maybe it wasn't efficient
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that we got rid of all of those things. Okay.
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Yeah. Or will anybody die if we do this? Yeah.
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Bottom line. Will anybody get hurt if we do this? It was really interesting to hear Kathy.
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Kathy and Wendell were on last week. Kathy talked about the dangers in an HHS facility.
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So many similarities. But to be fair to the House budget, they specifically
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said under the HHS section that they're not looking to cut those facilities.
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So that's good. Yeah. And which brought up the next question,
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like, what are you cutting then?
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Like, most of the jobs that there are now. I think there's a lot of.
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Administrative type jobs. There's been a lot of questions about HHS and some
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of the programs they've run that, you know, there's even been some news stories
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about some problems with some of the programs.
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My guess is in HHS, it's largely centered around that, where there's like teenagers
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who've had programs that affected them in negative ways.
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And my guess is a lot of that. Well, speaking of that, do you think they'll
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need to wait until the one big, beautiful bill from what we're hearing,
18:05
what comes of that? I know it passed the U.S.
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House last night. It goes on to the Senate. It includes lots of, I mean.
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Sure. That affects the money that trickles down. So you think they'll probably
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wait on to see what happens with that? You know.
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We've asked all along how we really have sympathy for the General Assembly,
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honestly, how does or any state, how do you write a budget not knowing what
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you're getting ready to have to hold expense wise that you used to rely on the
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federal government for? And it's going to be interesting.
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So the state health plan met this week and made some changes to some of the
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program structures, right?
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Yeah, well, they haven't actually voted. They won't vote until August.
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But, yeah, there's going to be some benefit changes, premium increases.
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Which they haven't voted on yet. Yeah, that comes in on. I wouldn't have voted
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either the week the budget came out.
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Yeah, so that's what I was kind of getting to, like. Throwing peanuts at state employees.
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Yeah. Like, how was the state health plan treated in the House budget?
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So, I just came from a retiree forum, CNICAD, where Treasurer Briner spoke.
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And he was pleased with the amount put in, frankly, by the House and Senate
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in terms of the health plan.
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But I have to point out, we at Scenic are still really ticked off because if
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you want to fact check us on this, please do look at past media articles about it.
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When the federal government sent billions to North Carolina for COVID.
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250 million of that that was supposed to go to the health plan never, ever did.
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And we waited and we waited and we waited. That money never went to the health plan.
19:42
The health plan, the hole they're
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trying to fix by increasing everyone's premiums is a $500 million hole.
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So that $250 million from COVID would have cut in half anything you've got to
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go ask the employees for.
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But the General Assembly never, ever paid that back.
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That's a debt the General Assembly to this day owes to the health plan,
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therefore to the employees and the retirees. Also, those job vacancies were
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reported even a couple years ago, and it's gotten a lot more money since then.
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But even a couple years ago, Office of State Budget and Management said that
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over a billion dollars had been put in the reserves because of those vacancies.
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So state employees have been doing the job of more than one person and putting
20:29
money, therefore, in the reserves this whole time.
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So that's money the state owes.
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Yeah, you're welcome. State of North Carolina. So that's money that was supposed
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to go to people doing the jobs.
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People have been doing the jobs of more than one person. They've not benefited
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at all from that money going into the reserves.
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They haven't even been paid the money to their health plan that the federal
20:53
government sent for COVID relief.
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And the most obvious connection to state expenses on COVID would be the state health plan. Yeah.
21:01
So there's so many ways in which state employees get ripped off on the fringes and have no idea.
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But there's an awful lot of money that's been in the state coffers simply because
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it didn't go to the state employees like it was supposed to.
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We're having a membership appreciation slash membership event out at Halifax
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Mall today. It's over now.
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But when we finished session, the lobbying team went over, you know,
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just to chat with people and help out where we might be needed.
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And I had a conversation with a state employee while I was standing out there
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who was, I mean, she's going to go in the hole.
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With the premium increases. Well, tell us a little more about those premium increases, the range.
21:38
So I have a little information they put out right after the meeting this week.
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And this may be the same thing. Yeah, that with these plan restructuring,
21:46
like they have a bundle payment plan,
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preferred provider plan, they're saying that the premium increases will be less
21:53
than it previously anticipated with some premiums only expected to go up $5
21:58
per month. So that's good news. We'll see if that happens.
22:02
But the general, what they handed out, though, was like a larger amount.
22:06
So it said for 2025, the 70-30 plan, it's $25 a month.
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That's your premium. In 2026, there won't be the 70-30.
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There'll be the 80-20 standard and an 80-20 plus.
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The 80-20 standard, the premiums will be between $30 and $70.
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So, yeah, it's going to depend on salary.
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So, yeah, some people will see it go up from $25 to $30, but somebody is going
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to see it go up from $25 to $70 in the 80-20 standard.
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The 80-20 plus, it's going to go up $70 to $100. box. So significant,
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significant increases for the people, the low end.
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And it's an appropriate time to point out, we know that the providers in this
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system, the doctors and the hospitals,
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according to the only information we have about what we pay,
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are paid up to, in some cases, more than 800 percent of Medicare reimbursement
23:00
rate, which is supposedly four times what it takes to run a hospital with a profit.
23:06
And we know, for instance, Atrium, just last week it was reported,
23:10
they said their executive level pay for all of their executives went up on average.
23:17
41%. That's the pay raise they got.
23:19
Remember, North Carolina is the most expensive state in this nation for health
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care. I was thinking we got a huge tax cut with this next tax cut. Yeah.
23:27
So atrium executives get this 41% pay hike, and we don't know what we're paying
23:32
them from the state health plan.
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That's still problematic. It makes me guess they must be in that 800% or more
23:41
range of reimbursement, which again would be four times what it takes to make a profit.
23:45
I don't know. And we can't know right now because they're protected.
23:49
So looking at this structure that they released, I don't know if you've seen
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this or not, because they posted it to their Facebook page.
23:56
It looks like the new 70-30, which is called the standard plan,
24:00
but it's not a 70-30, it's like 80-20 now, will be the deductibles on that have
24:04
doubled. So they're from $10.
24:07
Yeah, it's not just premiums. Yeah, not just premiums. Your primary care doctor
24:12
visits have gone up. All of those have gone up.
24:15
There's no CPP anymore. Yeah, that's being phased out, which that largely affected
24:20
mental health care providers.
24:22
CPP being Clear Pricing Project, which some of y'all's physicians might have
24:26
been enrolled in that. At the end of the day, it boils down to this.
24:31
We were told we have no choice but to go. The General Assembly is not going
24:35
to give us more money than they are. We can't go get it from them.
24:38
So we have to get it somewhere. And the place we have to go get it is the members of the plan.
24:44
Because heaven forbid we ask. But that's not true. Give us back our $250 million
24:48
of COVID money, and we cut it in half right there.
24:51
And then go to the providers who are giving 41% raises to their executives because
24:57
they've clearly got it because they're giving it to their executives.
25:01
But instead, we're going to go to a $35,000, $36,000 a year correctional officer
25:07
who's working in an understaffed prison and their life's on the line every day.
25:12
And we're going to tell them, you're going to have to pay for it because there's nothing else we can do.
25:16
Yeah, you're going to have to pay $1,500 more before your insurance kicks in
25:20
because that's just the way it is, right?
25:24
Hashtag reasons. So putting all of this together, we have smaller than needed
25:30
or expected raises out of all three plans.
25:32
We have vacant job cuts, which those jobs need to be filled or else we're putting folks in danger.
25:39
And the insurance is going up, your health care insurance. So it's a net loss
25:43
all around for state employees, right?
25:45
Yeah. And net loss for the public. Yeah.
25:48
You know why? Because those state employees aren't going to stay in that job
25:52
long. And the retraining and filling those jobs, the cost is exorbitant.
25:58
If you can fill them, right? Right.
26:00
Which you can't because of these puny raises.
26:04
Well, and, you know, underfunded salaries, period.
26:08
Even before we're talking pay raise here, the salaries are so low that there's
26:11
nothing attractive about state government employment right now.
26:15
Yeah, I posted your video this week of the audio from it on our podcast feed
26:20
about correctional officer starting pay. And that's just a stark reminder of
26:25
the issue. Third lowest in the country.
26:28
Go us. $37,000 for starting.
26:31
So even if you look at the highest raise that's been proposed for correctional staff,
26:38
which is higher than the rest of state government, it still doesn't catch you
26:41
up to the other states that are our neighbor states, that are bordering states.
26:46
You're still below them. And I don't know, maybe it makes you fourth lowest paid in the country.
26:53
That's not the kind of thing we want to be known for.
26:56
But there we are. That's what we are. And again, we're the number one costliest
27:00
place to go get health care.
27:01
And there's nothing. The problem with the budget is there's nothing about the
27:05
budget that does anything to reverse either one of those things.
27:08
And North Carolina is not Mississippi.
27:10
Like, we're a pretty vibrant state, you know.
27:14
I mean, we have a strong financial well-being, right? I mean,
27:18
we're one of the up-and-coming states in the country.
27:20
We're 10th in population. We have a huge influx of people moving into this state.
27:26
And yet we're below all the surrounding states on even that one job.
27:31
I'm sure it's like that on all jobs, right?
27:33
Not just a little bit below, a lot below the neighboring states and 12% less
27:39
than local government in this state.
27:42
And that's another thing that we even talked about last week,
27:44
about people just going to their local governments instead.
27:48
So it's dire times for us. So what can you do, state employees and retirees?
27:54
What can we do to stand up? One thing you can do is read your scoop.
27:58
We'll have a link in there for you to be able to reach out to your legislator
28:01
and tell them what you think about this.
28:04
What pressures are you feeling at your job? What does the vacancy rate do to you?
28:09
What effect does it have on your job and how, you know, the dangers that you
28:13
feel at your position? Have you ever thought of leaving?
28:17
Maybe what keeps you in your job? Just tell them everything.
28:20
And we'll have a link in our scoop and use that to quickly reach out to your folks and tell them.
28:26
Those stories are important for legislators.
28:28
I mean, it puts a face to an issue.
28:31
The good, the bad, the ugly. Yeah. They need to know it all.
28:34
And not just the folks the appropriations chairs.
28:36
No matter who your legislator is, contact your local folks.
28:41
And again, this budget is not a Republican budget. It is very much a legislator budget.
28:47
Yeah. Republicans and Democrats voted for and applauded this budget.
28:53
This is not a partisan issue. This is a policy issue.
28:56
And the bottom line is every budget's about priorities and neither party thought
29:00
that you are a priority or that the taxpayer services you provide are a priority.
29:06
Although there were a couple of folks we did want to mention.
29:09
I want to give a shout out to Representative Terry Brown.
29:13
He spoke so eloquently on the floor and he's always a supporter,
29:16
but we appreciate the comments and the points he made about the raise is not enough.
29:21
He was, you know, concerned about that. Representative Moray,
29:24
I think she spoke in a press conference.
29:26
Yes, Representative Moray from Durham.
29:28
Yeah, she always has good comments.
29:31
She pointed out that the cuts would be detrimental.
29:33
Representative Ben Moss spoke up on the floor yesterday. You know,
29:37
he made the point that it's not a perfect budget.
29:40
Everybody's not getting what they want. You know, and he did mention state employees
29:43
are not getting what they deserve either.
29:46
So, yeah, I mean, they're people of both sides. Thank you to those folks.
29:49
Not a perfect budget. That's an understatement. Yeah. It was a very polite way of putting it.
29:54
So do you think that the political points you can score by cutting vacant jobs
29:59
are worth the danger of putting people at risk at prisons and, you know,
30:04
the potential of fallout that could come if there's a huge riot at a prison because folks die?
30:10
You know, you're assuming people will connect the dots and say,
30:13
oh, yeah, that riot is connected to the understaffing. staffing.
30:16
I think with Pasquotank as an example, there wasn't a lot of connecting those
30:21
dots other than what we were trying to do.
30:23
And I know Nick Oxner, a reporter who used to be with WBTV, was definitely trying to connect those dots.
30:30
But for most people, they said, what terrible people those inmates were that did that.
30:34
You know, the inmates did it because there was opportunity. There was opportunity, yeah.
30:38
Yeah. And if you did bring it up, you would be shouted down as like,
30:42
oh, it's no time to bring up politics at this time. A hundred percent.
30:46
And it's exactly the time to bring up politics. It is. It's the,
30:49
yeah. Politics caused it. Uh-huh. Truly.
30:52
I mean, it wouldn't have happened to the degree it happened.
30:55
I'm not saying nobody would ever be assaulted or killed. That's ridiculous to say.
30:59
But could you get as many people as they got? Absolutely not.
31:03
That was clear. Well, I mean. The understaffing. In Louisiana right now, they had 10 inmates.
31:08
Then no one said anything about staffing at that prison. I don't even know.
31:12
I'm sure it's not great right so everything's political now you can make everything
31:18
political i was gonna say people are making music books everything political i mean.
31:22
Yeah. Politics is required to fund the positions.
31:27
If the positions are not adequately funded, you can't get anybody to take the job.
31:33
The bottom line is you can still make more money down the street at Sonic than
31:38
you can in many of our prisons.
31:41
So why am I, maybe something could happen to me at Sonic.
31:45
You never know. But it's real likely something might happen to me in a prison.
31:49
So it's not just prisons, but, you know, that's the example that's the most egregious.
31:54
It's just in my head, I see so many things on social media and these social
31:58
warriors now who will post and talk about how everything is political.
32:03
But when there is something like that that happens and they don't make that
32:07
connection, and that's the most important times that they need to make that connection.
32:11
Not when someone says one line in a book and you're like, that's political.
32:17
No, you need to make the connections with the important things.
32:20
Not every song, book, dance needs that connection made.
32:26
Yeah. Do y'all think it's always been like this, though? I don't think it has.
32:29
Yeah. I actually don't. Yeah, it has. Really?
32:32
Not our first right again. Yeah. It's just circumstances. I don't care who's in charge.
32:36
I mean, we've been through the same amount of time lobbying that Democrats were
32:40
in charge that we have with Republicans in charge. And it was funny because
32:45
when the Republicans came in, they were going to change all of that.
32:48
And maybe not. I guess maybe I'm talking more about the proliferation of political
32:54
speech throughout the rest of society.
32:56
Well. And I guess it makes it easier.
32:59
Social media makes it a lot. Yeah. Maybe not even easier, but more prevalent.
33:03
More in your face. You have more people pointing out those connections to you.
33:07
Yeah. All right. We're off on a tangent. Are you ready for the question of the week? Hit us. Okay.
33:13
Music.
33:19
Well, speaking of teachers, since we did speak a little bit about teachers,
33:23
it's that time of year again.
33:25
I went to my daughter's sixth grade awards day this morning,
33:28
and I just wanted to give a shout out to the teachers, the bus drivers,
33:32
nutrition specialists, the nurses, principals, support staff,
33:38
and administrators for surviving this year with my children. And all of our children.
33:44
I got kids now? Well. They all deserve a good race. They're just not all going to get it. Yeah.
33:51
Special shout out to Ms. Pinar, Ms. Harrington, Mr. Pinar, and all the other
33:56
sixth grade teachers at San Lee Middle School.
34:00
But my question this week is, what is one memory you have of your high school graduation?
34:05
Do you have a memory of your high school graduation? Well, I mean, I remember it.
34:10
I remember graduating. I remember looking around wondering, what the heck is
34:13
everybody crying about?
34:15
Let's go to the beach, you know? Because everybody went to the beach after.
34:19
Where'd you go to high school? I went to Garner. I'm a Garner girl.
34:22
I went to Northmore High School in Robbins, North Carolina, and our graduating class was 95 people.
34:28
Oh, wow. So me and one of my best friends, we got a box of cigars and handed
34:34
them out to everybody in our class.
34:36
And everybody had to keep them hidden or we'd get, like, kicked out of school. It's so funny.
34:39
But afterwards, we all, like, had cigars at the end. Like, we weren't lighting them, but, you know.
34:45
Just fine. I feel like you would probably get your diploma taken away these days. Yeah.
34:50
But that's my biggest memory of my graduate. Can't have any fun anymore.
34:54
What about you, Sam? You've got to remember. Yeah.
34:56
It's like it was last week. Where'd you go? Where'd you go? I graduated from
34:59
Grays Creek High School in Hope Mills, North Carolina. What year?
35:03
2018. 2018. Okay. And we had our graduation at the Crown Coliseum,
35:09
and that's where everyone did.
35:10
So they rushed you in and out of there. If you went to a Cumberland County school,
35:14
your graduation was at the Crown Coliseum.
35:16
And so it'd be like, your graduation's at 9.30 in the morning.
35:19
You got to be out by 10.30 so we can do the next one.
35:22
On the news this morning, they were talking about that, how all the Raleigh
35:26
schools now graduate at like,
35:28
was it red hat or somewhere not all of them
35:31
but like why do people not graduate at their school anymore i
35:34
guess it's just we didn't have enough space yeah we had graduated
35:37
on the football field yeah that's what we did too so we had like 400 students
35:42
and we would have to go to the crown coliseum you only got a certain number
35:46
of tickets for family members it was restricted and i remember when everyone
35:51
else stood up to throw their caps i sat there because i was very overstimulated and anxious.
35:56
I did not like having that many eyes on me at all, even though it wasn't all
36:00
about me. I did not like being.
36:02
In an area where it was the center of attention. And so I just sat there in
36:08
like panic when everyone else stood up and threw their hats up.
36:12
And one of my math teachers was sitting next to me and he was just like,
36:17
Mom, aren't you excited?
36:18
And I'm like, no, I just want to sit here and be ignored. Please pretend that I don't exist.
36:25
That's funny that my son graduated last year and like graduation is still such
36:29
a big deal. We also, no one was allowed to clap until the end of our ceremony
36:34
because they had to get through it that fast.
36:36
And we had this thing called perfect graduation, which is basically the day
36:40
before you graduated, you signed a giant banner saying you're graduating that year.
36:45
And if you had a perfect graduation, then they would put that banner up in the
36:49
school for the next year and over the summer and stuff.
36:52
Which basically meant that everyone had to
36:55
be quiet until the very end of the ceremony if one
36:58
person's family cheered for them when they
37:01
walked across the stage never happening wow i
37:04
can remember they you would not i knew this topic would light a fire in sam
37:08
and we did not have a perfect graduation in my year because of course there
37:13
was a couple families and they also got removed as soon as the families would
37:16
get up and start cheering and screaming you were removed and And that student
37:19
did not get their diploma immediately after the graduation.
37:22
I don't know. I don't altogether hate that. If you can't hear the next person's
37:26
name, I think that's mean.
37:28
Yeah. Like, well, I guess, yeah. If you make it a quick yell. Yeah.
37:32
But if it's a prolonged yell, that's not cool to the next person.
37:36
No, that's not. They work just as hard. Even if you got a whoop whoop,
37:40
they would kick you out. No, I remember even when I graduated from high school,
37:43
they said, yeah, no noise, which, you know, you might as well have been talking to a rock.
37:47
But I don't recall that it would go on and on and on and interrupt for,
37:52
I don't know. I don't remember any of us being unhappy. We were glad.
37:55
We were glad we'd hit that mile marker in life and let's roll.
37:58
There were some families who just didn't care as soon as they knew that they
38:02
knew they were getting kicked out.
38:03
So they would go stand at the edge and just scream all they wanted and then
38:07
just walk out of the building.
38:08
Man. And it's like, OK, you don't care. But the students actually kind of cared
38:12
about getting a perfect graduation because.
38:14
Oh, I bet you really cared about that. I didn't care that much.
38:17
I don't even remember signing it. I was like, I'm not going to see it.
38:22
I can see you really caring about that. I wasn't going to see it.
38:23
Well, that's the thing. I was gone.
38:25
I was never going to see it. I didn't care.
38:28
But my family was like, we're still going to be respectful because there are
38:31
other kids who care about getting a perfect graduation.
38:34
But the reason I was respectful and my family was respectful is because also
38:37
you didn't get your diploma that day if you did not behave.
38:40
Where did you go, Artis? Where did you go to high school? Broughton.
38:44
Oh. Oh, now where did y'all graduate? At Broughton.
38:47
Okay. And it was in the gym, and they still do it there. It was hotter than
38:52
18. You know what? That's what I remember.
38:56
It was so oppressively hot in that gym.
38:59
I bet your class was really large, wasn't it? Yeah, I think it was.
39:03
I mean, it was a packed, yeah, you can only have a certain number of people
39:06
and it was packed. And it was just, again, it was hot.
39:09
Isn't that a weird thing to be your memory? Well, I mean, the thing that was
39:13
happening to you in the moment, the biggest thing that was happening to you
39:16
in the moment was that trickle of sweat running down your back.
39:19
Hoping that purple gown wasn't leaning on you.
39:22
Yeah. I will say I did tear up a little bit at my graduation,
39:25
but again, I think that's because I was anxious and overstimulated.
39:29
Now, my favorite graduation, though, was law school because they let the law
39:35
school lead everybody into Kenan Stadium.
39:37
Yeah. And they didn't do it by any kind of merit, which was awesome. Yeah.
39:42
And so I'm like, I'll hold the sign. So I was the first person walking into
39:46
Kenan Stadium leading the charge. That's awesome.
39:49
Except my family later was like, you got to be kidding. Like,
39:53
you're representing the academic integrity of the whole group. Okay.
40:00
I was like, well, I was willing to hold it. My college graduation,
40:03
they had us lined up, I guess, by last name.
40:06
But, like, also certain departments graduated in the morning.
40:09
Certain departments graduated in the afternoon. I was just social science.
40:13
The one they do on the football field. So I graduated that morning,
40:17
and I was just sitting next to a couple of my buddies, actually,
40:19
from freshman year. A couple of my friends who lived on my floor and they're
40:23
just sipping from flasks the whole time.
40:26
They're just like sitting there and they're like, you want some?
40:30
So the answer was no. My college graduation is kind of now infamous because
40:35
guess who our speaker was?
40:37
UNC class of 2003. Oh. Bill Cosby.
40:41
Oh, was it really? Yes. He had a good speech. I don't remember who ours was.
40:45
That was probably a good speech, though.
40:47
In hindsight, you know, it's not something you can brag about anymore,
40:50
but you could at the time. That was a big deal.
40:52
Bill Cosby. That would have been a big deal. I feel like NYU has the best commencement
40:56
speakers and they get to brag the most.
40:58
I just read in the last couple of days that Kermit the Frog is the keynote speaker at some graduation.
41:06
Kermit the Frog? I would have rather had Elizabeth Banks. She was a commencement speaker this year. Oh.
41:12
She's great. Love her. Well, that's our episode this week.
41:15
Thanks for joining us and good luck, Sam, putting all this together.
41:19
That's our new outro. Bye.
41:22
Music.