By Bill Bucher

The battle to cut funding to North Carolina public schools is fast becoming a “done deal,” in the jargon of some of our fine legislators in Raleigh.
The Republican-dominated N.C. House has proposed cutting K-12 education by 8.8 percent, and not to be outdone, the Senate upped the ante by initially proposing even deeper cuts. (Editor’s note: Senate leader Phil Berger said late last week that the Senate budget measure to be unveiled Tuesday will spend more on public schools than the House version.)
According to the N.C. Department of Instruction estimates, the House plan would eliminate 18,000 public school jobs, many of whom are classroom teachers; the Senate’s initial budget proposal would eliminate 20,000 jobs.
North Carolina has already lost 10,000 public school jobs this year due to budget cuts, and the only reason more weren’t lost was that federal stimulus money — due to run out after this year — was used to stem the flow of red ink. The Republican view seems to be that the only way to improve public education is to cut the budget, a concept which boggles the imagination and begs for a more reasonable explanation.
Well, the explanation is simple, and the sales tax issue is the key. Republican leaders in the N.C. legislature have insisted that the “temporary” one-cent sales tax be allowed to expire on June 30, even though extending it would solve more than one-third of the state’s current budget crisis. In theory, Republicans should be delighted with a sales tax, which is paid equally by poor and wealthy individuals. In fact, many have expressed support for a national sales tax and eliminating the federal income tax. However, they also know that North Carolina families already pay precious little in sales taxes because services and other major family expenses such as mortgage payments and rent are exempt from taxation, and other items such as electricity and groceries are taxed at significantly lower rates. The one percent part of this tax goes almost unnoticed by most North Carolinians.
“The average person is paying less than a quarter a day as a result of this tax and we believe our kids are worth much more that,” Debra Horton, executive director of the North Carolina PTA said recently.
So why is the new Republican majority in the N.C. legislature so adamant that the one-cent sales tax is to be eliminated June 30? The answer is that big businesses can save millions of dollars in sales taxes, and North Carolina corporate interests — chief among them Raleigh millionaire Art Pope and his conservative think-tank John Locke Foundation — are lobbying heavily to eliminate the one-cent part of the sales tax. Corporations pay the same sales taxes as individuals do except for items expressly purchased for resale, and even small changes in sales taxes can have big impacts on profits and dividends for shareholders of publicly-owned corporations. Allowing counties the authority to enact more local sales taxes isn’t popular in Raleigh for the same reasons. Eliminating up to 20,000 North Carolina public school jobs and putting the money into the pockets of shareholders is a poor plan for helping the North Carolina economy recover.
So the next time you hear a politician say that he or she is adamantly in favor of “lowering taxes,” ask them, “Whose taxes?” Since the public school job losses caused by these tax cuts will hurt families with children much more than corporations, it begs the question — who exactly will benefit the most from a reduction in sales taxes?

Salisbury resident Bill Bucher is the director of Financial Services for the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.

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