North Carolina state legislative budget negotiators cleared a major obstacle Wednesday by reaching a compromise on the Medicaid section of the 2014-15 General Fund spending plan.
Senate and House budget leaders sat down Wednesday morning for a standing-room-only meeting to start a new round of exchanging offers, starting with the bottom line.Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown said the meeting would deal only with differences between the two chambers on reversions, Medicaid and the lottery – the three biggest factors in determining how much money is actually available to be spent in the new fiscal year.
“We feel like it’s important that we get the starting number right, and that’s what we’re talking about today,” said Brown, R-Onslow. “Everything else in the two budgets is still on the table for negotiations.”
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Finally, in a rare public budget meeting — one item on the agenda was negotiated to a solution.
The two chambers agreed to allocate $137 million for Medicaid cost overruns in the prior year’s budget and put aside an additional $186 million to cover additional costs for this fiscal year. The numbers represent the midpoint between the House’s best-case projection and the Senate’s worst-case outlook.
The Senate stood steadfast at its mark for weeks, prompting political posturing that threatened to derail the final days of the legislative session. But senators agreed to a compromise in a rare public meeting of the budget conference committee after the House moved closer to its position. “We still have concerns,” said Senate leader Phil Berger, an Eden Republican. “We prefer to be at the worst case, but at some point you have to move the process along. That’s what we are doing.”
House and Senate negotiators still have several sticking points to overcome before reaching a final budget agreement including:
• The latest House compromise offer still includes a plan to double lottery advertising to juice sales and get $30 million in additional revenues. The Senate says it won’t agree to the move.
• The Senate continues to insist on a measure in the budget to cut Medicaid eligibility for thousands of elderly and disabled residents. The House says it won’t agree to the proposal.
• The House wants to give most state employees a $1,000 pay hike plus benefits, and retirees would receive a 1.44-percent cost-of-living adjustment. The Senate proposed an $809 salary bump plus benefits and a lower adjustment for retirees.
