Schofield: Show us the way, Joe
Submitted by James on Sat, 05/30/2009 - 10:24am
Right now, the man on the hot seat is House Speaker Joe Hackney. For better or worse and through no fault of his own, the timing of the budget process has placed the buck squarely on the desk of the veteran Orange County lawmaker at the most critical moment. Today, one month before the end of the state fiscal year, at a point at which all the bad revenue numbers are in and the Governor and Senate have already taken their shots, circumstances have conspired to give this one man more power than any other official in the state over an issue of historic importance.
I hope you'll all go read the rest of this well-reasoned column. I especially hope Speaker Hackney will do so. I stand with Rob Schofield in calling for the Speaker to step up to meet this unprecedented challenge. Without his leadership, North Carolina will lurch once again to the dark side.
Contact Joe here
http://www.joehackney.com/contact
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
The Speaker's challenge
I really do believe the Speaker wants to do the right thing. Perhaps his biggest challenge is the fact that the Repubs are, as usual, zero help. Minority Leader Paul Stam has pretty much made it clear that he is deligthed to vote for a budget that wrecks state government.
This means Hackney's got to bring along essentially ALL of the conservative Dems to get anything good accomplished. That will be a tall order. To the extent folks can put pressure on the more conservative members of the Dem caucus to vote for more revenue they will be doing the Lord's work.