I’m writing a story for this coming weekend setting the scene for North Carolina legislative races this fall. While the paper will do district-specific profiles for individual contests later on, this story is more interest in the milieu in which candidates find themselves.
Part of that milieu will be independent expenditures either by groups organized as federal 527s (named for the chapter of the tax code that allows for them) or businesses of one sort of another.
Already, a group called Real Jobs NC (link), which describes itself as non-partisan, has gotten into the campaign, targeting a variety of Democratic incumbents. The individuals who have bank-rolled the group have deep ties to Republican politics. And the candidates the group is running ads or fliers against match-up pretty well with the Republican Party’s list of high priority races where they think they have a chance of unseating Democratic incumbents.
The AP’s Gary Robertson wrote about the group itself when they first started up. Click here to read that report, which details the involvement of former state Rep. Art Pope and Fred Eshelmann of Wilmington.
“They’re just another arm of the Republicans,” said Rep. Hugh Holliman, one of the Democrats Real Jobs has targeted and the House Majority Leader. “I know they’re supposed to be separate, but they’re not.”
Roger Knight, a spokesman and lawyer for the group, said any overlap between the GOP and group’s objectives is coincidental.
“I think our focus has been more on the voting records of the individuals that we have identifies in the ads and no so much who their opponent is and what the race looks like,” Knight said.
Holliman’s 81st State House District is based in Lexington, which is near Greensboro and so of interest to me. In a flier the Real Jobs group sent to residents in the district, Real Jobs says, “State Representative Hugh Holliman is wasting our tax dollars on pork during a recession.” It goes on to cite four projects as pork.
In the spirit of Factcheck.org and Politifact.com, let’s take a look at the four projects in the Real Jobs flier.
“Voted to GIVE HOLLYWOOD FATCATS UP TO $20 MILLION OF OUR TAX DOLLARS for each movie they produce in NC”
For this claim, the flier points to H 1973 of the 2010 session. In fact, H 1973 did contain a passel of economic incentives, including one for film makers.
I wrote a fair bit about this during the legislative session. That background is here, here and here.
The credits in question are refundable tax credits for a quarter of qualifying costs of production up to $80 million. In order to claim a $20 million credit, a movie production would have to spend $80 million on the production. There is a limit on how much any one individual salary can count toward the credit.
The bottom line: the claim that Hollywood producers can claim a credit of $20 million is essentially true. But because of Real Jobs’ claim to be non-partisan, it’s worth noting that 19 Republicans voted for the measure, including Rep. Harold Brubaker from a nearby Randolph County district and Rep. Thom Tillis, the deputy GOP leader in the House.
“Voted to BUILD A $25 MILLION LUXURY FISHING PIER in Nags Head”
For this bullet point, the flier points to H 628, which passed in 2009. Much of the controversy about the pier swirled around whether Senate President Pro Tempore Marc Basnight's family stook to earn some of that money as contractors on the project.
In regards to Holliman, there are two notes of interest. First, the bill in question requires the $25 million come from “receipts or from other non-General Fund sources.” In other words, while this is still public money it is not tax dollars.
Also, the bill in question passed the Senate and House with no opposition: 111-0 in the House and 49-0 in the Senate.
The bottom line: while the claim is true, it would be fair to say that there was a fair amount of support from Republicans and Democrats alike at the time. Also, I'm not really sure what would make this a "luxury" fishing pier.
“Voted to SPEND $218,000 FOR A SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL in High Point”
The reference for this one is S 897, the budget bill that passed this summer. That’s actually the wrong bill. The Shakespeare Festival is mentioned in S 202, the budget bill from the year before.
In that budget, the legislature actually cuts back on funding for the festival, trimming the grant to the program by $11,524. That left the actual operating support for the festival at $208,009 (link). It’s also worth noting that this annual grant started going to the festival in 1999. So it’s by no means an idea that just cropped up in recent years.
The bottom line: the dollar amount is off, but the North Carolina state budget does fund the Shakespeare Festival. Also, the actual vote Holliman took was to reduce funding to the festival, not originate new funding.
On a political note, the Shakespeare Festival in High Point is not too far from Lexington and one wonders about the wisdom of hitting a bit of pork kind of close to Holliman’s own district. After all, voters are less likely to view spending close to home as pork and more likely to think of it as “critical economic development spending.” For this item to work as a demerit so close to home, it might have to rely on a sort of classist assumption that the voters who are the target audience for this flier aren’t going to care much about high falutin’ Shakespeare productions.
“Voted to USE OVER $1 MILLION OF OUR TAX DOLLARS ON A BOTANICAL GARDEN in Chapel Hill.”
This bullet point references S 202 of 2009 and indeed, there is a line item that references the botanical garden. However, as with the Shakespeare Festival, this is a budget reduction. In this case, lawmakers trimmed $145,162.
There also may be a problem with the “over $1 million” figure. Knight with Real Jobs said they derive that figure from a notation in the budget that said the state was reducing “the state appropriation to the North Carolina Botanical Garden at UNC-CH by 12%.”
In fact, $145,162 is 12 percent of 1.2 million and would subtract out to leaving about $1.06 million in the pot. However, this notation may have been in error. Information from the legislature’s fiscal research staff says the FY08-09 budget going to the botanical garden was $971,017 and that the 09-10 and 10-11 budgets were $775,276 each year.
The bottom line: The numbers might be off here. However, if you’re inclined to think sending money to a botanical garden is a bad idea then it probably doesn’t make a difference if it’s $1 million or $775,000. Also, this is a line item that seems to have been around for some time, so it didn’t start with the 2009 budget, an inference you could take away from the direct mail piece.
OVERALL BOTTOM LINE: This is only one of several mailers or videos that Real Jobs has put out. The claims in the Holliman flier are based in fact, although lack some context and some of the figures may be off. Claims in other district vary and I’ve not vetted them, although the group did have to retract one claim (link) made in a flier sent against a Raleigh-area candidate. Finally, their claim to be a nonpartisan group falls flat due to their funding and the fact they seem to be targeting exclusively Democrats. (One of the group's founders addresses that topic in this story by the Wilmington paper). Also, it's worth keeping in mind they are dinging Democrats for votes in which several or all legislative Republicans voted in the affirmative.