Actually, that headline is a bit off. What State Treasurer Janet Cowell said as she release the state's annual debt affordability study was:

The annual analysis, approved by the Debt Affordability Advisory Committee, found that the state has exhausted its General Fund debt capacity until fiscal year 2013. Additionally, the combined debt capacity of the Highway Fund and the Highway Trust Fund has been exhausted until fiscal year 2014.

The committee sets a percentage of revenue as the primary metric for determining debt affordability. This percentage for the General Fund is slightly above 4 percent, which is the self-imposed target adopted by the committee. The Highway Fund and Highway Trust Fund’s percentage also slightly exceeds its 6 percent target.

North Carolina’s “triple A” bond rating has been reaffirmed by all three national bond rating agencies. Currently, all of the state’s debt ratios are at or below the median levels for the state’s peer group, composed of other states rated “triple A” by all three agencies. North Carolina’s debt is considered manageable at current levels. The report acknowledges that the state’s current revenue picture is only modestly optimistic and reflects the continued slow pace of economic recovery. Additionally, the study outlines the need for replenishment of the state’s reserves.

The translation of all that really is: The state SHOULDN'T borrow any more money and if it does so, North Carolina will put its AAA bond rating at risk. So we've not hit a hard limit so much as we've gotten to the point where we've borrowed as much as is considered fiscally prudent.

The report also mentions that the state has pension and health care liabilities to worry about, a was a growing debt to the federal government incurred to pay for unemployment claims.

Click here for a full copy of the annual debt affordability study (link) (.pdf).

The current Republican-lead General Assembly isn't exactly a crowd that's big on borrowing. However, this does take away one tool from them as they go through the budget this spring. If the legislature does authorize any new big repair or renovation projects, they'll have to budget cash up front rather than borrowing on down the line.

Also worth noting: the debt limit floats with the total amount of revenue collected by the state. By letting the 1-cent sales tax expire last summer, the General Assembly effectively lowered North Carolina's self-imposed debt ceiling.

The North Carolina chapter of the ACLU (link) sent a letter to N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper and legislative leaders warning that the General Assembly appears to be violating restrictions on sectarian prayers used to open sessions of governing bodies.

"Several legislators and members of the community have contacted us to express concern about the North Carolina General Assembly's ("NCGA") frequent practice of convening session with a sectarian prayer. According to the complaints, this practice occurs in both the House and the Senate chambers, and a significant majority of these legislative prayers are explicitly sectarian and favor only one religion, Christianity."

The ACLU goes on to suggest the General Assembly adopt a non-sectarian prayer policy.

I've written about this before, in the context of a Winston-Salem case that was heard by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. At the time, Sen. Phil Berger, the president pro tempore of the Senate, said: ""I'm more concerned about the government dictating what an appropriate prayer is than I am if a particular minister mentions Christ or mentions something that applies to one specific religion or creed."

Click here to read the letter itself (.pdf).

So Gov. Bev Perdue spoke to reporters last night for the first time since announcing she wouldn’t run for a second term. The press room at the Sanford-Hunt-Frye dinner was packed with no fewer than seven television cameras, a handful of print reporters and other various hangers on.

You can check out full audio of her remarks at this post.

During her Q&A, a television reporter asked why she hadn’t spoken to reporters before Saturday night.

"I actually wanted to go home and regroup,” Perdue explained. “I was in New Bern. I was surprised none of you all came to see me or call me there. I answered my phone. Y'all maybe aren't as smart as we think we are."

Ha. It’s not exactly like the governor’s unlisted home phone number is in every reporter’s Rolodex. So the Gary Robertson of The Associated Press quipped, "Give us your phone number."

This drew laughs.

But then she gave up the digits, complete with the 252 area code, while cameras and recorders rolled.

I posted full audio of the presser because I figured folks who couldn’t slog over to Greensboro might want to listen to the governor explain herself. (I often post full audio or video of important events.) And at the time, I didn’t think about the fact she had given her phone number and probably assumed it was to some office line.

Cut to this morning, when the governor’s press office called and asked me to clip the number out of the audio.

"I don't know that she intended for everybody to have it," Press Secretary Chris Mackey said on my voice mail.

Really? Then it probably wasn’t a good idea to give it up while standing at a podium with a nest of microphones all wired to a room full of people rolling tape in an on-the-record interview. Generally speaking, it is not a reporter’s job to clean up the messes politicians make for themselves when speaking. That’s doubly true when the politician in question just suggested you might not be as smart as she thought and was being a bit of a smart you-know-what.

That said, I have, in fact, clipped the audio in question to excise the phone number, more out of courtesy than out of any sense of obligation. I’m not sure it is, strictly speaking, the journalistically right thing to do. I’ll let you weigh in on that in the comments.

Gov. Bev Perdue spoke with reporters Saturday for the first time since announcing that she wouldn't run for re-election earlier this week. As she said in her written statement (link), Perdue insisted that she stepped out of the campaign to focus on lobbying for more education funding.

“If I were perhaps a typical politician…I would have said ‘to hell with this’ and gone right along and run for governor and let it become a political wedge and let the Republicans say … ‘She’s doing this to win votes and garner favors.’” Perdue said.

Click below to listen to her full remarks.

U.S. Rep. Howard Coble says he will seek election to a 15th term in Congress. Our early story, compiled from his news release, is here (link).

Coble, 80, will be running in a district that is much changed from the one he has represented for the past 10 years. Stokes and Surry counties now make up the western fringe of the Greensboro-based district and it includes parts of Orange and Durham counties as well. The middle of the district based in Guilford, Alamance and Rockingham counties will be familiar territory for Coble.

"One of my physicians described me as a 'young 80,'" Coble joked with reporters on Friday. "Folks, I'm not sure there is such an animal."

Coble was recently hospitalized and many thought he would not run because of health problems. However, Coble said today that doctors had cleared him to work.

Click below for video of Coble's announcement.

North Carolina leaders regularly trot out surveys that show the state is "business friendly." (See Site Selection Magazine and Forbes.)

Chances are the governor's office won't be sending out a press release the results of a study released today by the Tax Foundation.

North Carolina has the 44th most favorable tax climate in the country, according to the foundation. The state fairs particularly poorly on sales tax and individual income tax rankings.

The Tax Foundation was founded in 1937 and bills itself as a think tank that educates "taxpayers about sound tax policy and the size of the tax burden borne by Americans at all levels of government." It shares some funding sources with the likes of ALEC, but is generally viewed a providing reasonable analysis.

It's worth noting: a rewrite of North Carolina's tax code has been on the General Assembly's agenda for a long, long time. The Revenue Laws Study Committee and House and Senate Finance Committees have identified (over and over again) a set of steps the state could take to minimize swings in revenue collections that would also be more fair to all taxpayers. Virtually everyone involved agrees that the architecture put in place during the 1920s no longer addresses the needs of the state. However, partisan mistrust, powerful interests who like their current tax treatment and a political hothouse environment has pretty much killed any tax reform effort before it got rolling.

Reps. Alma Adams, Pricey Harrison* and Maggie Jeffus, all Greensboro Democrats, were among the 33 state lawmakers to score 100 percent on Environment North Carolina's (link) legislative scorecard.

Like other scorecards, Environment North Carolina's rates legislators based on the votes they cast on a key set of bills.

More broadly, the legislature would be described as hostile to environmental causes based on the ENC scores. Consider:

• 24 senators and 55 house members got a 0 percent, meaning they did not cast any votes deemed "pro-environment."
• In a legislature where both the House and Senate are controlled by Republicans, only one GOP House member (Chuck McGrady) and in the Senate only two Republicans (Neal Hunt and Richard Stevens) scored as high as 30 percent.

Here's the partisan disclaimer: Republicans would say that their agenda is not anti-environment but rather is pro-business. Many of the bills ENC identified as being "anti-environment" were designed to lift or ease regulations that the GOP argues hamper businesses. The other bills on ENC's list dealt with fracking (link), a type of natural gas extraction that some companies want to pursue in North Carolina. ENC says fracking presents a threat to clean air and water; proponents say it will create jobs and tax revenue for the state.

I asked the ENC folks whether that represented a failure of the environmental community to communicate their priorities to those who control the mechanisms of power in the legislature.

"There's no denying it, we have a problem. But it's not our problem," said Elizabeth Ouzts, state director for the group. She said the General Assembly has departed from its historically middle-of-the-road positions on environmental issues. "It's a failure of those who failed to vote for common sense environmental issues."

For her part, Harrison said she thought the legislature was out-of-step with public sentiment.

"I think the public is reacting negatively to overreach and extreme governance and I think maybe November will reflect that," she said.

The best non-sequitur quote of the ENC presser: Rep. Grier Martin explained why he had taken up for environmental legislation this way: "I'm in it because it's about the quality of the air my wife and daughter breath." Martin also argued that votes against "green energy" and public transportation bills was a vote against jobs in the state.

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* It's worth noting that Harrison was the only lawmaker to score 100 percent on the N.C. League of Conservation Voters scorecard (link). The two groups used a different set of bills to rate lawmakers. However, the conclusion that Harrison is one of the lawmakers most sympathetic to environmental issues would be consistent with the conventional wisdom on Jones Street.

Note: Video of Berger's news conference is appended to the end of this post.

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Sen. Phil Berger, the Republican president pro tempore of the state Senate, has challenged Gov. Bev Perdue to a debate over sales taxes.

Perdue, a Democrat, has said she'd like to raise the state sales tax by 3/4 of a penny to pay for education programs. Berger has said that raising taxes is the wrong approach.

"More money is not always the answer, not always the right answer, to what's wrong with education," Berger said.

He said Perdue has essentially engaged in a one-sided debate over the past week. A joint appearance, he said, would let voters better compare and contrast the different positions.

No response from the governor yet, although a spokesman said one is coming shortly.

Update: Perdue's office calls the debate proposal "a cheap stunt." From Spokeswoman Chris Mackey:

“Republican leaders in the General Assembly need to stop wasting time with cheap stunts meant to distract attention from the damage they’ve done to North Carolina’s schools. They should stand up and take responsibility for passing a budget that eliminated more than 1,700 teacher positions and nearly 2,300 teacher assistant positions this year. Rather than playing useless political games, they should get to work and find a way to reverse the damage they’ve caused, and to prevent the even deeper cuts that are coming next year. North Carolina’s school children don’t need petty campaign theatrics; they need leaders who will make education a priority.”

Update: I'll have video of Berger's presser in a bit. Right now, House Speaker Thom Tillis is saying "me too" to the debate idea. From a release:

“I would be more than happy to join Sen. Berger in a public debate with Governor Perdue over her proposal to raise the sales tax, which would take more than $800 million out of the pockets of North Carolinians. Governor Perdue believes that government should demand that our citizens pay more for basic necessities instead of demanding more efficiency out of government. Sen. Berger and I believe that there is room to improve the core functions of government without punishing every North Carolinian, and we passed a budget that reflected that belief. The Governor has a very different vision of the role of government than do Sen. Berger and I, and the citizens of this state deserve an opportunity to clearly see the difference. I look forward to the opportunity to put those differences on display.”

 Update: Here are two videos shot during the Berger news conference. During the time between the two, Berger was discussing a separate issue.

The rest of it: I'll have a newspaper story on all this for Wednesday, which will include NC State political science professor Steven Green pointing out that we're going to have a debate over the sales tax issue: it's called the 2012 gubernatorial campaign.

Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity offered to pay for the debate, if one were to come off. From the conservative group's release:

Raleigh, NC – In response to Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger’s challenge to Gov. Bev Perdue to a public debate over her plan to raise taxes by more than $750 million, Americans for Prosperity today offered to host the debate and pay for the event with private funds.

“This is an important issue that is very important to taxpayers and we agree that the issue needs full debate. Americans for Prosperity is willing to host the debate at a location that both sides agree to utilize. We will offer to shoulder the costs of the event as a public service to the citizens of North Carolina.”

And Rep. Bill Faison, a Democrat who still sounding an awful lot like he wants to challenge Perdue in the primary, sent out an e-mail asking why Republicans didn't take the chance to debate his jobs bill, which would have raised sales taxes as well:

President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Thom Tillis are calling for a debate on tax policy and funding for education. Where have they been for these past five months?

I asked them in writing to put my JOBS Plan on for debate at three of their special sessions, September, November and January. Moreover I asked Speaker Tillis to do this in a second letter, in person in his office at the Legislature, and publically, face to face, on the Flashpoint Television show. I have asked them to stop wasting North Carolinian’s hard earned tax dollars on social issues and bring forward my plan, and that of so many of my colleagues in the House, to put people back to work, support education and put uniforms on State Highway Patrol Troopers using by using a fraction of a penny sales tax. Both Berger and Tillis have stubbornly ignored all calls for meaningful Legislative action to deal with these problems. They have refused to allow public Legislative debate on these vital issues.

Why I even tried to amend the last Adjournment Resolution so these issues could be debated when they bring us back for one more wastefully expensive February Special Session but they voted it down. They cannot effectively govern. They have failed to address the most critical issues affecting us all, while focusing on the radical social issues of a few in their party. They need to quit wasting our time and money with partisan political posturing and get down to the business of the people; jobs, the economy, education and a meaningful energy plan.

If they really want a debate on issues that matter to people, then let’s have it. I call on them to allow the filing of the JOBS Plan supported by 70 percent of the Democratic House Caucus and let’s publically debate the merits of putting over 36,000 people immediately back to work, including teachers, teacher’s aides and others in both the public and private sector. Let’s debate using a fraction of a penny (seven tenths of a cent – seven cents on a ten dollar purchase) to help our friends and neighbors keep their homes, cars and keep their kids in school. And, after all the talking is done, let’s do something positive. Let’s pass the JOBS Plan. Let’s take action to help those around us get back to work by contributing just a very little to do a huge amount of good for lots of folks.

Guilford County Commissioner Billy Yow says he is "looking hard" at a run for Congress in North Carolina's 6th District, a seat currently occupied by Rep. Howard Coble.

Like Coble, Yow is a Republican, and he was part of a group of challengers that tilted at the longtime Congressman in 2010.

Yow said he wouldn't make a final decision until early February, when detailed congressional maps are available. However, he said whether Coble decides to run or not wouldn't be a factor in his decision.

That's something of a reversal for Yow, who said earlier this month that he would not mount another primary challenge.

"If you've been up there for 26 years, that's all the better reason to vote against you," Yow said.

Asked why he was running, Yow lashed out at government inaction on unemployment.

"I am absolutely sick to my stomach watching the government sit up there in Washington and do nothing while there's all this unemployment," Yow said today. "Private enterprise doesn't have a voice in Washington. The small businessman doesn't have a voice in Washington. ... All we've got in Washington is a bunch of lawyers."

For what it's worth, Coble is a lawyer by training.

Yow owns a farm in southern Guilford County and runs a well-drilling business.

He is critical of the government's bailout of the banks, particularly because it is still hard for small businesses to get loans and lines of credit.

"They sold us out and bailed them out," Yow said. "Now the banks won't do nothing to help our small businesses."

Yow said that if he does decide to run, he will file on the first day of the filing period in mid-February.

For his part, Coble has said he is "leaning toward" running but has not made a final decision. He, too, has said he wants to see what the final maps will look like.

Speculation about Coble's future has been high lately due to a recent two-week stay in the hospital for a respiratory illness. But in recent conversations, Coble said he is feeling better.