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RALEIGH — North Carolina will be a much different place next year if legislators are to be believed.

Classrooms and state prisons will be more crowded. Health care will be harder to come by for the working poor. People with publicly funded Medicaid will find fewer services covered. Public colleges and universities will be more expensive to attend, and professional licenses more expensive to hold.

A proposal to raise some taxes, which few are talking about openly, is something many expect will be needed to take the edge off some of the proposed cuts.

There’s hardly anyone in the state who will be immune from the effects of the state budget crisis.

“You’re looking at a bad, bad situation,” said Rep. Henry “Mickey” Michaux, a Durham Democrat and the House senior budget writer. “I’ve tried to explain that all year. People are going to be hurt.”

Gov. Bev Perdue and the Senate already have written their versions of the budget, but their cuts did not prompt the kind of outcry that led parents and service providers for disabled children to pack a committee room Thursday.

That’s because they both assumed the state would have at least $1 billion more to work with if it left taxes untouched than fiscal analysts now project will be the case. And they counted on using some federal bailout money that has now been spent to balance this year’s budget.

Once the House finishes writing its version of the budget — probably by the end of this week — a final plan will be negotiated by the Senate, House and governor. But for now, it is the House that has been left to illustrate the worse case scenario.

“We’re doing a lot of things we wish we didn’t have to do,” said Rep. Maggie Jeffus, a Greensboro Democrat who works with Michaux to lead the appropriations committee. “We’re in terrible shape.”

Among the moves House budget writers anticipate will help close a $4 billion hole in the budget:

-- Class sizes will increase by an average of two pupils a room in public schools.

-- A pilot program used by Rockingham County schools to attract more math and science teachers will be phased out.

-- Reimbursements will be cut for doctors and others who serve patients under the Medicaid program.

-- Eight prisons, including Guilford Correctional Center, will close.

-- Home-care slots for developmentally disabled children and adults will be frozen at current numbers, meaning some family members will have to continue caring for loved ones without help or look to an institutional settings.
 

“You have very few options when you have a child with developmental disabilities born into your family,” said Julia Leggett, policy coordinator for the ARC of North Carolina.

In addition to freezing current spending, Leggett said the budget will keep the Department of Health and Human Services from fully developing its Community Alternatives Program. Were it allowed to expand, she argued, the state might save money in other programs those families now use.

Similar discussions are taking place over virtually every page of the budget, even in areas that don’t involve services to people. For example, rather than spending state money on expanding the road system to keep up with a growing population, the House budget writers have channeled most state tax money into maintenance.

“The most important thing we can do right now is preserve what we have out there,” said Rep. Nelson Cole, a Reidsville Democrat who oversees transportation spending. The state, he said, needs to expand its roads but the budget crisis won’t allow for the kind of spending that is really needed.

Cuts are hitting some of the smallest areas of the budget as well. The High Point Furniture Market will have its state transportation funding sliced by 25 percent to $900,000 and will see a cut in the money the state grants it to help market itself and stave off competitors such as Las Vegas.

As all these cuts are discussed, so is the worst kept secret in the legislative complex: a “broad-based” tax increase. Perdue has proposed raising beer and wine taxes, and the House budget is replete with fee increases for professional licenses, court costs and the like.

But raising the sales or income tax would be particularly controversial in a year when many voters feel they are barely getting by. Still, consensus seems to be building among key decision makers that some kind of revenue bump may be need to lessen the proposed cuts.

“From day one, I have believed that you have to have some new mix of revenue to solve the problem,” Perdue said. “I believe the voters in North Carolina want cuts, they want massive cuts, but they don’t want to cripple the work of the state and the future of the state.”

Budget writers have said that any tax increase would need to raise between $750 million and $1 billion to provide meaningful relief to the budget. A one penny increase on the state’s sales tax would raise about $850 million, according to fiscal researchers.

Although it would fix many of their biggest problems,  those writing the budgets are still skeptical of a tax bump.

“I don’t have a problem with a tax increase,” Michaux said. “But consider, we’re not out of the economic turmoil yet. Who is going to pay the taxes?”

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com