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Here's how North Carolina can balance its budget. See if you can tell which suggestions have actually been proposed by elected officials:

 Use inmate labor to pave roads and repair bridges.

Use inmate labor to teach school.

Release inmates who are elderly and need expensive medical care.

Release inmates who promise to move to another state.

In all traffic cases, raise fines but drop other penalties. Habitual speeders can be a good source of revenue.

In criminal cases, give the accused bus tickets to South Carolina and threaten them with prosecution if they ever come back.

Shut down UNC system campuses with four-year graduation rates below 50 percent.

Oops, better make that 30 percent. We don't want to get rid of too many.

At the others, raise the enrollment cap for out-of-state students from 18 percent to 80 percent. The state loses thousands on subsidized tuition for every resident student but makes money on nonresidents by charging their actual cost and then some.

Legalize video poker but take a 20 percent cut for the state.

Legalize lots of other vices on similar terms.

Turn the Battleship North Carolina into a casino.

Send former Gov. Mike Easley a bill for his personal travel on state aircraft and ask Mrs. Easley to give back every dime she was paid by N.C. State.

Put tolls on state highways payable by out-of-state cars.

Leave the cigarette tax at its current level, but drop the legal age for purchasing cigarettes to 14.

Same for lottery tickets. Sell them at high schools. Give kids on free lunch vouchers to buy lottery tickets instead of meals.

Eliminate middle school and have students stay home instead of attending grades 6, 7 and 8. They aren't going to learn much in those years anyway.

Convert empty prisons into "camps" for middle-school-age kids whose parents can't stand them at home anymore and are willing to pay hefty fees. Laid-off guards can hire on as "counselors."

Cut the pay of top university officials who are demoted. Lower job = lower salary: quite a concept.

Lease coastal waters for oil and gas exploration.

Lease coastal waters to the U.S. Navy for war games and inland areas for practice landing strips.

Sell the Outer Banks to Virginia if it will also take the rest of northeastern North Carolina.

Turn over the state park system to the National Park Service.

Do away with the state Department of Administration and see if anyone misses it.

Stop buying housing developments just to build highways through them.

Stop giving incentives to wealthy corporations that may or may not create any jobs in this state.

Slap a tax on pet owners who don't have their dogs or cats neutered. And double it for people who feed feral cats.

Close counties. California, the most populous state, has only 58. Why should North Carolina have 100? They're costly and inefficient. Twenty should be plenty.

Charge South Carolina for water that flows across our state line.

Sell ads on Tar Heel basketball jerseys.

Sell naming rights to state facilities and landmarks. Such as: The Perdue Chicken Governor's Mansion; The North Carolina Pork Council Legislative Building; The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Yadkin River Bridge; The Lorillard Tobacco N.C. Division of Public Health; The NASCAR State Highway Patrol.

Sell or lease North Carolina politicians to lobbyists, openly. It happens anyway; might as well be honest about it and take a share for the state.

Resume issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. They still drive. Why not get some revenue for it?

Cut off legislative expenses if the General Assembly runs over its scheduled adjournment date of next Tuesday.

Tax candidates' campaign contributions. Some of them rake in millions.

If all else fails, declare the state of North Carolina bankrupt and appeal for a federal takeover.

Other states may do the same, and we don't want to be standing in line behind California when it happens.

Someday even the feds are bound to run out of money they can borrow.

Contact Doug Clark at 373-7039 or dgclark@news-record.com, or add your own budget-balancing ideas at his blog, www.news-record.com/blog/offtherecord.