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The News & Observer of Raleigh recently did a series titled “The Generous Assembly,” which ripped lawmakers for not getting a handle on spending. One of the stories focused on money given to “pet projects,” placing the ACC Hall of Fame in the same category as the infamous teapot museum.

This is part of an age-old push and pull here between being good stewards of taxpayer dollars and helping projects important to folks back home succeed. Those projects are, of course, pork barrel spending to those who don’t live there.

Just to be clear: Scoop is all for spending public money wisely. And we don’t much have an opinion one way or another about whether ACC Hall of Champions, due to open in 2011, is wise spending or not.

But it’s unusual to see someone who represents the area where a pork/economic development project is located take aim at it.

Enter Sen. Phil Berger.

The Eden Republican, who represents much of Guilford County, including parts of Greensboro, picked up the Raleigh paper’s theme and targeted the ACC Museum in a news release last week, characterizing it as “wasteful pork spending.”

Berger is a fiscal conservative and his party’s leader in the Senate, so it’s not unusual for him to take a swing at waste.

“We’re just saying that’s money that was appropriated in past years, hasn’t been spent, is sitting there. It’s something that if we truly have the type of crisis where we’re talking about the need, the absolute need to raise taxes in a recession then maybe we need to look and rethink whether it made sense to appropriate those monies in the past,” Berger said.

So, to be clear, would Berger be in favor or reclaiming that money from Greensboro?

“Before I would advocate laying off teachers, I would advocate reclaiming that money. Yes,” Berger said.

Semantics

No elected official likes to raise fees and taxes.

And that unease about spending taxpayer money had City Council members carefully considering their options about the 2010 water rates last week.

But Water Resources Director Allan Williams gave the council three options: use $2.1 million from a savings account; cut back maintenance projects to keep the rates flat; or increase water rates by 6 percent.

Putting off work on water lines was not a popular option. And at first, only four council members liked the idea of dipping into the city’s reserves. But they also expressed concern about asking residents to pay more in a difficult economic time.

So Councilman Robbie Perkins tried to talk council members through the options.

“OK, who wants to raise water rates 6 percent?” Perkins asked.

“That is not the right question,” Councilwoman T. Dianne Bellamy-Small said, to laughs from the audience.

Councilman Mike Barber offered another variation.

“Who wants to stab the taxpayer in the heart?”

Atwitter about Twitter

Thursday’s forum on local government, put on by Action Greensboro, was a sellout. Well, only they didn’t sell tickets.

But all 250 seats were taken, and some people even stood in the back of the room to listen to Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones; Mike Smith, dean of the UNC School of Government; and John Alexander, professor of leadership at Elon University Law School, speak on issues facing Guilford County .

And there was a larger audience elsewhere.

You’ve probably read about Twitter in these pages before. What’s interesting here is how the quick-hit online messaging system was used to submit questions and provide context during the event in conjunction with an online broadcast of the speakers.

It was a format that had at least one of the speakers feeling right at home. Jones said Mecklenburg commissioners “tweet” during meetings.

Smith leaves Twitter to younger users. “My children are on it,” he said. “I think it’s a generational difference.”

Well, we’re on Twitter. Check us out at twitter.com/NandRPolitics and follow Action Greensboro at twitter.com/synerGgso

Staff writers Mark Binker, Amanda Lehmert and Gerald Witt contributed.