It Is Not Just In DC, We Need To Clean House in NC as well

Raleigh - The News and Observer today reported that former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand (D-Cumberland) worked in secret to enact a law resulting in enormous increases in medical care costs for NC prison inmates.

Rand used a technical corrections bill to strip an essential cost cutting provision from last year's budget. According to the report, "Rand kept inmate medical costs high," (2/12/10) , Rand's involvement in the "technical corrections bill" negated a provision in the previously passed budget initiated by the NC Department of Correction that would have limited medical costs for inmates to the same level as the State Health Plan.

DOC spending for inmate medical care has increased over $38 million during the previous decade, according to the N&O.

The effort to inflate medical costs for inmates was carefully hidden kept during debate on HB 836, "An Act to Make Technical, Clarifying, and Other Modifications to the Appropriations Act of 2009." In fact, an explanation of the bill by House Appropriations Committee Chair, Rep. Mickey Michaux, described Section 15A, providing Rand's language, as merely "technical" during House floor debate.

Rep. Michaux should take this up with former Senator Rand and his staff.
"North Carolina taxpayers have every right to be incensed by this irresponsible action of the Democratic leadership in the legislature. The current budget raised our citizens' tax burden by almost $1 billion by claiming the deficit was much wider than the facts indicated.

Now we see further examples of outright waste," said House Republican Leader Paul Stam (R-Wake). "It is past time for our citizens to demand accountability from those who have mismanaged our state's finances for too long."