N.C. Senator Ellie Kinnaird's Newsletter

September 24, 2009 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Ellie Kinnaird

Greetings from Raleigh.

After leaving a difficult session requiring painful cuts and tax increases to fill in a $4.5 billion budget shortfall, I visited my family in Oregon and California. The papers there were full of their budget crisis, just like ours - except California is the mother of all budget crisis. Oregon has had to cut schools severely along with other programs. Many states share the problems, with one county in Alabama firing two thirds of their staff before the state rescued them. Citizens in some states defeated an attempt to mitigate the problems with tax increases through referendums. According to the Wall Street Journal, states are dealing with a collective $168 billion in shortfalls, accounting for 24 percent of their annual budgets for the current fiscal year, which began July 1. We just received our fiscal outlook from our analysts, and next year will not pick up revenues for many months. Do you remember Bush telling the country to go out and shop to save the economy? Well he was partly right: sales tax collections plummeted. (But then there was this banking, insurance, mortgage problem, too.)

Even in the midst of the budget crisis, we were able to pass some significant legislation that I worked on. We finally passed comprehensive sex education in all our schools. Abstinence before marriage will still be taught, and those who don’t want their children to hear about accurate, full information will be allowed to withdraw from the comprehensive portion of the curriculum. We passed a bullying bill that had been held up because some legislators objected to language about sexual identity ,even though we know these are the children who are most bullied in schools. In fact, the most popular derogatory term that kids use now is "gay" and "faggot." These children have a very high suicide rate. The bill also protects the disabled, long a goal of the disabled community. Finally, we passed the Racial Justice Act that will allow those sentenced to death to investigate whether racial bias affected their death penalty sentence.

We expanded the Children’s Health Insurance program, of great importance when people are losing their jobs and insurance. We gave extra funds to our community colleges for retraining. Our community colleges, which are never funded adequately, are one of the true resources for our people in every walk of life and the state’s economic development.

I serve on six commissions during the interim. We will study changing the age of children in the adult criminal system from 16 to18 in a Youth Accountability Task Force. We know from brain studies that adolescents’ brains are not developed and youth are vulnerable to peer pressure, are impulsive, and have little or no capacity for judgment. This leads to their doing stupid things that some will pay for the rest of their lives. In addition, 40% of children in the Juvenile Justice system have serious mental health problems. The new juvenile model of care trains staff to engage and deal with the problems of juveniles as they arise in an appropriate way rather than just warehousing the kids. We know it works and want to expand it to 16-18 year olds.

Another commission will discover how to reduce the prison population through a study from the Justice Institute.

End of Life Directives could lead to a secure form to make sure the patient and families members’ wishes are followed.

I am also on the regularly meeting Energy Policy Council, the Environmental Review Commission, The Sentencing Services and Policy Commission and the Health Care Oversight Commission.

As always, I appreciate hearing of your concerns and opinions, especially in your areas of expertise.

Paid for by Ellie Kinnaird for Senate • PO Box 668, Carrboro, NC 27510 • 919-929-1607 •