State legislature should ditch bill to expand vouchers and instead aid western NC

The Bottom Line from NC Newsline

Rep. Tricia Cotham voices support for legislation to expand the state's controversial school voucher program. (Photo: ncleg.gov feed)

State lawmakers return to Raleigh this week and from the looks of things, it will mark yet another big and wasteful failure for the General Assembly.

That’s because the overriding policy issue in our state right now is the massive economic and environmental disaster in the west that was wrought by Hurricane Helene.

If ever there was a crisis that deserved every available resource and funding stream at our disposal, this is it. Gov. Roy Cooper is taking just such a stance.

Unfortunately, that’s not how Republican legislative leaders see it. At this moment of desperate need, they’re planning to ignore Cooper’s request and instead direct hundreds of millions of dollars in badly needed funds to their deeply flawed and unaccountable school voucher scheme.

The bottom line: at a time in which hundreds of businesses and thousands of workers are in desperate need of emergency aid, state lawmakers plan instead to send funds that could be used for that critical public purpose to millionaires to subsidize their kids’ private school tuition. North Carolinians from across the state should be outraged.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.