Legislative budget writers on Monday checked the fine print of the two-year state budget, sorting out final details like eliminating funding for a short-lived public schools CEO.

The double-checking meant most legislators were unlikely to receive their own review copies of the nearly 300-page document until hours before the first of two days of vote on Tuesday.

House and Senate Democrats completed a tentative budget agreement for the next two years late Friday. After talks with Gov. Beverly Perdue’s staff over the weekend, negotiators combed through the spending plan again to make sure the language matched the agreed details.

“We’re trying to get something within the available resources that we can all live with,” said Sen. Tony Rand, D-Cumberland. Perdue, who last month forced legislators to redo an earlier deal after expressing her disfavor, said lawmakers are “moving toward consensus on my budget priorities and a budget agreement is within sight.” Perdue must sign the budget into law. She has not threatened a veto.

Lawmakers have proposed spending about $19 billion for the fiscal year that started July 1, not including more than $1 billion in federal stimulus money that would help ease the state’s worst fiscal crisis in a generation. Lawmakers also proposed $990 million in additional taxes in the current year and $1.3 billion next year.

Deeper spending cuts were staved off by the tax increases, federal stimulus funds, and a decision to grant local public school superintendents flexibility to move money from textbook purchases or other uses to teacher salaries promised to stave off , legislators said.

“I can’t tell you how many teachers would have been cut if we had not put money back in,” said Sen. Linda Garrou, D-Forsyth, one of the Senate’s top negotiators. Republicans contend the spending cuts were more managable than Democrats characterized and higher taxes aren’t necessary because government has operated without them for the past month.

A late wrinkle discussed Monday was that public universities planned to make scholarships to needy students that were $12 million more than the General Assembly planned to spend. Negotiators said the extra money would have to come from shaving the margin for error on the $19 billion budget to just about $10 million, said Rep. Mickey Michaux, D-Durham, a top House negotiator.

Legislators also decided Monday to eliminate $200,000 in salary for the position of state public schools chief executive officer. Perdue filled the post this spring with former Cumberland County schools superintendent Bill Harrison. Harrison decided last month he will retire from his $265,000-a-year job after a Wake County judge ruled in a lawsuit
filed by state Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson.

The judge ruled the state board of education violated the state constitution by creating an overarching public education executive and giving Harrison that job, rather than leaving day-to-day operations to Atkinson, who was elected to her post. The proposed budget would raise the sales tax rate by a penny so that most consumers would pay 7.75 percent through mid-2011. A new income tax surcharge would apply to profitable corporations and individuals whose taxable income topped $60,000. Cigarette and alcohol excise taxes would go up, though some House Democrats still hoped to block that condition.

In education, the proposed budget would drop earlier plans to cut teaching positions in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, but direct superintendents to increase class size in higher grades or find other savings. The deal also would close seven small or aging prisons, and close the Samarkand Youth Development Center for female delinquents in Moore County.

North Carolina, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are the only remaining states without a budget more than a month after the fiscal year started July 1.

RALEIGH, N.C. – North Carolina lawmakers agreed on a third stopgap spending measure to keep state government operating, this time imposing no deadline on themselves to strike a final budget deal.

The General Assembly on Thursday agreed to again direct Gov. Beverly Perdue and state agencies to spend no more than 84 percent of what was approved in last year’s $21 billion budget.

Legislators put no expiration date on the governor’s spending responsibility. That means Perdue could be forced to impose any spending cuts required to stay within a budget of nearly $19 billion.

Lawmakers thought they had a deal on a new two-year budget last week until Perdue said nearly $1 billion in new fees and taxes was too small to prevent education cuts.

North Carolina lawmakers have rolled out another temporary spending plan because they won’t complete a final budget deal before the current stopgap measure expires Wednesday night.

The state Senate approved overwhelmingly a second so-called “continuing resolution” Monday night and sent it to the House. It directs Gov. Beverly Perdue and state agencies on where they can spend while lawmakers negotiate a permanent two-year budget and how much.

Sen. Linda Garrou of Forsyth County said senators had little choice but to offer the temporary plan because legislators don’t have a deal yet on how to raise an extra $1 billion.

The Senate’s temporary plan has no expiration date. The House may change the bill to set another deadline.State lawmakers introduced yet another stop gap measure at the General Assembly Monday evening to keep government operating as they complete a budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year.

On Friday lawmakers agreed to a spending plan of more than $18 billion dollars. The hold-up is over how to generate $990 million in taxes.

Monday, budget writers debated which cuts to restore. Health and human services received an additional $80 million, and lawmakers debated how to divvy up the money among programs such as community services, personal care and mental health.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The number of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) representatives in the national legislatures of 18 countries around the world has tripled since 1998.

That finding is among those in research by political scientist Andrew Reynolds, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His paper, “The Presence and Impact of Openly Gay and Lesbian Politicians in the Parliaments of the World,” finds that although these representatives are in the minority in the legislatures in which they serve, their presence correlates with passage of more gay-friendly laws.

Reynolds, who teaches in the College of Arts and Sciences, said that openly gay representatives must build coalitions with heterosexual colleagues to succeed in passing gay-friendly laws in such areas as same-sex marriage and partnership, adoption rights and hate-crime law.

“Gay members of parliaments have never been numerous enough to act as a voting block with leverage, but they can be legislative entrepreneurs who help set agendas and educate their colleagues on related issues,” said Reynolds, associate professor of political science and chair of the international and area studies curriculum. Familiarity appears to breed tolerance.

“When the gay person becomes a person with a name, human talents and foibles, aging parents and young children, sport team obsessions and opinions about the latest TV show, it becomes more difficult for their parliamentary colleagues to overtly discriminate against or fail to protect them through legislation,” Reynolds said.

The study identified 67 openly gay legislators or members of parliaments (MPs) in the 18 countries at the end of 2008, compared with 22 in 1998.  “The current crop of 67 is undoubtedly the largest collection of openly gay MPs in history,” Reynolds said.

Of the 67, 50 identified themselves as gay men, 14 as lesbians, two as bisexual and one as transgendered. The largest number per legislature was 14 in the British House of Commons; the largest percentage was six percent, in the Netherlands.

Reynolds found that legislatures with the most LGBT members – 60 of the 67 – were in established democracies of Western Europe, North America or Australia and New Zealand. There were two each in Africa and Latin America and one each in the Middle East and Asia.

Reynolds’ cited the American-based Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which looks at local, state and national elected bodies. The fund reported last August that there were about 20 out-of-the-closet gays and lesbians in elected office in the United States in 1987. By 2003, the fund noted, 218 of the roughly 511,000 Americans in elective office were openly LBGT – less than .05 percent. Three served in Congress, 47 in state legislatures and the rest in local government. As of 2008, the total number of LGBT officeholders had tripled to 602, including 79 state legislators and 28 mayors.

Legislatures are not the only offices in which LGBTs have made gains, Reynolds’ paper noted. Last year, there were nine openly gay cabinet ministers in the countries Reynolds studied. And last February, Iceland elected the world’s first openly gay prime minister, Jóhanna Siguróardóttir.

Reynolds assigned numeric values ranging from minus two to two for the presence or absence of gay-friendly policies in each of seven areas:

* legal relationships
* marriage
* civil unions
* adoption rights
* laws against discrimination
* sexual orientation as part of a hate-crime law
* gays not banned from military service

“Each variable represents a distinct legal right or denial of a right,” he said.

Reynolds then used these values to determine combined scores for all seven areas for each of 76 countries – 18 with openly gay legislators and 58 without. He notes now that this year, six nations have begun offering same-sex marriage: Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa and Spain.

Three states of the United States had gay marriage laws in 2008: Massachusetts, California and Connecticut. California’s was struck down by referendum in November 2008, but Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire passed gay marriage legislation in 2009.

Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands and Spain were the highest-scoring in Reynolds’ tallies for the most gay-friendly nations, each with five out of a possible six points. The least tolerant of gays, scoring minus two each, were Egypt, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. The average score was .96 and the standard deviation was 1.73.

The highest-scoring nations tended to have the most LGBT legislators, Reynolds found:
“Having even a few openly gay legislators is linked with a significant improvement in the legal rights of gay people.” Advocacy by LGBT groups also is influential, as is the level of social acceptance of LGBTs in each country.

“The presence of minority members in a legislature aids in breaking down intolerance and in building alliances that cut across pre-existing cleavages within society,” Reynolds said. “Globally the trajectory is clear. More and more openly gay candidates are winning office, and legal equality, across a variety of domains, is gathering momentum.”

RALEIGH, N.C.  – North Carolina legislators stung by the last-minute loss of a Miley Cyrus movie took the first step toward sweetening the state’s tax incentives to attract film and television productions.

The state Senate’s Finance Committee on Wednesday approved legislation to raise the income tax break for production companies from 15 percent to 25 percent. The measure now moves to the full Senate as lawmakers are in late-stage talks on cutting spending and raising taxes to produce a balanced budget for the year beginning in July.

Republican opponents of the expanded tax break said the timing is wrong since teachers will be laid off and other important services cut. Supporters said it will attract new productions and create jobs.

RALEIGH, N.C.  – North Carolina lawmakers are marking the life of the late U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, who was one of the most polarizing political figures in state history.

The General Assembly discusses a resolution honoring Helms on Tuesday. He died last July 4 at the age of 86. Helms’ family members are expected to attend.

Helms’ career included a reputation for helping North Carolinians of all political stripes work their way through the federal bureaucracy.

But political stands which barely changed over three decades in Washington both endeared him to conservatives and angered those who said he manipulated issues of race and sexual orientation.

Late in his career, Helms softened his views on AIDS and worked for more federal funding to fight the disease overseas.

The N&O reports that this weekis the calm after the storm, a time to assess the tempest that started a week ago today when the bell rang at the Legislative Building and started a lightning round of nearly nonstop action.

RALEIGH, N.C.  – North Carolina legislators have agreed to extend a pay cut to themselves and judicial workers that Gov. Beverly Perdue ordered for the rest of state government.

The House agreed Thursday to finalize a bill explaining how Perdue’s executive order to require mandatory furloughs should be carried out.

Perdue’s order said state employees in all three branches of government must take a half-percent pay cut in exchange for 10 hours off. She said it would balance the last two months of the state’s budget.

But the separation of powers meant Perdue couldn’t touch the pay of lawmakers or judicial branch workers. Judges’ pay can’t be cut while they’re in office. All but about 20 of the state’s 400 judges have agreed to take the same pay cut.

RALEIGH, N.C.  – North Carolina coastal homeowners saddled this spring with huge increases in their insurance premiums, deductibles and surcharges are seeking help from state lawmakers.

A state Senate committee on Tuesday considers a bill that would temporarily freeze the increased insurance costs. Residents along the North Carolina coast are facing homeowners insurance premium increases of up to 30 percent.

Also Tuesday, a House judiciary committee will consider a bill that would stop any surpluses collected by the state-backed insurance pool called the Beach Plan from being distributed back to the insurance companies that paid into the fund.

Behind closed doors, legislative leaders are crafting a deal between coastal interests and the insurance industry.