Budget & Tax Center director Alexandra Sirota on the legislature’s remake of the state tax system

NC Newsline

Ever since North Carolina Republicans took control of the state legislature in 2011, they’ve pursued a sustained and aggressive effort to remake the state’s tax and budget systems. Repeatedly, they’ve enacted big cuts to progressive levies like the personal and corporate income taxes that primarily impact the wealthy, while slashing spending on core public structures like public education. So, what’s been the impact of this sea change? What impacts will the new state budget proposals currently under discussion at the General Assembly have? And what will the future hold if legislative leaders stay on the path they’ve charted?

Recently NC Newsline got a chance to pose those questions to an expert who’s been observing and chronicling the changes since they got underway, the executive director of the nonpartisan North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, Alexandra Sirota.

In Part One of our special extended conversation with Sirota, we took a look back at the past dozen or so years of fiscal policy changes that have been implemented by Republican legislators at the North Carolina General Assembly, and the impacts they’ve had on our state tax and budget systems.

In Part Two, our conversation shifted to the details of the latest budget bills under consideration at the Legislative Building as well a new proposed state constitutional amendment that would lower the cap on the state income tax, and according to Sirota, serve only to further undermine the health of an already inadequate tax code.