Though specific cuts won't be finalized for months, the message to nonprofits out of the N.C. General Assembly is clear: Prepare to have less money.
Gov. Bev Perdue's budget recommendations include $17.6 million in cuts for nonprofits, according to an analysis by the N.C. Budget & Tax Center. Just how that will affect specific nonprofits is not entirely clear, though, because grant money flows through state education and health departments before it's split among groups.
And the final budget is likely to include larger cuts for nonprofits, because Perdue's plan depends on bringing in more than $800 million by extending most of the temporary sales-tax increase used to prop up the past two budgets. Leaders for the Republican majority in the House and the Senate have promised more cuts to avoid that, and they've made it clear that nonprofits are a target as they scour the governor's budget.
In fact, the phrase "eliminate/reduce funds for nonprofits" appears on every page of GOP marching orders to budget subcommittees, which do most of the detailed budget writing in the legislature. Speaker of the House Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, has said that he wants legislators to tally every state dollar nonprofits get and look for duplication and inefficiency.
Tillis said nonprofits do good work but that their funding has to be weighed against the importance of core state functions, such as paying teacher salaries. Sen. Pete Brunstetter, R-Forsyth, is a key member of the Senate's budget team, and he said nonprofits will get the same review as state departments.
"There's no different philosophy toward nonprofits," Brunstetter said Thursday. "Everybody's going to get a hard look this time."
Brunstetter said nonprofit leaders he has spoken to are hoping to keep their current state funding going into next year. That, he said, is "going to be the exception rather than the rule." Legislators will look at what a nonprofit does and ask whether "it makes sense" and is part of the state's "core mission requirement," Brunstetter said.
Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, said he hopes that doesn't translate into an assault on nonprofit funding. Nesbitt said that between volunteer service, charitable donations and other government funding, nonprofits multiply the impact of state dollars many times over.
"It's one of the best deals the state has," he said.
There is some good news for nonprofits in the governor's budget, though even it hints toward funding cuts. Perdue suggested $25 million in new funding to help local governments and state-funded nonprofits reorganize, consolidate and find other efficiencies. It remains to be seen whether that money survives as legislators rewrite the budget, a process they hope to finish in June.
ctfain@yahoo.com
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