As if "the cash in one's pocket disintegrates" when the "beautiful NC sun" don't shine:
Gov. Pat McCrory said Wednesday he’d like to improve salaries for all of the state’s educators eventually, including veteran teachers, community college instructors and university faculty. But he said that will depend on the state’s future revenue picture.
Immediately, he said, the focus is on raising base pay for early career teachers to $35,000 by 2016 – a plan he announced last month.
“There has been no strategy on education compensation for the last decade,” McCrory added. “It’s just been dealt with year by year, and the last five years with almost no pay raises. So part of our goal is to have a long-term strategy on how we compensate our teachers.”
Still, he cautioned, “We cannot make that commitment until we know the money is available.”
McCrory said the budget forecast isn’t even clear for the upcoming fiscal year and could be affected by higher Medicaid expenses and lower tax collections because of the recent winter storms. ...
UNC President Tom Ross said the university system is producing 8,500 additional degree earners now compared with 2007-08, yet spending 18 percent less to do it. The UNC system has sustained more than $600 million in recurring cuts during that period, he said. Part of the system’s budget request for next year includes money to keep top professors.
This is the second time Gov. McCrory has blamed the cold weather for not wanting to give raises to teachers and professors (here is a link to the first one). I've Google Scholared all sorts of "weather" and "taxes" combinations and can't find anything in the literature that suggests that bad weather affects tax collections in the long run. There is nothing on this in the short run either but there is anecdotal evidence that people don't spend much money when they are locked in the house due to bad weather. What might surprise you is that once people are released from their weather prison they go shopping and tax collections go back up!
It will be interesting to see how long the long term university faculty pay strategy takes to develop. In the interim, faculty are leaving for other jobs.
