NC Budget Dance Slowed As GOP Leaders Differ On Bottom Line

At the start of the year, the big question within North Carolina state government was whether Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Republican legislators could agree on a budget after reaching an impasse two years ago. But right now it’s the GOP lawmakers who can’t get out of the starting blocks. House and Senate Republican leaders are still hundreds of millions of dollars apart on how much money they want to spend next year. The bargaining means the first spending proposal has yet to be approved by the Senate. Any final bottom-line spending figure is expected to be well below the $27.3 billion that Cooper proposed in March.