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Mitch Lewis:
Let's talk a little bit about active citizenship/accountable government
that was one of the sections in the NC 20/20 report. How do you
encourage citizen participation in government on the local level
as well as the state level?
Speaker Morgan:
Well, you know, we need to do more to bring solid information about
state government to the people. We spend a great deal of money coaxing
people in businesses from out of state to come to North Carolina
and we send them all kinds of matter and information, very little
though. The Progress Board has recently published the first ever
guide to the state budget and I very much appreciate what they've
done, but how come the Legislature and the governor didn't do it?
I mean the closest thing that we have to a plan is really the state
budget that we come in and do, and that's a two year plan by any
state budget and that's a biannual budget and that's about as far
as we look into the future. We could be doing better, you know.
I think the work of the Progress Board has been very helpful and
the report being seen by citizens throughout the state of North
Carolina may help us in the very question you ask.
Mitch Lewis:
Well, let me ask you this. What do you think it means that in the
report it says that the government should be accountable and accessible
to citizens? How do you go about doing that?
Speaker Morgan:
Well, first of all, that is a charge that I think we raise our hands
and take an oath to be accountable to the citizens of North Carolina
and uphold the constitution. I think the very nature of us being
elected officials, we have to try to hold government accountable
to the people the work of the Progress Board and the planning that
has resulted from their work and final publication that people are
just now seeing, a great report. Perhaps that gets us publicly elected
officials looking further into the future than we had. You know
we started out this session of the General Assembly with some very
difficult times, and I think that what we are going to be measured
on is not by how fast we got a budget out of the House the first
time in April in 20 years or how smoothly we met crossover, which
is usually a contentious time. Or how quickly we got a budget out
of the House itself, an entire state budget out of the General Assembly,
but in years into the future we're going to be measured all of us
on whether or not we were able to lead NC out of some very troubled
times. And that means having a vision and looking into the future
longer than we've been accustomed to. Just a one year budget or
a two year budget where we make a budget during the next year that
is referred to as the short session.
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