RALEIGH (WTVD) -- As the old saying goes - time is money. And perhaps nowhere in the state is that more on display than at the General Assembly. It passed another temporary spending measure Thursday directing how North Carolina government should operate while Republicans leaders remain knotted in a budget stalemate.
It costs about $200,000 every week to keep the legislature running after a budget cycle has run out and THAT happened two months ago.
Factoring in the vacation lawmakers took after extending the budget the first time (of three so far), it has cost taxpayers almost $1.5 million dollars as legislators wrangle with the budget.
"There's all kinds of ramifications for what happens if we don't do our job in time," said Democratic Representative Rick Glazier. "There's lots of times when there may be a need to be here longer than you expect, but the fact that you can't get along and get it done timely is not one of them."
Republicans control the House, Senate, and governorship but they remain apart on issues critical to an agreement.
"The time we've spent hasn't been playing backgammon," said House Speaker Tim Moore. "We're thinking about how these numbers affect real people."
But without budget numbers in place, real people stand to lose.
"It's critical for hiring," said Glazier. "If your school starts in August or September, you do your hires in July and early August. You can't do those if you don't know you budget. If I'm a parent, I'm going to be really pretty upset at this point. My school is very likely on less of an allocation of teachers, less of an allocation of teacher assistants, not sure what their textbook allocation is, school has started -- and then what do you do when you finally get the resources?"
Republican leaders frequently say they'd rather get it right than leave early, but already this has been the second longest legislative session in the past 40 years.
"In the end," said Molly Young, House Speaker Moore's spokesperson, "negotiating for the $26 million dollars in teacher assistant funding and negotiating to keep drivers education continuing on greatly outweighs a $147 per diem per day."
Glazier agrees that it's important to get it right, but weighs out the $1.5 million in extra spending differently. "You take that amount of money and you think about the teachers and teacher assistants that could be hired, the textbooks that could be gotten, the public health money that could vaccinate more folks, the transportation money for a road that could be built. The list goes on."