HB 1010: Spending Money Like it's Free | Eastern North Carolina Now

   Publisher's note: This post, by Alex Rector, was originally published in the Bad Bill of the Week section of Civitas's online edition.

    As North Carolina continues to struggle with one of the worst unemployment rates in the country, many families are finding ways to trim their household budget. But how many of you would think that adding an expensive cable channel that nobody watches would count as tightening your budget?

    Representative Ray Rapp does.

    Rapp (D-Haywood), along with Reps. Becky Carney (D-Mecklenburg), Marian McLawhorn (D-Pitt) and Rick Glazier (D-Cumberland), recently introduced House Bill 1010, which would spend $10.5 million of your tax dollars to subsidize UNC-TV - North Carolina's little-watched public television station. And they want to make this a recurring commitment.

    Ironically, Representative Rapp's website claims the state should tighten their budget, just like "every family in North Carolina."[1] Is that what you call "budget-tightening" Rep. Rapp?

    Funding a TV station is nowhere near any reasonable person's idea of a vital function of state government. Such matters are more appropriately left to the private sector, where consumer needs and desires will be served diligently. In this manner, citizens will be made better off by voluntarily choosing to watch TV stations, not having money siphoned from their pockets every year to support and enlarge a growing state bureaucracy.

    Because it tries to give away millions of your tax dollars on a frivolous program like a TV station, HB1010 is the first winner of 2012 "Bad Bill of the Week".