Senator Bill Cook - May 22 Legislative Update | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Press Release:

Republicans Pledge Fifth Consecutive Teacher Pay Increase, Hail 19 Percent Average Teacher Raise Since 2014
    Five years ago, Senate Republicans made a promise to dramatically raise teacher pay in North Carolina. We've kept that promise. Moreover, the numbers speak for themselves:

• Teacher pay has increased every year for the past four years. In fact, our state's teacher salaries are among the fastest rising in the country.
• Under Republican leadership, starting teacher pay increased to $35,000 and average teacher pay reached $50,000 for the first time in state history.
• And we have already pledged for the fifth consecutive year that North Carolina teachers will see their pay increase in the state budget.
• That means teachers can expect to see an average pay raise of 6.2 percent next year alone. Under the current 2017-19 state budget, teachers will receive an average $4,412 raise.
• According to the General Assembly's nonpartisan Fiscal Research Division, the average teacher salary for the 2018-19 school year will be roughly $53,600.
• That's an average $8,600 - or 19 percent - pay raise compared to the 2013-14 school year.
• Over a 30-year career, a teacher will earn $233,000 more on the 2018-19 salary schedule than he or she would have earned under the old plan. That amount does not include any benefits, or state and local supplements and bonuses.

    Unfortunately, the North Carolina affiliate of the national teachers' union is trying to follow the playbook of unions making headlines in other states - by wrongly encouraging its members to walk out on their students, close down schools and go on strike during school hours. Despite claims to the contrary, the union affiliate's president has admitted his motives are baldly political, telling reporters: "We don't anticipate much change from this group. So, we're going to change the players in the game."

    If these union leaders were truly advocates for our kids, they would understand that walking out on hundreds of thousands of students at the end of the school year - forcing them to miss critical instructional time and possibly even end-of-year testing - is wrong.

    Needless to say, they should understand and respect that many families simply can't afford to pay for unexpected childcare or to lose a day's work as a result of their walkout. They should be protesting Gov. Cooper for vetoing the generous teacher pay raises included in last year's budget - which teachers received only after we the Republicans in the legislature overrode his veto. Playing politics with our kids is never appropriate, and these protests don't change the fact that North Carolina is clearly headed in the right direction.


    (The salary scale above does not include any benefits, or state and local supplements and bonuses.)
Record-Breaking Tourism in 2017

    North Carolina tourism industry broke records with the amount of visitor spending taken up in 2017. The industry generated record visitor spending in 2017 with a total of $23.9 billion, a 4.2 percent increase from 2016, according to new data released earlier in the month. We have the most beautiful and varied landscapes, with travel destinations lining the way from the mountains to the coast. Visitors spent more than $65 million per day in North Carolina last year and contributed about $5.36 million per day in state and local tax revenues as a result of that spending. Partnerships with destinations, attractions, lodging and dining properties and associations statewide remain key to North Carolina's success. And effective collaboration within the tourism industry contributed to North Carolina maintaining its position as the nation's sixth most-visited state.

North Carolina Wins Site Selection Magazine's Top State Award

    Site Selection magazine has released its annual rankings of Global Best to Invest locations and Top Investment Promotion Agencies, which will appear in the May 2018 issue. For the second year in a row, North Carolina has won the Prosperity Cup, which is awarded based on ten factors of economic performance, including the total number of new and expanded facilities in the state, capital investment and total number of new jobs created.

    Since 2011, legislative Republicans have undertaken major pro-growth reforms to fix North Carolina's business climate and spur economic growth. The pro-growth reforms include an overhaul of the state's regulatory environment and tax reforms such as reducing the corporate income tax rate to 2.5 percent in 2019, adopting single sales factor apportionment, reducing the personal income tax rate from a high of 7.75 percent in 2013 to 5.25 percent in 2019, and increasing the amount of tax free income that North Carolinians can claim. Those changes resulted in North Carolina climbing from 44th worst to 11th best tax climate in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation.

    Our policies have also helped turn budget shortfalls into surpluses and made North Carolina one of the fastest growing economies in the nation since 2011. As a result, the State of North Carolina is projecting a final revenue surplus of $356.7 million. Prior to the Republicans taking control of the legislature in 2011, we inherited a massive $2.5 billion budget deficit from the Democrats.

• Contact: Senator Bill Cook
•     bill.cook@ncleg.net