Education, Social Security and Cary Audit| Hour 2

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendarshow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. So North Carolina, we've been talking a lot about workforce development. Where kids are going to school, what kind of skills they have, how do we prepare them for the future. I mean it's clear North Carolina doesn't really have a shortage of opportunities. We may have a shortage of skilled workers. Joining me now, Kevin Daniels from America First Policy Institute says just that maybe we need to rethink the message we're sending students. Kevin, thanks so much for calling in and joining me today. Oh Dona, thanks thanks for having me. It's always good to talk to you. It's great to talk to you. So you have a new column out, We're going to be having it up there on Carolina Journal. Here shortly. But you argue that we've been measuring success the wrong way for our students. Tell me what you mean. Yeah, So, the the way that our organization looks at it through the America First Policy Institute, it's it's more so about looking at where are the jobs, where's the hot and demand hoigh demand skilled jobs located in North Carolina, and then it's looking at the pathway for it. You know, Traditionally, over the past couple of decades, we've been pushing and it's not just North Carolina Nationally we've been pushing more so a four year degree pathway. But what we're looking at, and similar to a lot of other states, we're looking at, how do we improve credentially, how do we get students more access to short term pell grants so we can look at shorter term you know, higher education opportunity and get these students the credentials they need to enter the workforce and get good paying jobs. Sure, so we're not really talking about necessarily a degree for a good paying job. Why do you think that that's been such a dominant message as opposed to you know, highly skilled tradesman type of educational backgrounds. A lot of that was being pushed from for the federal level. And you know, and and you see that along the lines of the increase in the amount of debt that students were taken on the different you know, organizations and associations that were pushing these different loan programs, and so you started to see debt increase. You started to see these different degrees that come out that didn't even lead to a job. They would just you know, feel good degrees and diplomas. But we need to take it back to what we used to do as a country when we said, let's prepare our students for the jobs of right now, but also how do we look at what jobs are coming in the future so we can get our our workforce ready and prepared for it. Sure, what kind of positions, what kind of career fields do you think deserve our attention right now? If you think of jobs we need now and what we will be needing. Construction, electrical, welding. Sure, also looking in the healthcare industry, you know, your nurses, your CNA's, and then you know, looking at in North Carolina, we are working hard on looking at how do we increase energy production here? So being able to look at the entire workforce and supply chain. When it comes to energy production where you know, we're talking about nuclear, natural gas, technology jobs, data centers that are hopefully coming to North Carolina and with you know, Meta here and Google and several other companies, how do we how do we get our workforce ready for those jobs that are available now? But also you know, knowing what's coming down the pike and what our lawmakers are doing, uh, you know, enhance North Carolina's you know, economy and in job recruitment. So we know what jobs are coming, and we know what jobs are already here, but how do we prepare the workforce you know what about? Yeah, of course, let's talk specifically about rural communities. This is something that North Carolina has really become a have and have not state to some degree. We've got fantastic city centers and with lots of jobs, high uh high paying jobs, very expensive houses, lots of traffic. But then our rural communities, we. Don't want to you know, spoil the great you know, the the the special communities we have. But at the same time, those kids have got to get out, earn a living and enjoy some of the prosperity too. How do we specifically address our rural communities. Within rural communities, community college system. We have a really really strong community college and the you know, the third largest in the nation, and within rural areas, whether we're looking at East of ninety five or out in the mountains, community college system is going to be a really big driver of workforce development, but also when it comes to company recruitment. So when we go back to the nineties and we look at you know, in this case Eastern Carolina, when the thebacco industry was in decline, the commercial fishing industry started to decline, where the amount of commercial fishing leases declined. Following that was the banking industry started to leave the area, and then the population, the people started to leave the area, going to urban areas where there was more opportunity. So within these local municipalities, in rural areas, as you know, the on a federal level, they're looking at the reindustrialization of America and bringing a lot of companies back on shore. It's being able to look at that in rural areas and say and also with our military, it's looking at the community college system, looking at K twelve and some of these programs and initiatives that are going on and preparing people for the jobs that are here but also coming. We also in rural areas because I live in the rural community. We also have to address the housing issue, because even though we're in a rural area, it's still pretty expensive living out here in the rural areas. We also have to look at rural infrastructure, water and sewer. So there's a lot of work to be done in rural in rural areas, but in order to increase job opportunities, we also have to look at cost of living, but also look at other infrastructure issues. So we can bring jobs, good paying jobs back to rural North Carolina, and then we can you know, continue to the support workforce needs with a lot of the good programs that we have. Sure, and that's happening in North Carolina, but are you seeing it happen at the national level and emphasis on workforce development. And say the US Department of Education. Yes, the Department of Education and the Department of Labor. So if we if we step back and look at the it's called America's Talent Strategy, And within America's Talent Strategy, it talks a lot about the collaboration between the US Department of Education, Department of Labor, and Department of Commerce. And what we're seeing with Department of Labor and Education is more collaboration. As the US Department of Ed is decreasing its workforce and it's footprint in DC, some of those departments, mainly workforce related departments, are going into the Department of Labor, and the Department of Labor is recruit is putting out a lot of financial resources into these different states to boost apprenticeship programs. And then also, as I mentioned before, the short term peal, so I think it was over the past year there's been about three hundred and sixty six million dollars in apprenticeship grants that have gone out to the states for skilled labor. And then when you throw the other fifty billion dollar Royal Health Transformation program on top of that, there's a lot of resources in that geared towards workforce. So what we're seeing out of US Department of Education and the Department of Labor is insolidation of workforce programs, streamlining of processes, and more grant money going out to the states to support workforce programs. That is encouraging Thanks so much, Kevin Daniels from America First Policy Institute. I appreciate your time this morning, this afternoon. Thanks, thank you for having me all right. For over a year now you've heard me talking about create a video. Great local company in Minthill that has helped more than two million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS, tapes, reels and slides into lasting keepsakes. Now creative videos helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. Introducing group travel videos perfect for family reunions, church mission trips, group vacations, destination weddings, student trips, senior adult groups, sports teams, I mean, really, any gathering of people that you care about that's traveling together. 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You can email Katie Katie at group travel videos dot com. Group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. I'm Donna King. I'm from Carolina Journal and filling in for Pete Callander this week. And we've been talking a lot about where's your tax money going throughout the week and some of the state budget plans we've been seeing, and certainly workforce development. But here's a new one. A new analysis says that Social Security, the Retirement Trust Fund could run short as soon as twenty thirty two, just six years from now. To talk about what that might mean for you, Brian Balfour from The John Locke Foundation joins us now Brian good afternoon. Hi, good afternoon, Dona. Good to speak with you today. Good to talk to you. So millions of Americans rely on this Social Security. What does this mean? And would social Security just disappear? No, no, I don't suspect it would just disappear. And this is not this news is not surprising to anybody who's been paying attention to the Social Security system. I mean, budget watchers and fiscal policy hawks have been watching this for a long time and warning of this. This is really just kind of the inevitable conclusion of this pyramid scheme of Social Security. It was it was never designed to be a program with the size of people living this long, with you know, drawing benefits for so many years, with a lot fewer people paying in active workers paying in. Unfortunately, Congress has kicked the can down the road for many, many years on this, and it appears they're running out of road at this point. So I think there's going to have to be some significant changes. Probably most likely, I would suspect they would look to do some increased taxes. Of course, a trust produce some more revenue for the system for the program, but also then on the benefits and they turn it into start to turn it into a bit of a means tested on the benefit out of things. So the wealthier senior citizen would they would see their benefits being reduced. Yeah. This report is coming from the Committee for Responsible Federal Government Federal Budget. It's a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that focuses on issues of significant fiscal policy impacts. So it's exactly what you're describing here. This report estimates that beneficiaries would see an automatic twenty two percent reduction and benefits if Congress does not act. So what's your thought about what's driving this shortfall? Do you think it's just poor management, the program's gotten out of control. What are your thoughts? Yeah, So some people think when they pay their Social Security tax during working years that that money is going into like some sort of a dedicated account for them. They're not the case. People actively working today are paying into the system and those those dollars are being immediately being paid out to the benefits of the retirees that are drawing those checks and Social Security And so what happens is now we have I mean, we have the blessing of having people living much longer lives. But that puts a lot of strain on the Social Security system. So people are drawing Social Security checks for sometimes, you know, twenty five, thirty thirty five years. The system was not when the system was set up, it was not set up and designed to be able to accommodate people living those kind of longer lives in retirement. So in the early days of the system, there were a lot of active workers paying into the system, supporting relatively fewer retirees. But that situation has split, so now we have fewer workers paying in relatives to all the retirees. So there's just not enough revenue coming in. So, you know, as I mentioned before, it's a classic pyramid scheme, and you know, the federal ironically, the federal government would throw throws people in prison private citizens for setting up pyramid schemes like this. But the pyramid theme is fine as long as you have enough newcomers coming in and paying into the system. But that has not happened. Just demographically, we have you know, so many more senior citizens drawing checks and benefits. There's just not workers paying into the system to put afloat sure. And they had to have seen this coming, right, I mean, you know, we're talking we're now six years out from from it running short, and the closer we get does the problem get more and more. Difficult to solve. We've talked about different options, raising payroll taxes, increasing retirement ages, some of the things you've mentioned. What are the trade offs with some of these these approaches? Yeah, I mean, like I said mentioned earlier, I mean, it's been decades that people have been warning about this, but Congress just does not had not had the will to act upon this, in part because one of the hard choices to make would be probably most likely to have to look to reduce some benefits. Now, over the years, they have tinkered with it, like they've raised the retirement age a couple of times, I believe, and and tweaked it some tweaked some of the tax rates of people paying in. What this is going to require more than just kind of tweaking around the edge. Is this kind of significant shortfall that is coming up, and you know Congress has been unwilling to address it in a real serious manner. But I think I think time is orting out where they're going to have to do something more dramatic than what the little fixes they've done over the years. Sure, what should listeners watch for as they pay attention to Congress and handling of Social Security? What are you going to be watching for? Yeah, I think it's just you know, there's the two sides of the equation, right, there's the taxes that are paying into the system, and then there's the benefits being paid out to the retirees. I mean, which are they going to address more. Are they going to try to look to increase taxes, especially on higher income earners to try to generate more revenue, or are they going to look to try to maybe increase the retirement aid so more, look to decrease benefits especially for more higher wealth individuals, or some sort of commodation of the both. You know, it will just be really interesting to see how it plays out. Absolutely So one of the other things switching gears just a little bit. We're talking about the state budget a lot over the last two weeks or so, ear Marks. I know you're still elbow deep in the state budget. Tell me what you're seeing or you're seeing some things that are raising some red flags in our state budget as we dig into it, And give me an example of a couple of earmarks that might worry you. Oh, yeah, for sure. So i'd I wrote about this a little bit and looked into it, and I counted they call them quote special appropriations in the budget, but they're really their earmarks and pork. And I counted seven hundred and twenty seven of these line items specifically, and the majority of them going to local governments, local communities, local charities. I mean, it's arranging anything from you know, sending some money to a local boys and girls club, to a local community to build some baseball fields or pickleball courts, to you know, repairs for the local city hall. And then even reconcerning is just some of them were just blank tests local governments with like no purpose identified. Just here, here's whatever, you know, half a million dollars of tax payer dollars to some local city government with no purpose task whatsoever. And that's that's especially concerning to me, and I just I don't feel that state tax payers should be paying for these very local expenditures, these these local earmarks. You know, if these things are going to be funded at all by any government, that should be by the local government itself. Do you see these more often an election year? Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know that that's probably likely. I haven't really detected a real big trend, but this number of the seven and twenty seven number really stands out. I've been I've been watching North Carolina budgets for almost twenty years. This number really stands out. I think there was one other year I remember, not super long ago, where there's maybe even an except nine hundred, But other than these those couple of years, Yeah, seven twenty seven really stands out. That's a big number number, right. Yeah, I mean that there's a The state budget is still pretty flushed with money. I mean, things are going well, revenues are coming here and I head of expectations. Can you need surpluses? So the stark reality is if legislators have that extra money, they're going to find ways to spend it. All Right, It's been one of the biggest local government stories this week in North Carolina. A new state auditors report on the town of Cary is raising some big questions that spending practices oversight accountability for taxpayer dollars. All Right, your friend and mine, Nick Craig, joins us. Now, you've been following this studying that auditor's report, Nick, Good afternoon. Let's talk about the big picture. What are you seeing in this investigation? Good afternoon, Donna, Yeah, studying it definitely, because the report is more than twenty six hundred pages long, as the auditor's office and their team, I can imagine for months have been trying to dig through some of the financial statements. And you mentioned that this is one of the largest local government stories. This is one of the biggest we've seen in quite some time, and I think that's in large part due to some of the outrageous nature of some of the spending in the town. To carry to bring our audience up to date, taxpayers spent thirty seven thousand dollars for a tuition for one of the council members. She would then go on to later reimburse the town. They spent sixty five thousand dollars to ghost write a book for the previous town manager, and Sean Stiegel thirty five hundred dollars, hotel rooms, seventy eighty dollars, glasses of wine, one hundred and fifty two hundred dollars stakes. And how about this, Donna, one hundred and twenty one thousand dollars on a video project a surprise dance performance by the town staff. It doesn't get more absurd than this. That is the weirdest one out of all of this, because I heard a little bit of it yesterday when we were talking with the state auditor, and so I'm glad to have you here to kind of dig into some of these. Yes, what the world they spent more than one hundred thousand dollars on a dance video in the by the town of Kerry. Well. The best part about it, Donna, is they spent eighty six thousand dollar dollars on the video production for the town's retreat, which they took back in twenty twenty four they visited Wilmington. That wasn't enough for them, so they spent an additional thirty five thousand dollars filming a documentary about how the video itself was produced. Was don't we sat it all up? Was this an ad for this selar? That's so strange? Was it an ad like something public to try and recruit business or anything like that. No, And that's the weird thing about it. You could see and obviously one hundred and twenty one thousand dollars is a lot of money. But if you were to say, oh, we're going to spend this on a tourism campaign to drive people to the town of Carrier drive businesses, you may be able to justify a purchase like this. This was an internal video that had never seen the day of light until the State Auditor's Office released it yesterday, and now it's racking up views. I've got more than three quarters of million views on that video on social media in just the last twenty four hours. So great. That video has been flying around our office, so it's been crazy. So one of the things that jumped out to me is the number of cards for the town of Carry that employees had and sixty thousand purchases that investigators found. Well, give me some of those numbers again, because that doesn't sound right, that like eight hundred credit cards for the town. Yeah, well, and that's exactly what it is. Is if you go through the report, you'll see that's described as a procurement card or a peak card, which is what it's called. But if you boil it down, that's exactly the case, don it. It is a town issued credit card. When you break all those numbers down, eight hundred and twenty eight of those cards issued, which accounted for about sixty two percent of the employees within the town of Kerry walking around with a town issued credit card. When you compare that to municipalities that are similar in size to Kerry, which is the ninth largest municipality in the state of North Carolina, other areas like Charlotte, like Raleigh themselves, only about sixteen percent of employees have those town or municipality issued cards. So they were way over on that. More than sixty thousand transactions between January of twenty twenty four and December of twenty twenty five, totally a whopping twenty four point two million dollars. That is crazy. So, Nick, if you don't mind sticking around, because I really want to dig into this a little more. We're talking about a new audit, a new report from North Carolina State Auditor Dave Bollock talking about the town of Carrie meals, travel expenses, alcohol, hotel charges, and lots of missing receipts. Nick Craig is going to stick with us through the break here. We're going to talk more about what how, what question should we be asking our own towns. We're talking about this new report from the North Carolina State Auditor's Office about the Town of Carrie. Some crazy things going on in this report. We're probably going to see a lot more information coming out in the coming weeks. But Nick, one of the big things that everybody's asking, you know, dance videos, big state dinners, wine, you. Know, maybe it might have been bad judgment. Is illegal? Are we seeing some of these questionable expenses termed criminal? Well, and that's kind of the big question. And there's a couple of ongoing investigations. Because they're ongoing, we don't have a lot of public information. There hasn't been any big press conferences. There has not been any, at least that we're aware of right now, any indictments or any sort of legal charges against the former town manager and Sean Steegel. He was on the job for the better part of almost ten years. It wasn't until November of twenty twenty five that some of these questions came to light, not because counsel was looking into what was going on, but because a couple of media outlets started submitting some public records requests. That information then came to light. Then the Democrat led town council said Oh, we might have a problem here, put them on administrative leave in November of the last year, and he would go on to resign it less than a month later. So it remains up in the air whether some of these transactions were legal or not not immediately clear right now. Sure, I imagine we're going to see more of as these might be referred to Wait County District Attorney or the SBI or. Something like that. You know. One of the questions that I'm wondering just personally, is this happening elsewhere that North Carolina has had so much in migration, so much more money flowing through our municipalities and some of our towns like Carry, the temptation's got to be there for things like this to happen, the potential. What do you think is causing this and what should we be looking for when we go into you know, when we look at our town councils and our town managers. Yeah, I think it is exactly that. It's the explosive growth. Carry has seen some of the most explosive growth, not only in the state of North Carolina, one of the top municipalities municipalities in terms of growth anywhere in the United states they have a fun balance of somewhere in the ballpark of one hundred and ten to hundred and twenty million dollars. I mean, this is a major government we're talking about, Donna. Shortly after this report was released last night, the Town of Kerry and the all Democrat led town council held an emergency kind of press conference at their council chambers, and it was pretty disappointing, to be perfectly honest with you. They scapegoaded the former town manager and Sean Stiegel. There was very little responsibility accepted by any of the current council members. Some of them defended some of the things in the reports, including an eight hundred and two dollars per month cardinal car allowance for a vehicle. The town council members get this was not a good pr situation for the Town of Kerry and for voters in that area, many of them asking, well, you know, how do we get our money back? A reporter asked that at the press conference yesterday evening and the answer was, you're not going to and we hope that it doesn't happen again in the future. So I would imagine voters in that area of wake county that have seen their property taxes skyrocket over the last couple of years are outraged with some of the spending in this report, and hopefully outraged with some of their elected officials. We saw a similar situation over the last couple of years in Rocky Mount, a relatively large municipality here in North Carolina as well. The former town manager there spent their fund balance all the way down to twenty million dollars. The town was on the brink of not being able to make its payments. This is, unfortunately something that is way too common in North Carolina, and unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the elected officials, whether that be a county commission or town council or city council. Unfortunately, I hate to say it, don it seems like many of them are asleep at the wheel when some of this stuff is going on. Did I hear you say that the town council members got eight hundred dollars a month for a car allowance? You heard me correct, eight hundred dollars a month, according to the report, and council member Carrissa Johnson, who is on the council, defended that during the press conference yesterday, claiming that she has to drive all around in her own car, and gas is expensive, and that is expensive. I have to pay my own phone bill, so on and so forth, totally. So of the rest of us part of her salary. Well, yeah, but I mean, I guess it's different for the all Democrat town council and Kerry. It was a pretty eye opening moment that mayor got very defensive when questioned. When he was questioned about their salary, which isn't a lot, it's twenty anywhere between twenty seven and thirty thousand dollars a year. One of the other council members said, oh, well, if you get rid of the car allowance, you're gonna have to increase the other stipends because I've got two kids in college. So I guess taxpayers and Kerry can look forward to sending their council members to college and allowing them to drive around town all the time. Sure, sure, so. Of course. Dave Bollock, North Carolina's state auditor, had a press conference about this. I know you tuned into that press conference. Tell me what the thoughts are behind this. Was there anything in particular that sparked this? Was it the public records requests and are we going to see more of these from Auditor Bullock? As I understand the story right now, it was some of these public records requests that started shining just a little bit of light as to what exactly was going on in the town of Kerry. Once those records became public, I presume somebody whoever requested them, or maybe word of mouth that made its way to the State Auditor's office, they stepped in and said, hey, let's roll back the books here and see what's going on. And that investigation started late late or earlier this year when they first started digging into some of these numbers. So what happens next, what are we expecting or what does the state auditor say they're going to do from here? Well, the State Auditor's Office has submitted their report. Fortunately, unlike the Rocky Mount situation, they're not on the brink of bankrupt after all of this spending because they've continued to raise taxes so substantially, Donna, their finances are actually in pretty decent shape. That obviously doesn't help the residents that are struggling to make ends meet and seeing their property taxes go up every year. I would imagine that if anything moves forward through the Way County District Attorney's office in Lauren Freeman or something through the State Bureau of Investigation, that some of the data from the auditor's office report will probably play into a potential indictment or potential criminal charges. Okay, we're running out of time, but I do have one quick comment or a thought for you. These public records requests are filed by media outlets, but anybody could go to their town council and get just this kind of information if there's something going on. Is that right? Yeah? Absolutely, And it's a good opportunity for folks to be mindful that don't just necessarily trust the individuals that are in there making decisions. You, as a citizen, are obligated to see some of those files, and every county, city, in town throughout North Carolina has the ability to request those records. Great, Thank you so much, Nick Craig. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.