Well, we guess we shouldn’t have been surprised, but somehow we always are.
County commissioner Steve Carter talks such a glib line about fiscal responsibility, we often forget that he frequently votes the opposite of what he says.
Carter has been on the board of commissioners for seven budget cycles.
During those seven years, there have been budgets passed four times, including this week, that included increases in the county’s property tax rate (ranging from 1.43 percent above “revenue neutral” in 2023 to 13.5 percent in 2019 with a whopping 8-cent tax hike in one fell swoop).
Carter has voted for every single property tax increase during his years on the board (also including 8.47 percent last year and this year’s 5.33 percent).
Twice there have been votes for tax rate cuts, and he’s 50-50 on those, having voted against one in 2021, but for one in 2022 – not incidentally, the year he was last up for reelection.
[Editorial continues below chart of Carter’s and other commissioners’ votes on budget/tax rates.]
Those votes now total a cumulative increase of more than a 28 percent increase in the county’s property tax rates.
Only in the Covid year of 2020 was there neither a rate cut nor rate increase recommended by the county manager or passed by the board.
We fully expect to hear another Carter lecturette next spring, presuming he intends to run for reelection in 2026. And, if ever he truly votes to “hold the line” again, it will inevitably be next year – hoping, perhaps that voters won’t notice, or remember, his track record as the current commissioner with the most consistently pro-tax and spending record.
Surely the greatest irony in local politics is that Carter’s first non-elective political involvement in Alamance County was with the so-called Tea Party, a national movement that protested tax-and-spend policies during the Obama years.
But Carter has long since forgotten, or betrayed, those principles.
Instead, he’s become the ring-leader for higher taxes and more spending.
But hypocrisy this week wasn’t restricted to any one commissioner; as noted on page 2 (in our unique Sunday online editorial).
The majority of commissioners – Carter, plus sidekicks Pam Thompson and Kelly Allen – ended up betraying all of their conservative rhetoric, alleged principles, and overt promises, instead voting like a bunch of liberal Democrats for higher taxes and more spending.
We can certainly understand the frustration, even exasperation, of many actual conservative Republicans, who deem Carter and some of his colleagues to be little more than RINOs (Republican in Name Only).
It’s just such a shame to see someone who touts himself as having a pedigree as a fiscal conservative, instead, lead the charge for higher taxes and more spending, whether for ABSS or a half-dozen other causes.
But, as we say, we often forget that such erratic voting has actually been more the rule than the exception throughout Carter’s tenure.
Then, in surely the greatest irony of the week, even after he added millions in funding for the school system, partially in the misguided notion of “avoiding” a confrontation with school officials, the school board subsequently voted to pursue a unique, rarely-used (never before used in Alamance County) dispute process to challenge the commissioners’ funding and demanding more money than even Carter provided.
Before this other shoe dropped, Carter even took a “victory lap,” of sorts, strutting before the school board on Tuesday afternoon and enjoying their praise before they went into closed session.
Once they emerged, they voted to challenge his budget as providing insufficient funding.
What a humiliation!
The commissioners would have been better positioned for such a fight if they had supported the no-tax-increase budget proposed by commissioners Ed Priola and chairman John Paisley, Jr.
So all of Carter’s efforts to curry favor with ABSS advocates appear to have been for naught – which is what so often happens when one ditches principles for political expediency.
