The state is lagging behind in making tax refunds, and North Carolinians are getting angry.
Although the anger is justifiable, it's useless.
The state is out of money, and no amount of yelling, screaming or protesting to Department of Revenue employees is going to produce a refund check any sooner.
State officials say that the refunds will be made. Everyone will get every dollar they are owed. It just may take a while.
A confluence of events -- all of them bad -- has the state in a hole and has slowed refunds. They all start with the recession.
People lost their jobs and reduced their spending to adjust. That meant reduced tax collections that led to budget cuts and tax increases.
And that set off another round of cuts, as governments and schools laid off employees.
Families eager for their refunds have probably filed earlier than usual this year, whereas families unable to make an additional payment -- beyond what they had withheld -- are likely to be holding off until April 15.
Gov. Bev Perdue and legislative leaders can only wait and wonder what the revenue picture will look like in late April when collections are finally tabulated.
Some opportunistic politicians are screaming, but they need to be planning how to get the state out of this mess.
North Carolina cannot continue the fiscal irresponsibility it has followed over the past 15 years.
The state does not have a reliable stream of income upon which it can depend.
Economic downturns in the past decade have repeatedly prompted the General Assembly to raise taxes, installing what have been called "temporary" increases to the sales and income taxes.
What was a fiscally sound state in the post-Depression 20th century now scrambles to balance its budget every year. It can't even get state income-tax refunds paid in a reasonable amount of time.
Legislators who are afraid of change have refused to reform our antiquated state tax system, one based on an economy of manufacturing and farming.
That economy is gone, replaced by one heavily dependent on services.
The result is a revenue system that taxes only portions of the economy and does so at very high rates.
The solution on the revenue side is to refocus the tax laws to cover the economy as it exists today and then to lower rates, because more economic activity will be covered. Such a move will smooth out the peaks and valleys in state revenue collections.
We hope that it will also mean that the state has enough money every March to promptly pay back taxpayers who file for their refunds.
