Education and infrastructure key issues for House candidates

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Education and infrastructure key issues for House candidates

It’s been 17 years since voters in North Carolina’s four westernmost counties have chosen a new representative for the state House of Representatives, but following the retirement of Roger West, R-Marble, that will change on Election Day.

Voters will decide whether to send an experienced local politician to take West’s place or to trust a political newcomer with the charge of representing Macon, Clay, Graham and Cherokee county’s interests in Raleigh.

“I don’t care if it’s the Democratic Party, the Republican Party or the Pajama Party,” said Randy Hogsed, of Andrews, who is running on the Democratic ticket. “I want to be a representative and I want to represent us.”

As Hogsed sees it, the Republican candidate Kevin Corbin was handpicked by West to carry on the mantle of “party politics.” He bills himself as the candidate who would best listen to the people, find collaborative solutions and bring those ideas to fruition.

“I don’t see anybody out there fighting for us,” Hogsed said. “We’ve got some people working locally, but people in the state House are fighting over who goes to what bathroom. They’re fighting over voter ID. They’re fighting over issues that really don’t concern the day-to-day life of people right here who are struggling to keep their families above water.”

Save for a single term on the Andrews town board, Hogsed has no political experience. Corbin, meanwhile, has decades of involvement with local politics — as well as a career in the insurance business — to his name. After 20 years on the Macon County Board of Education — 16 as chairman — Corbin was appointed to the Macon County Board of Commissioners in 2010. He’s remained there since, serving as chairman since 2012, and is also the current chairman of the Southwestern Commission’s board of directors, which is composed of elected leaders in the seven western counties.

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All 20 of the county commissioners inside House District 120 — their number includes Republicans and Democrats — have endorsed him, a fact Corbin points to as proof that he’s not the party politician Hogsed would paint him.

“It’s clear that I can work across party lines and work with everybody,” he said, adding that he sees his political experience as a plus for his chances of making a difference as state representative.

“When you go to Raleigh, if you haven’t been involved in local government to some degree you’re going in blind,” he said. “I understand the process. I have the contacts.”

Tackling education

Corbin has already talked with Speaker of the House Tim Moore about the legislation that would be his first priority if elected — an adjustment to the per-pupil formula that governs education funding in order to benefit small school systems, like those found in the mountain counties.

The existing per-pupil structure puts small schools at a disadvantage, Corbin said, because in those situations the big-ticket costs of running a school must be divided among fewer students. For example, perhaps the second grade class at Macon County’s K-12 Nantahala School has only 10 kids, compared to the state’s assumption that a class have 24 students. But those 10 kids still need their own teacher and their own classroom, so each of those kids will end up costing more to teach than in the state as a whole.

“I plan to introduce a bill in the first month that I’m there that would bring increased funding to small schools,” Corbin said, adding that Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, has promised to introduce an identical bill into the Senate if he wins his re-election bid.

Hogsed also places education issues high on his list of legislative priorities. Having a solid education system — both K-12 and community college — is vital if economic opportunity is to return to the far western counties, he said.

“We have to put together a quality skilled certification system that is meaningful to business and industry today,” he said. “That’s a certificate that a student can earn in high school and in our community college system that is quality and that businesses, industries can look at and say, ‘This person has the skillset and the knowledge we need to operate our business.”

Between Graham, Clay and Cherokee counties, there’s only one community college, and Hogsed doesn’t believe it’s being funded the way it needs to be if it’s to fulfill its mission.

Hogsed and Corbin agree that, when it comes to education, more and better funding is needed. They’re both on board with the idea that lottery funding needs to be restored to pay for school capital construction, as promised when the program was set up. Teacher pay needs to continue improving. A recent study from WalletHub ranked North Carolina the eighth-worst state for teachers, based on parameters such as salary, student-teacher ratio and per-pupil spending.

According to Corbin, that increased funding could happen rather painlessly if legislators prioritize education as the economy continues to grow.

“We have more people working, more people paying income tax, more people paying sales tax, so that should look good for North Carolina,” Corbin said. “As we realize those increased funds, I think most of it should go to education.”

However, Hogsed said, that could prove a dangerous bet, as shown by the economic collapse of 2008. There’s no guarantee that the economy will continue to increase indefinitely. And in the meantime, he believes, there’s plenty of opportunity to cut existing education expenditures to benefit public schools — the state should get rid of private school vouchers.

“Let’s build our public school system up to such a high quality that nobody wants to go anywhere else,” Hogsed said. “Our public schools need to be the very best schools available. We don’t need to be funding private schools.”

Between the Opportunity Scholarship Program’s 2013 launch and the end of the 2015-16 school year — the program gives low-income students scholarships of up to $4,200 to pay for private school tuition — more than 22,000 applications were received. This summer, the program was expanded to pave the way for nearly 36,000 students per year to receive scholarships by 2028-29, adding up to a total appropriation of $144 million. For 2016-17, the plan is to appropriate $24.8 million for 6,200 scholarships.

From where Hogsed sits, it’s unacceptable for the state government to be shelling out those dollars to private institutions while public schools struggle to make ends meet. But Corbin sees the issue differently.

“Both my kids went to public schools and I’m very much a believer in public schools,” he said. “But when you’re talking about being a legislator you have to look at the bigger picture. In some areas of this state the public schools are not as good. I do think parents should have a choice.”

But at what cost, Hogsed asked? Is it fair to shortchange the public schools to the benefit of private businesses?

Corbin, meanwhile, maintains that it’s not an either-or decision, especially in an increasing economy.

“You can fund different kinds of school systems and help them all to thrive,” he said.

Approaches to taxation

As far as how to fund a government, Corbin and Hogsed have very different ideas.

For his part, Hogsed decries Raleigh’s recent changes to tax policy as detrimental to working families.

“They were going to close tax loopholes, which sounded great until you saw what some of the tax loopholes were,” Hogsed said. “When you sent your students back to school, you didn’t get a tax-free weekend did you, unless you went across the state line.”

High-earners are now paying less in income tax, Hogsed said, while lower earners are paying more. Sales tax has expanded to apply to a wider variety of items, such as car repairs and concert tickets and mobile home purchases.

“I believe in a graduated tax structure, and that’s what they’re trying to eliminate in North Carolina,” Hogsed said.

Corbin, meanwhile, sees a shift from income tax to sales tax as the way to go. Sales tax is “the most fair tax there is,” he said, and he’s in favor of the current legislature’s efforts to drop income tax rates for both individuals and corporations.

“As they drop those rates, it’s good for business. It’s good for consumer spending,” he said.

Even better, sales tax captures revenues from dollars spent by tourists and part-time residents. Plenty of people from Florida, for example, will keep their residency in that state for as long as possible, even if they live much of the year in North Carolina, because Florida charges no income tax but maintains a higher sales tax — if the North Carolina sales tax rate went up as income tax went down, the state would realize a greater share of taxes from that population.

However, Corbin declined to criticize the individual tax policy changes the legislature has made in recent years.

“As legislator I know you’ve got to look at the whole picture, and I have not been in a position to do that,” he said.

Connecting roads, cell towers and broadband

For political leaders in the furthest west reaches of North Carolina, finding new ways to fuel job growth, infrastructure and a healthy economy is always a key concern, and Corbin and Hogsed are no exception.

House District 120 covers some of the most rural areas of North Carolina — business growth can be sluggish. When just one large employer pulls out — as in the case of Stanley Furniture, which left Graham County in 2014 and caused unemployment to skyrocket to nearly 15 percent by the end of the year — the effects can be devastating.

Both candidates agree that improved infrastructure will be key to growing opportunities in the future, and both see Corridor K as a key part of those needed improvements. Under discussion since the 1960s, the still-unbuilt four-lane highway would stretch from Stecoah to Andrews.

“Corridor K is probably the top priority,” Corbin said. “It’s the route that needs to be improved the worst.”

“I’ve driven in 48 states, and there’s roads through all kinds of mountains, over all kinds of woods and rivers,” Hogsed said. “There’s no reason we can’t build a road here that doesn’t comply with every environmental law there is.”

Hogsed continued to say that he’d work to get the transportation priority formula changed to reflect the higher cost of building in the mountain regions. Maybe fewer people use the roads, he said, but the roads are still needed and they cost more to build. Perhaps a multiplier could be introduced into the formula to account for the higher cost per mile in mountainous regions.

In addition, he said, he’d reach across state lines to make things happen.

“Many of our road problems are across the state line, so we have to be able to work with people in Tennessee and Georgia and South Carolina,” he said. “When are we going to build a road from Franklin to Nantahala?”

Roads are important, Corbin said, but in 2016 cell and internet service are equally so. In Macon County, they’ve been working on a project to fill in the gaps where that’s concerned. Corbin believes that he could expand the undertaking to other areas of the state if elected to the legislature. Macon created a color-coded map of the county to show areas of strong, weak and non-existent cell and internet service. Next month, he said, commissioners will be meeting with representatives from the various internet carriers to talk about how they might reach those dead areas.

“Macon County is leading the way in that,” Corbin said. “We’re trying to find answers to how we can expand those because that’s huge for economic development. We have such a wonderful place to live. If we had internet and cell service everywhere, it would be even more desirable to live here.”

That’s a sentiment with which Hogsed agrees.

“A lot of people want to live here, but they look at issues like, ‘I can’t even get internet at my home. How is my business going to operate here?’” Hogsed said. “These are issues we’re going to have to work on to have any hope of recruiting quality jobs.”

Hogsed also favors collaboration to solve such issues. If elected, he said, the first thing he’d do is put together a group that’s he’s dubbed Team 120. The group would be made up of people from all walks of life — largely, but not elusively, composed of people who live in the district — who would meet to come up with pragmatic solutions to issues affecting the district.

“Let’s develop a plan. Let’s find ways to fund it and put it into action and bring it to fruition,” Hogsed said. “Let’s finally get things done in the mountains.”

HB2 and voter ID laws

According to Hogsed, high-profile issues such as HB2 and voter ID laws have been mostly side shows, issues demanding a disproportionate amount of time and money to enact and defend from legal challenges in comparison to their actual import to the most pressing issues facing North Carolinians — the opposite of “getting things done in the mountains.”

Passing HB2, for example, cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars to convene a special legislative session. The result was a law that’s dominated discussion of North Carolina politics ever since.

“My personal feeling is if a business decides they want to provide restrooms for transgendered folks, that’s their business, and if a business does not want to, that’s their business — let customers vote with their feet,” Hogsed said. “Right now we have businesses and athletics that are deciding to vote with their feet because they’re leaving North Carolina because of the way this issue was handled.”

Corbin’s thought on the matter isn’t too far off of that.

“HB2 needs to go away,” he said. “It’s creating a problem where there wasn’t one before.”

Hogsed likens the HB2 issue to the voter ID law. Both pieces of legislation, he said, are solutions in search of a problem, causing unnecessary and unproductive dissention in state government. But while Corbin would be perfectly happy for HB2 to disappear, he believes the voter ID law should stay.

“I’ve always supported the idea of voter ID,” Corbin said. “As far as saying it’s a racial issue, I truly do not think it is because I can’t imagine anybody that couldn’t have access to getting an identification. You have to have identification for anything in life.”

Hogsed, however, sees voter ID as an unfunded mandate that sets out to fix a problem that doesn’t exist — the number of voter fraud cases prosecuted over the past decade has been negligible, he said. To put the cherry on top, he said, a full panel of judges recently determined that the law targeted African Americans “with almost surgical precision.”

“Voter ID fraud was not a problem in North Carolina,” Hogsed said.

But, Corbin said, it’s hard to say for sure. If there’s been no system in place to check whether someone is who they say they are, it stands to reason that actual prosecutions would be few and far between.

“If people are voting fraudulently, then it’s not being caught so we don’t know how much of it there is,” Corbin said. “To me the voter ID makes sense because it at least give you a relative sense you’re not having voter fraud.”

The Possum Drop legacy

There’s a lot to consider when deciding on a candidate, but when it comes to Roger West’s replacement there’s one particular question on everyone’s mind — what about the Possum Drop?

West had earned a reputation as champion of the New Year’s Eve event in Brasstown, which involves the slow lowering of a possum-containing cage at midnight. The tradition had aroused the ire of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which engaged in a legal dance with the legislature that is still playing out in court. West had been at the forefront of the effort to let the Possum Drop continue on.

Corbin and Hogsed both said they’re fans of the event — Hogsed even has the T-shirt — but neither has plans to make the Possum Drop the cornerstone of his legislative history.

“I think Roger has protected it,” Hogsed said. “It’s there, it’s not going away. The Possum Drop to me is a nonissue.”

Kevin Corbin

• Residence: Franklin

• Age: 55

• Professional background: Owns Corbin Insurance Agency, which employs eight people full-time.

• Political experience: Corbin has served as chairman of the Macon County Commissioners since 2012 after being appointed to now-Senator Jim Davis’ empty seat in 2010. He sat on the Macon County Board of Education from 1985-2005, serving as chairman for 16 of those years. He currently chairs the Southwestern Commission Board of Directors, which includes elected officials in the seven westernmost counties.

• Reason to run: “I truly think I can make a difference for far western North Carolina. With my experience as a school board member and as a county commissioner, I think I have what it takes to represent our district.”

Randy Hogsed

• Residence: Andrews

• Age: 53

• Professional background: Real estate broker with experience in construction and deliveries.

• Political experience: Served one term on the Andrews town council.

• Reason to run: “I’m running to represent the working families in Western North Carolina. I want to bring jobs to the mountains. I want to build roads we need. I want to build the educational system we need.”

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