Leila Pedersen and Suzy Khachaturyan contributed to this post.
State lawmakers should appropriate these dollars immediately to meet the rising hardships facing families, the challenges in containment of the coronavirus and roll-out of the vaccine, and the financial pressures on local governments and public institutions that need to expand services to protect the common good.
North Carolina can afford to put people first and respond robustly to COVID-19 while putting communities on sounder footing for the future. These dollars show that North Carolina need not solely rely on the restrictive and time-limited aid, like what the federal government delivered at the end of December.