Paul Stam

Gov. Beverly Perdue has loudly proclaimed her new initiative to stop Medicaid fraud.  The heart of her claim is the use of new technology by IBM to review claims before they are paid.  This is a great idea.

But her press release is highly misleading.  As Lieutenant Governor from 2003-2008 she was culpable in not supporting this technology.

In 2003 Republican Senator Robert Pittenger introduced SB 985 titled Medicaid Fraud Detection Pilot Funds to finance and use this technology. The bill was referred to the Committee on Appropriations/Base Budget and never heard on the Senate Floor. However, on April 29th 2003, Senator Pittenger offered a floor amendment to the Budget Act which passed 49-0 and further expanded direction relating to fraud software.  Meanwhile, in the House Republican Representative John Blust offered the same bill.  Legislative leadership refused to let it be heard, even though it had passed 49 to 0 in the Senate. Read More...

A recent report by the State Controller provided an accounting for the total spending by North Carolina for the 2008-2009 fiscal years.  In a surprising revelation, the “gap” between the expenditures last year and the anticipated revenues for this year, without tax increases, was only $338 million.  This is in stark contrast to the Democrats’ constant assertion of a budget hole exceeding $4.5 billion for the current fiscal year.  Democrats increased taxes almost $1 billion to cover their exaggerated imaginary shortfall. Read More...

On July 15, 2009 61 House Democrats voted for the “NC Racial Justice Act” SB461. Federal and State law already prohibit racial discrimination in imposing death sentence for first degree murder (and any crime). This bill goes far beyond that by allowing use of statistics in a particular county or district to prove that since some other person was possibly discriminated against, that this murderer may not be subject to the death sentence for first degree murder notwithstanding lack of real evidence of actual discrimination. And since there is not a single county or district in the state with enough numbers for a valid statistical study, the evidence presented will be complete nonsense (based on population proportion rather than offender proportion). Read More...

The Office of the State Auditor released its audit of the State Health Plan this past week. The plan insures 667,000 teachers, state employees and retirees. Among several good recommendations in the Auditor’s report is one that demands immediate implementation. Read More...

Legislative Republicans hosted a news conference today highlighting differences with Legislative Democrats on the State Health Plan bailout, changes to the sex education curriculum and public financing for municipal campaigns. Read More...

A bill providing a referendum on a constitutional amendment to protect private property rights was introduced today in the NC House of Representatives. House Bill 1268 was sponsored by a large majority of the Members of the NC House of Representatives, including all 52 Republicans and 31 Democrats – more then two - thirds of the House. Read More...

The Exclusionary Rule requires that some relevant and material evidence against murderers and drug dealers be suppressed. In 1914 Federal Courts started hiding evidence from juries. In the 1960s they forced this rule on the states. In 1984 the U.S. Supreme Court decided that if the police in good faith obtained evidence that for some technical reason was acquired illegally the jury should still hear and see it. On January 14, 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the “Good Faith Exception” in Herring v. United States. Read More...

Every year Bev Perdue served in the state Senate, and later as Lieutenant Governor, she supported private education vouchers at the preschool level and at the college level in the form of Legislative Tuition Grants. She has never claimed this was bad policy or that this drew money away from public education. Read More...

It has been a long time since a local meals tax has been approved by the General Assembly for a metropolitan area. This year there was a renewed attempt by the City of Durham for such a meals tax to fund “cultural amenities” such as minor league baseball. Read More...

North Carolina is one of only four states which allow property to be involuntary annexed by a city without meaningful consultation with property owners. Tremendous growth in recent decades has caused the issue to become more and more contentious. In many instances cities have involuntarily annexed high-value neighborhoods in order to boost municipal revenues. Research shows tax increases ranging from 60 percent to more than 100 percent for properties brought into municipalities through involuntary annexation. Current law provides citizens with very limited recourse when their land and homes are about to be involuntarily annexed. Homeowners are relegated to speaking before a city or town council made up of members not answerable to them. Read More...

The House and Senate passed very different versions of House Bill 1366 in 2007. The House version of the “School Violence Prevention Act” included language specifying students who identified themselves by “sexual orientation” and naming in state law, for the first time, groups of people based on “gender identity or expression.” The Senate version amended the bill by removing this language, focusing on bullying of any public school student. Read More...

After the General Assembly passed its 2008 Budget, Democratic leaders announced they had discovered a quarter billion dollar deficiency in the State Health Plan for teachers, state employees and retirees. Read More...

NC House Republicans have introduced a Resolution urging Congress to lift the ban on ocean oil and gas exploration. House Republican Leader Paul Stam (R-Wake) said strong support for lifting the ban should have persuaded Democratic House leaders to allow the Resolution to be heard before adjournment. Read More...

The purpose of taxation should be to raise revenue to fund important government services. There are several taxes that are counterproductive to that purpose.  One is the vestigial North Carolina gift tax. North Carolina is one of only three states (Connecticut and Tennessee) with a state gift tax (and Connecticut taxes only very large gifts). Read More...

Last Thursday fifty-nine Democratic House members* voted to allow counties to impose a tripling of Land Transfer taxes from .2% to .6% if approved by the voters in a referendum, despite rejection of the tax in all twenty county elections since last year. Read More...

Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) and House Republican Leader Paul Stam (R-Wake) today discussed proposed legislation for a temporary moratorium on involuntary annexation.  The House Select Committee on Municipal Annexation voted yesterday to move forward with a bill that would impose a statewide temporary moratorium on involuntary annexation through June 30, 2009. Read More...

More than a decade ago, the General Assembly passed landmark legislation setting abstinence until marriage as the expected standard taught to public school students in sex education curriculum throughout North Carolina. Federal lawmakers used North Carolina's legislation as a model for the federal Title V grant program, which provides $50 million annually for abstinence until marriage education in the states. Read More...

Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) and House Republican Leader Paul Stam (R-Wake) today expressed their displeasure with a decision issued by the legal counsel of North Carolina's Community College System requiring admission of illegal aliens to all 58 state-supported campuses. Read More...

To hear audio of Paul Stam's speech against House Bill 1761, click the link below.
HB-1761-Paul-Stam

The press has reported on the private athletic scholarships that were slipped into the conference report on the budget at the request of Senator Dannelly.  The News and Observer has editorialized against it (August 17, 2007). Read More...

State House Republican Leader Rep. Paul Stam (R-Wake) addressed a meeting of the Wake County commission, Tuesday, urging its support for a house bill offering tax credits for parents of children with “special needs.” Read More...

This year, General Assembly appropriations for transportation were virtually the same as last year. The total: not enough to meet needs; in fact, the Department of Transportation estimates that unmet state transportation needs will continue to grow. It is obvious to anyone, from daily commuters to school bus drivers, traveling on North Carolina's roads that we are no longer the "Good Roads State" and are falling further behind in road construction and maintenance.  The problems in transportation are serious and getting worse every day.   In November 2006 the American Society of Civil Engineers gave North Carolina a “D” on the condition of its roads and a “C-” on bridges.  Similar studies give North Carolina poor marks on a wide range of infrastructure measures. Read More...

The new state budget for 2007-2008 (HB 1473) allows counties to impose a tripling of the land transfer tax from .2% to .6% if approved by the voters in an advisory referendum. But there has been little discussion about the merits of this tax and why it is a particularly odd choice. I hope you enjoy my reasons for opposing this tax. Read More...

The House Election Law and Campaign Finance Reform Committee is scheduled to consider Senate Bill 353 “Presidential Electors by District.” If enacted, the General Assembly will be apportioning 13 Electors to the winner of the 2008 presidential tally in their respective Congressional Districts, with the remaining 2 Electors allocated to the statewide winner of that same national contest. Read More...

A two-year fiscal plan, introduced Tuesday by Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) and House Republican Leader Paul Stam (R-Wake), proposed increases in education spending for dropout prevention, vocational education and community colleges. Read More...

Eighteen months after the November 2000 presidential election even the New York Times, after an exhaustive audit, conceded President Bush had defeated Vice President Gore in Florida’s presidential popular vote. Despite winning a plurality of the national popular vote Vice President Gore was ultimately defeated because George W. Bush won a simple majority of the Electoral Vote. Though rare, it was not the first time in history the Electoral count had been won by a presidential candidate who failed to win the most popular votes. Read More...

Just in time to meet “crossover” requirements, the North Carolina House has given final approval to a state constitutional amendment protecting private property. http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2007&BillID=h878" target="_blank">House Bill 878 would place the amendment before the voters statewide November and would protect owners from having private property condemned by state and local governments for anything other than a “public use.” Read More...

Rep. Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) and Linda Johnson (R-Cabarrus) gave notice today they will move to recall the state Marriage Protection Amendment, House Bill 493, from the House Rules Committee, which has not acted upon it since its introduction, to the House Floor for a vote on May 23. Read More...

Late Thursday evening the House passed its Appropriations Bill for the next fiscal year (H.B.1473) on a vote of 68 - 51. All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans voted "no." Republican Leader Paul Stam of Apex summarized many of the reasons for the opposition of the GOP caucus. Read More...

In 2001 Gov. Easley and the General Assembly imposed two “temporary taxes” – a higher sales tax rate and a higher income tax rate. Despite their “temporary” nature Governor Easley and subsequent Assemblies have repeatedly extended them - even last year when there was $2.4 billion above projected revenues available to allocate. Read More...

From the Joint Republican Press Conference on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007. Read More...

New Photos from the week of March 5th - March 9th at the Legislature. Read More...

Comments from Republican Caucus Leader, Paul Stam, from the Joint Republican Press Conference Read More...

On Sunday a unified House Republican Caucus met in Greensboro and elected a new leadership team for the upcoming session of the General Assembly. Read More...