NC governor: jobless to rise though economy better
GREENSBORO, N.C. - GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — Gov. Beverly Perdue told elected education officials Monday that the state's financial picture is improving but unemployment may keep rising in the short term.
Speaking to an annual meeting of the North Carolina School Boards Association, Perdue said she's more hopeful than when she took office in January, when she had to close a budget shortfall that ultimately reached $3.2 billion.
Perdue and state lawmakers approved a state budget in August that required districts to find $225 million in cuts in grades 4-12. School officials were asked to tap into federal stimulus funds to replace state money.
"We were in tough times then. We have fought our way out," Perdue said at a Greensboro hotel. "We've come through the hard rows ... it will not — unless something wrong happens between now and (next) July — be the bleed-out that we suffered last year."
Perdue said the state's unemployment rate may reach 11.5 percent before going down as people who stopped looking for work return to the job market and are recorded again as unemployed. The jobless rate has been hovering around 11 percent since February.
State revenues for the first four months of the fiscal year ending Oct. 31 are 1.5 percent, or $95 million, lower than projected when the $19 billion budget was drawn up, according to the General Assembly's fiscal research staff.
Perdue told school board officials she was hopeful that North Carolina could receive $400 million in federal stimulus from $4.5 billion in education innnovation grants for which states are competing. The state's school districts would share in half the money.
Perdue also announced the development of a new Internet site that gives users more information about higher education courses they can take online in North Carolina.
The governor also spoke on Monday to Grimsley High School students who were working on college applications. She later visited the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem.
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On the Net:
N.C. online learning portal: http://www.elearningnc.gov
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