Politics

McGrady wins key budget post

By Bill Moss, Published: January 27, 2015

A new assignment in the state House gives Rep. Chuck McGrady a leadership role on state budget issues.

House Speaker Tim Moore on Tuesday announced that he had appointed McGrady as co-chair of the House Appropriations Committee, a post that helps to guide spending priorities. Noting that the Hendersonville Republican "helped craft the education budget in the last session," Moore added, "His new position will give him the opportunity to influence other parts of the budget, including funding for transportation and environmental protection—areas where he also has expertise."

In his new role, McGrady will have a hand in the entire budget, covering spending on transportation, public safety, human services, environment and education. McGrady will also serve on the Agriculture, Alcoholic Beverage Control, Commerce & Job Development, Education-Universities, Environment, Ethics, Judiciary II and Wildlife Resources committees while serving as vice chair of the Environment and Judiciary II committees.

McGrady's promotion, combined with state Sen. Tom Apodaca's strong position as Senate Rules Committee chair, gives Henderson County a powerful one-two punch in the General Assembly.
McGrady got a clue about his promotion before Christmas when some junior House members came snooping around his office. He learned he was going to be moving into a suite of offices that contains the "big chairs" of the Appropriations Committee — senior leaders who guide the budget and make the final decisions on spending.
McGrady moved from the Transportation Committee his freshman year and then got a substantial promotion in 2012 to chair of the Education Appropriations Subcommittee. When a coal ash spill in the hometown of the Senate's leader drove that issue to the top of the agenda last year, McGrady was suddenly catapulted into a leading role on that, too. The two topics made him a key player on two of the biggest issues of the 2014 session — teacher pay and coal ash cleanup.
"I'm really gratified," he said. "My hope is that it's a reflection of the fact that my leadership and my peers view me as quite competent. That's the positive side of it, and the negative side of it is I still get paid the same amount, and now I've got all these expenses, and I'm fully expecting that my time spent in Raleigh is going to be longer."
State Sen Tom Apodaca Apodaca, meanwhile, remains the most powerful politician from Western North Carolina and one of most powerful in the state capital. Besides his role as the Senate's legislative traffic cop, Apodaca is chair, co-chair or vice chair of five other committees. Those include committees on Insurance, Pensions, and Ways and Means, and appropriations subcommittees that guide spending on education and Justice and Public Safety.
"We're not going to do a lot of things this time," Apodaca said of the 2015 session. "We've done a lot over the past four years, as everybody knows.
"I don't think we're going to have to make a lot of cuts." A revenue shortfall is a small enough to make up, he said. "I think that's something we can live with. We don't have any extra money but we definitely want to do the second-year pay plan, especially for the younger teachers like we promised."