DOSE OF REALITY

Legislators often refuse to recognize the obvious. Friday, Wake County
Superior Court Judge Abe Jones hit them with a $75 million dose of
constitutional reality. Jones ruled that civil and administrative fines
that the General Assembly and the administration have refused to direct
back to public school systems, as the state Constitution clearly orders,
must go to the schools.

The Constitution could not be clearer. It says that all fines, forfeitures
and penalties "shall belong to and remain in the several counties, and
shall be faithfully appropriated and used exclusively for maintaining free
public schools."

For years, the state's public schools have been arguing that the money
collected from a variety of violators - be they criminals paying criminal
fines, procrastinators paying late book fees at the library or just
students caught parking in the wrong spot at a UNC campus - belongs to the
public schools in the county of the violation.

The state has largely agreed with the criminal fines, although a number of
law enforcement agencies have tried, over the last several decades, to
direct drug fines back to their agencies for use in fighting drug
smuggling. The state has refused, however, to abide by the Constitution
when it comes to civil and administrative fines.

In the mid-1990s, the state fined Weyerhaeuser almost $1 million for
pollution in Craven County. Then the state tried to keep the money,
something that Craven, the home of New Bern, didn't accept. Craven sued and
in 1996 won an N.C. Supreme Court ruling. The high court said the fine was
clearly the property of local schools, and the court ordered the state and
its schools to negotiate a settlement of what payments to the state were
fines, forfeitures and payments according to the Constitution and which
were not.

Under then-Attorney General Mike Easley, the Department of Justice took a
fairly hard line. Clearly, Easley's lawyers were working at the direction
of legislative leaders and Gov. Jim Hunt. With the schools seeing a broad
range of late fees, parking tickets, library fines, etc., as their
property, the negotiations broke down and the school boards went back to court.

As happens so often when the state of North Carolina goes to court, the
state lost on Friday.

Schools will, no doubt, welcome the $75 million in extra annual revenue
that they can expect. It is money well-deserved. The constitutional framers
had a good idea when they decided to take the state's bounty in criminal
and civil misbehavior and direct it toward the education of North
Carolina's children.

Maybe now, with Judge Jones striking his gavel over their heads, the
state's executive and legislative leadership will understand the true
intent of the framers.