"If you take state and local taxes together, which is the way you should measure this, as a percent of income in the state, we pay 10 percent," says Dr. Walden, a North Carolina Cooperative Extension specialist. "Ten percent of our income goes to state and local taxes in North Carolina.

"Right now we rank 28th," he adds, "28th highest among the 50 states in that measure of the tax burden. However, that is up a little bit from where we have been in the past. In 1990, we ranked 36th.

"Also in the Southeast we rank second in the relative size of the individual and corporate income taxes, although we are very low on the property tax," Walden says. "So there is some concern there that perhaps our tax burden has moved up a little bit, particularly in terms of certain taxes. I know the commission is going to look at that.

"However, when we look at where we spend this money, North Carolina ranks very high. In fact, we rank second in the Southeast in terms of expenditures on areas like public safety, education and roads," he concludes. "These are all public expenditures that have been shown to be positively related to economic growth."