Legislators returned briefly to Raleigh this week, accomplished a bit of house-cleaning, but were unable again to do the hard work of settling the budget impasse, leaving us right where we have been for months, with odds growing that no agreement will be reached before the next fiscal year arrives.

We suppose that when lawmakers return to Raleigh for the short session, presumably in April, there would be time to adopt the budget, but neither party has shown a willingness to budge, which is how compromise works. Phil Berger, the Republican who leads the Senate, also indicated this week that he doubts the General Assembly will work to adopt a budget for the next fiscal year. Remember, the budget that lawmakers approved is idled because of Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a two-year plan.

Republicans, no longer equipped with a super majority in both chambers, were unable to find the one or two Democratic votes they needed to override Cooper’s veto in the Senate.

Two of the biggest tickets that remain unpunched are Medicaid expansion, which we continue to favor, and raises for educators, which actually failed in a separate vote. The effort to give raises for teachers, teacher assistants, school custodians and other staff died on a party-line vote, denying teachers in grades kindergarten through 12th an average of a 3.9% hike through June 30, 2021.

Cooper wants a raise about double that, but educators and support personnel continue to do without a raise that we believe most North Carolinians, in the private of public sectors, would be pleased to receive. A pay increase is coming, but whether or not it will be retroactive all the way back to July 1, 2019, remains to be seen. If it isn’t, then educators will have been denied substantial money over the course of this impasse.

Robeson County is one of the biggest losers in the budget impasse, which explains why Sen. Danny Britt, a Republican, and Rep. Charles Graham, a Democrat, left Raleigh unhappy. Graham wants Medicaid expansion, which would benefit about 13,000 Robeson County residents, and Britt wants the Republican plan enacted because of all it offers this county, which is a lot.

When Britt last year was advocating locally for the budget, trying to pressure some Democrats into defecting, including Graham, a selling point was what it delivered to Robeson County in terms of hurricane relief and education. Some of that money has been loosened up with the approval of “mini-budget” items that are needed to effectively keep government operating.

But what remains at risk is $91 million for a College of Health Sciences at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, which Chancellor Robin Cummings, a physician by education and trade, has said could be “transformative” for this county and region.

Cummings is talking not only about UNCP’s ability to educate young people to fill gaps in health care because of a lack of providers, but the effect on our collective health when those providers remain nearby, as is often the case.

The money, we are sure, was dangled to get support for the budget, and critics of the budget called cynical the suggestion that money would not be included in subsequent budgets should the proposed one never be approved. But as we write this today, we have no assurance that it will be, and we certainly don’t know when it might be made available.

UNCP would have already gotten about $7 million of that money, which would have given traction to the establishment of the College of Health Sciences, so critical work is being delayed.

Not local, but with plenty of local interest, is that money for a new Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University is also a casualty of the impasse.

There is a lot of damage being done by this budget impasse, and right now, we see no end in sight. It shouldn’t be this way.