The General Assembly’s inability to agree on a budget for the fiscal year that is now 16 days old has local driver’s education programs, well, spinning their wheels.

The state is operating under a stop-gap plan that does not continue to provide money to pay for driver’s education programs to local school districts, and there is no guarantee that whatever budget is agreed on and signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory will do so.

The House budget plan continues funding, the Senate budget plans ends the funding, and McCrory has a different idea, giving individual school districts the option of offering driver’s education depending on the financial status of each. If McCrory’s plan were adopted, it’s almost certain the Public Schools of Robeson County would have to drop the program, so two of the three most likely scenarios would have the program ending here.

The program is already suspended in our school district, as it is in about half of the state’s 113 districts, making the drive a lot longer and difficult for 15-year-olds across North Carolina who are anxious to get their permit and hit the road. Without successfully completing driver’s education, a young person must wait until he or she is 18 to legally drive.

The state last year provided $200 to local school districts for each enrolled ninth-grade student, adding up to about $400,000 for the Public Schools of Robeson County. The director of the program says the per-pupil cost for administering the program is “$300 to $400,” so the shortfall is picked up locally. The local system, trying to keep the program affordable in a poor county, has charged students $25 each — $40 less than the state allows.

Should the state discontinue funding, then the local district would obviously have to subsidize the program in part, and probably pass a much higher cost onto students, many of whom come from poor counties. That might put the program beyond the reach of more than a few.

Our county is not only poor, it’s the largest in the state with many miles of highway. People need to be able to drive, to school, work, to shop, to wherever, and often times parents or grandparents depend on their children to do so. So taking the car away from 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds would have a greater effect here than in richer and more urban counties.

It would also mean more drivers on the road who haven’t gone through driver’s education, raising the question of safety. There has to be an upside to the program in terms of safety, or there would be no need for it.

The state recently enjoyed a $400 million surplus, and we understand that the road to a surplus is to not only by raising additional revenue, but by cutting wasteful spending. By no definition do we believe the state’s funding of local driver education programs to be wasteful.

We hope legislators do the right thing — and not widen the growing chasm between urban and rural counties be ending its funding of a local program whose value is not in question.