www.dailytarheel.com MB* DTH FILE PHOTO Sen. Howard Lee, D-Orange, said the end of session is just an excuse for the bill's failure. mixed signals to the public in the face of a $2 billion budget deficit. “The public perceives that we are broke and yet we continue to allocate money to all these projects, and that confuses them,” he said. Funding for the cancer center would have come from the state’s share of a tobacco lawsuit settlement. But Sen. Howard Lee, D-Orange, said there were other obstacles to the legislation, not just timing. “I think (the session’s impending end) is just one more excuse by the House to not be able to do anything,” he said. “If this bill had been introduced earlier on, it would have run into simi lar obstacles.” Lee also said he was surprised repre sentatives did not want to enact legisla tion that would provide jobs for citizens across the state. “I don’t understand not wanting to create ... treatment centers across the state,” he said. “Why we’re sitting here letting jobs escape from the state - that is baffling to me.” See BILL, Page 7 DTH/STAFF ment center is clear. Officials have said the current facili ty, the N.C. Clinical Cancer Center, is outdated and too small to accommodate demand. “The current space is inadequate and cannot continue to accept more patients and traffic growth,” he said. “It’s good that the new cancer center has been rec ognized as a need of UNC’s Hospitals systems.” Fitzgerald attributed the rejection to the last-minute addition of the treatment center provision into an economic incentives bill. See CANCER CENTER, Page 7