Offering the last budget of his time in office, Gov. Mike Easley said Monday lawmakers should raise the state’s taxes on cigarettes and alcohol to boost teacher salaries to the national average and repair North Carolina’s troubled mental health system.

His $21.5 billion spending plan would call for raising the tax on cigarettes from 35 cents a pack to 55 cents. The tax on a can of beer would go up from 5 cents to 9 cents, and from 22 cents to 25 cents for a bottle of most wines.

A two-term Democrat barred from seeking a third consecutive term in November, Easley said the $160 million raised annually by the new taxes would keep North Carolina’s education system strong and provide for the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

But legislative leaders, including House Speaker Joe Hackney and Senate leader Marc Basnight, expressed skepticism at the idea of proposing tax increases during an election year.

“I’m doubtful we’ll have any revenue increases in this budget,” said Hackney, D-Orange.

Easley unveiled the plan, an adjustment to the second year of the state’s two-year budget passed last year, on the eve of the General Assembly’s return to Raleigh. Along with the new taxes, it calls for phasing out a $172 million annual transfer from the state’s Highway Trust Fund to the general operating fund, holding a sales tax holiday on energy-efficient appliances and boosting education spending by more than $650 million.

The budget also would initiate $700 million in construction for prisons, university buildings and a Capital Area Visitors Center in Raleigh. About $550 million of that total would be paid for with new debt.

The state expects only a $150 million revenue surplus, so Easley balances his budget with the new taxes and nearly $400 million in spending cutbacks, mostly in health programs by lowering Medicaid spending forecasts and freezing reimbursements to health care providers.

“Things are getting a little bit tighter in this economy,” Easley said. The cuts and new revenue are needed, he said, “to accomplish what we need to do in education and to care for the least among us.”

Easley wants to raise the cigarette tax to generate $99 million to help pay for an average teacher raise of 7 percent. Other state employees only would get a raise of 1.5 percent, plus a one-time bonus of $1,000.

The governor pledged in 2005 to raise the average teacher salary above the national average in four years. The average salary for a teacher with 15 years of experience in North Carolina is $46,319, compared with the national average of $49,520.

“We just didn’t see any way to get there without some revenue increase,” Easley said.

In 2005, Easley and the Legislature agreed to raise the cigarette tax from 5 cents to 35 cents by mid-2006. It now ranks 45th among the states and the District of Columbia.

Raising it another 20 cents would still keep it less than half the current national average of $1.14 per pack, Easley said.

Raising the cigarette tax no longer has the same radioactive quality in North Carolina, the nation’s leading tobacco-growing state, that it once did. Health concerns and changes in smoking habits have diminished tobacco’s protected status among lawmakers, but old feelings for the golden leaf remain.