Are we fixing broken government yet?

by Doug Clark, Greensboro News and Record, July 30, 2013.

With all the uproar about the hard right turn implemented by Republicans in our state capital, it's easy to forget why so many North Carolinians voted for Pat McCrory for governor.

He promised to make state government work better.

It needed fixing, as once again demonstrated by our Office of State Auditor (Beth Wood, who happens to be a Democrat).

You might have seen news stories reporting that her audit found little accountability in the state's Job Development Investment Grant Program, which awards millions to companies based on their promises of job creation and investment. Unfortunately, there's been little accountability to make sure the jobs and investment really materialize.

Before you say, well, that's on McCrory -- no, it's not. The period covered by the audit was 2011, when Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue's administration was running the program.

That follows hard on the heels of a devastating audit about the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center, which has exaggerated its own effectiveness over the years and grossly overcompensated its executive director -- who just resigned in the wake of this report.

That, too, all happened on the Democrats' watch.

Before that was the staggering delays and cost overruns associated with installation of a new Medicaid management information system;  lack of accountability and arrogant leadership at the state's Alcohol Law Enforcement agency; clueless operations of a rural van pool program, and plenty more.

So Democrats were running a loose ship, leaving McCrory with lots of cleaning up to do.

Not to mention the task of getting people back to work in a state with the nation's fifth-highest unemployment rate.

I trust that McCrory is working on all these problems. But it's hard to be sure when so much attention is grabbed by education budget cuts, abortion restrictions and a voting overhaul that seems designed to make it harder for people to vote.

True, all those initiatives came from the Republican General Assembly. McCrory has had little luck in changing the subject from the legislative agenda to his agenda.

Now that the legislature has adjourned, he needs to focus on "fixing broken government," as he put it during his campaign.

Unfortunately, thanks to McCrory's fellow Republicans, many North Carolinians are worried that state government won't be broken, but wrecked, by the time they're through.