Moderates needed in state government

Editorial by Burlington Times-News, January 3, 2017.

The people who assess the best places in America to do business have been unanimous about this for years now: North Carolina is near the top among business climates.

In 2016, Forbes and Site Selection magazines rated us as the second-best in the country. Chief Executive put us in third place. Georgia, Texas, Florida and Utah were the only states to top us on the lists.

Unfortunately, those are measures of potential, not performance. In truth, there have been some problems, some nasty roadblocks that have cost us big bucks.

House Bill 2 is one of them. It codifies which rights will be protected in North Carolina, and by omission, which ones won’t. What it means in practice is that it’s OK to deny service or to fire people because of their sexual orientation. And that has driven some important business away, to the tune of more than half a billion dollars last year.

And it’s harder to measure it, but our state political leadership isn’t doing us any favors either. The heavy-handed, warlike tactics of the governor and General Assembly leaders have painted a picture of an unsettled and deeply divided state — not the kind of place where many companies want to do business.

While former Gov. Pat McCrory has claimed great success in restoring our economy — the “Carolina Comeback” — the truth is that outside of Charlotte and the Triangle, there hasn’t been much economic growth since before the Great Recession. In most of the state’s rural counties, unemployment remains high and good jobs are scarce.

Labor costs are low in North Carolina. Unions are almost invisible. Our cities have large, well-educated workforces, and our community college system is one of the best in the nation at job-training. Those factors should be drawing more economic development here, and they will, if our elected leaders help make it happen.

They can do that by governing from the middle, not from the extremes. They can do it by governing like grownups, by settling disputes with compromise and mutual respect. They can do it by using our world-class university system to brainstorm solutions to our problems, and then incorporate those improvements in our laws and bureaucracy.

There are few states with greater economic potential than North Carolina. We hope 2017 is the year we knock down the roadblocks and achieve that greatness.

Fayetteville Observer

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