Republicans want to bring Musk’s cost-cutting chaos to NC. No thanks

State Auditor Dave Boliek is not the world’s richest man, but he might be about to become North Carolina’s Elon Musk.

State Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, has introduced legislation that would have Boliek oversee in the state the kind of cost-cutting that Musk is ham-handedly carrying out at the federal level.

Senate Bill 474 would create a Division of Accountability, Value and Efficiency (DAVE) within the auditor’s office. The bill is titled the DAVE Act, an echo of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency known as DOGE. The name is also a winking reference to the auditor himself.

That thread of humor only magnifies the callousness of Berger’s proposal. During the 14 years of their control of the General Assembly, Republicans – largely led by Berger – have systematically starved the state government of the resources it needs to serve a growing and changing state.

Now the Senate leader wants Boliek to play Musk in Raleigh, bullying department heads, putting employees in fear of their jobs and cutting services that are vital, but deemed inefficient.

“Taking a comprehensive look at state agency spending and staffing to determine if they’re working effectively and efficiently is the right thing to do,” Berger said in a statement. “If they won’t hold themselves accountable, then the General Assembly will.”

Under the proposed legislation, all state agencies will provide an account to DAVE by Oct. 1 explaining what they do and who they serve. Presumably those that don’t meet some vague efficiency standard will have to lay off staff or face elimination entirely. The auditor would report the results of DAVE’s assessment to the legislature by the end of the year.

The issue facing state government is sufficiency, not efficiency. The state budget has underfunded state departments for years and allowed pay for state employees and public school teachers to lose ground to inflation. Now that low pay is being compounded by higher health insurance costs and shrinking pensions for state retirees. The result is a 20 percent vacancy rate across the state workforce.

The missing workers are taking a toll on services. The Division of Motor Vehicles has long wait times. The state Department of Health and Human Services is so short of staff it can’t promptly respond to complaints of mistreatment in nursing homes. The Department of Agriculture lacks enough firefighters to control large wildfires.

As state departments try to fulfill their missions despite a lack of funding, it’s bewildering that Berger wants to test them for efficiency with a process that will further strain their resources.

But that contradiction doesn’t matter to Republican leaders because encouraging efficiency and rooting out waste isn’t really the objective of the DAVE Act. This is about appealing to the MAGA base by parroting President Trump’s witless DOGE actions that are curtailing services and losing revenue. Social Security operations have been hobbled by the cuts and IRS staff reductions could cost more than $500 billion in uncollected taxes.

The DAVE Act follows on Republicans proposing state versions of Trump’s purge of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) standards in federal hiring and evaluations. But state hiring – when candidates can be found – and promotions are already based on merit, not quotas.

House Democratic leader Robert Reives said the Republican leadership should focus on what North Carolina needs, not on what President Trump is doing. “DEI bills from the General Assembly this session are simply performative political posturing,” he said in a statement. “This legislation shows Republican leaders are taking the lead from Washington instead of seeking policy changes that would actually improve the lives of working North Carolinians.”

Meanwhile, the General Assembly hasn’t held itself accountable. In 2021, Republicans eliminated a nonpartisan legislative unit, the Program Evaluation Division, that saved the state millions of dollars by evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of public services. With that watchdog out of the way, Republican lawmakers have stuffed the state budget with allocations that receive virtually no scrutiny in hearings or floor debate.

The final mark against the proposed DAVE Act is that instead of encouraging efficiency, it’s adding a layer of bureaucracy. The state auditor is already charged with seeking out waste and misuse of state funds. Making all state agencies file reports to justify their existence will make state government – including the operations of the auditor – less efficient.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, nbarnett@newsobserver.com This story was originally published March 26, 2025 at 7:10 AM.

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