North Carolina

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Republican leaders say the changes will improve the legislature’s ability to root out waste, fraud and abuse. But state Sen. Graig Meyer, D-Orange, is calling it what it really is: Politically appointed staffers, newly empowered and cloaked in secrecy, will pursue the partisan aims of Republican legislative leaders. “It is not too extreme to call this a non-judicial secret police force,” Meyer said in a statement. “The new agency has no known parallel in the U.S. And state law provides for no independent oversight of the committee.”

Gov. Roy Cooper said the legislature is shielding its own actions as it assumes new powers to pry into the executive branch, local governments and government contractors. “Intentionally, they block the right of the public to see legislative records on backroom deals with special interests, give themselves more power to seize state and private company records and unconstitutionally set up a secret police to intimidate and silence executive branch employees,” Cooper said in a statement. “This is all a recipe for legislative corruption and abuse of power.”

The state auditor, the attorney general, the state treasurer, the State Bureau of Investigation and others already provide checks on the waste and abuse of state funding. That this Republican-controlled legislature is interested in strengthening that oversight is a parody.

This is the legislature that has approved millions of dollars in vouchers going to private, mostly religious schools with virtually no accountability. This a legislature that does most of its business behind closed doors.

And this is a legislature that disbanded a unit that did fairly review state spending. The Program Evaluation Division (PED) began work in 2008 with a staff of nonpartisan experts and served the legislature much as the nonpartisan General Accountability Office serves Congress. John Turcotte, who led PED, said the unit saved the state $38 million annually while its annual operating cost was only $1.7 million. Despite that return to taxpayers, Republicans shut down PED in 2021 and replaced it with partisan staff under Gov Ops.