Job creation, government innovation and transparency, and education are expected to take center stage in the second year of the administration of Gov. Beverly Perdue. In a meeting Monday afternoon at the Governor’s Mansion with members of the press, Perdue acknowledged that 2009 “has been the hardest year in the state of North Carolina since the Great Depression,” but that she believes the state’s finances are structurally sound.

Perdue said she would “meet with anyone, anywhere to add … jobs,” and defended the use of incentives to lure companies to the state. “I don’t like incentives,” she said, but “we are in competition with 49 other states” for businesses, and North Carolina “is not going to unilaterally disarm.”

Beginning in January, the governor’s Budget Reform and Accountability Commission, created earlier this year to promote efficiency in state government, is expected to recommend a series of reforms. Among them, Perdue said, would be a wider adoption of public-private partnerships.

She hinted at the privatization or partial commercialization of some services, possibly including state Alcoholic Beverage Control authorities and highway construction and operations. She also said the Interstate 485 loop in Charlotte would be completed using private funding in an arrangement known as design-build-finance, and that both tolling and high-occupancy transit (aka HOT lanes) would have parts to play in expanding highway capacity.

Perdue also defended the state’s attempts to take over four hydroelectric dams in central North Carolina that have been operated by Alcoa since the early part of the 20th century. For eight decades, the dams powered an aluminum smelting plant, but it closed in 2002. Several hundred jobs disappeared when the plant shut down.

“North Carolina’s interest is in the waters” of the Yadkin River, Perdue said, and “it is not in the state’s interest for a foreign company [Alcoa] to use the state’s resources. [Alcoa] is buying a river with no benefit to the community or the state.”

When asked whether state Sen. R.C. Soles Jr. should resign his seat in the General Assembly, Perdue said she had not spoken with 40-year veteran of the legislature. Earlier this month, a Columbus County grand jury recommended that the attorney general indict Soles for assault with a deadly weapon resulting from an incident in August when he shot a former legal client in the back at the Tabor City Democrat’s home. Perdue did say that she believed he and every other public official in North Carolina should “step up” and follow high ethical standards for public service.

Perdue also refused to say whether she thought state Department of Transportation board member Lanny Wilson, who testified at the State Board of Election hearing investigating the campaign-finance irregularities of former Gov. Mike Easley, should resign from the DOT board. If he were indicted or refused to cooperate with any investigation, however, Perdue said she would expect him to leave the board. “I have the same litmus test [for ethics] with Lanny that I have with everyone else,” she said.

Rick Henderson is managing editor of Carolina Journal.