RALEIGH – Gov. Beverly Perdue began her administration – actually, the last week of her pre-administration – with several good decisions.
First, Perdue made three consequential Cabinet picks by honoring experience and competence over political heft. That’s not to say that new Transportation Secretary Gene Conti, Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco, and Health & Human Services Secretary Lanier Cansler are political neophytes. Conti has served in previous Democratic administrations. Cansler has, too, despite several terms in the North Carolina House as a conservative Republican from Asheville. As for Crisco, he’s long been active in state and local Democratic politics in Asheboro, and until last week served on the city council. And Conti and Crisco are Perdue donors.
But none of these key members of the Perdue administration was a major fundraiser for the governor. All three possess significant knowledge and skills in their respective fields. As they begin their tenures, they’ll enjoy public confidence and best wishes. They’ll make some decisions that fiscal conservatives won’t like, I have no doubt, but things could look a lot worse.
Let’s face it, things have been a lot worse.
Then, on Wednesday Gov. Perdue announced that for now she won’t be pushing two policies she advanced during the campaign, free community-college tuition and another minimum-wage hike. Her reasoning was correct in both cases. Economic recessions often increase demand for post-secondary education, as displaced or worried workers seek to upgrade their skills. But increasing demand is rarely viewed as a justification for lowering a price. North Carolina’s tuition rates are already extremely low by national standards, and for disadvantaged students are largely offset by financial aid. Now is certainly not the time to make state taxpayers shoulder an even-larger burden.
Similarly, now is certainly not the time to make it more expensive for retailers and small businesses to hire workers. Left-wing activists may continue to deny the relationship between government-imposed wage floors and unemployment, which is akin to denying the relationship between gravity and the falling rain, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us should ignore basic principles of economic science and hope that, if the intentions are good and the politicians are smart, they can make it rain upward. They can’t.
For the workers affected by minimum-wage laws – not a large segment of the workforce, admittedly but this proviso applies to both the adverse consequences and the supposed benefits – the imposition of wage floors inevitably boosts the income of some workers at the expense of others, who lose their jobs to automation, off-the-books employment, or business failure. Others don’t lose their jobs entirely, but see their higher wages trade off with other forms of compensation. Thank goodness the governor understands. “My priority is to keep people working,” she told the Associated Press. “I’ve got folks that have talked to me who are willing to take a less-than-minimum wage job right now just to get a paycheck.”
Finally, the governor announced during the same interview that she’ll be moving forward with plans to form a budget-efficiency panel structured like the federal commission that works to close low-priority military bases. The panel would submit recommendations to the General Assembly for an up-or-down vote, no amendments allowed. We like the idea, and hope that the Perdue administration takes it one step further.
All in all, inauguration week was a success for Gov. Perdue. I’d add in nice comments about her wardrobe, makeup, and elegant bearing at the various festivities, but I wasn’t in town for them – and besides, the press corps seems oddly to have covered these “essential stories” in some detail.
Now, it’s down to business.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation