RALEIGH – Government in North Carolina is too big, too intrusive, and costs too much. Contrary to what some might say, espousing that position does not mean I am “anti-government” or dislike government employees.
Rather, the debate is about what government should do. My view is not that state and local governments are set up to do the right things but just spend too much money and employ too many people trying to do it. This is the preferred spin of many politicians, of both parties, who try to be all things to all people and avoid the inevitably tough decisions that come from being fiscal responsible.
No, my view is that governments are trying to do too many things, things for which they have neither a philosophical justification nor a particular competence. Such overreaching leads to several baleful consequences. Yes, governments certainly do waste tax dollars on ineffective or counterproductive programs, and hire public employees whose skills would better be harnessed some other field of endeavor. But another consequence is that governments often do not receive the resources and personnel they need to perform the tasks we should expect of them – tasks such as public safety and the provision of services for which it is costly or impossible to charge users.
An example of the latter case would be North Carolina’s highway system. While I strongly favor building as many new limited-access highways as possible in the form of public-private tollways, it is also true that technology does not yet offer us an effective (and publicly acceptable) means of charging users directly for the use of streets and unlimited-access highways. As a result, we have a government highway system in which users pay a rough approximation of a user fee – motorists in the form of gasoline taxes and consumers in the form of taxes passed along in the prices of the goods and services they purchase.
According to a report in Triangle Business Journal, problems in retention of Department of Transportation engineers have been among the factors delaying the completion of a new phrase of desperately needed highway capacity. The state is essentially acting as a training system for the private sector, where more attractive raises and working conditions attract many public employees away after the first few years.
Unfortunately, this wound appears to be a self-inflicted one. Because of the categorical way we deal with public-employee pay, DOT engineers and other key state positions are not being filled even as workers in less-critical areas receive the same average pay raises. Recent U.S. Census data show that North Carolina continues to employ public employees per capita than most states do, but pay for many government jobs isn’t as competitive. A better policy would be to reduce the state’s fiscal commitments – yes, that means eliminating some programs and positions – and then use some of the savings to improve pay and working conditions to deliver core governmental services more effectively. A related idea is that when feasible, users should be charged more appropriate prices for the non-entitlement services they provide, with some of the proceeds used to improve compensation. The community colleges and UNC system come to mind here.
My focus is not on being “anti-government” but on what might be called “ante-government” – meaning the first principles that justify coercive state action. If these conditions are satisfied, then I am all for rewarding public employees for doing the jobs we want and need them to do.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.