In a couple of years or so the public will begin to assess the two terms of Gov. Mike Easley. All heads of state — be it presidents, prime ministers, or governors—want history to remember them kindly. That being the case, Easley might want to consider altering the course his administration has been sailing since 2001.

As it now stands, Easley will be known for steaming full speed ahead in two critical areas: raising taxes and hoisting a curtain of government secrecy.

Immediately upon taking office, Easley set about raising taxes. The aftermath of Sept. 11 and a recession, at first, provided convenient excuses for the governor to lighten taxpayers’ pocketbooks. Although they were the ones to suffer the ravages of high unemployment at the time, North Carolina’s taxpayers begrudgingly accepted the additional burden of higher taxes.

Soon, though, President Bush’s tax cuts began to work their way through the economy — even in North Carolina, albeit more slowly than in other states — allaying Easley’s need to again blame the recession. Since then, every budget Easley has signed — four in a row — included huge tax increases. The damage now totals $3.8 billion — a record pace of almost $1 billion a year — more than when he took office.

What do the state’s citizens have to show for it? Easley likes to measure his so-called progress by two standards: economic development and education. If spending is the yardstick — by all accounts, the Easley administration has been enormously successful. Since he took office, the operating budget for the Department of Public Instruction has grown by about $1.33 billion, or about 25.4 percent. The Department of Commerce’s budget has soared by about $42.5 million, or about 60 percent.

The report card? DPI test scores, at best, reflect mixed results. High school graduation rates, meanwhile, remain abysmal. Discounting the governor’s spin, any benefits of economic giveaways are impossible to measure.

Secrecy has been one of the administration’s greatest accomplishments. Every budget approved by Easley came to him at the last minute of the General Assembly session and through the legislature’s back door. All of the administration’s major economic “incentive” packages — totaling more than $900 million — offered to Merck, Dell, and Boeing, were passed via the back door of the legislature and without adequate time for debate.

In 2005, the legislature proposed, and the administration supported, a number of bills further restricting access to public records:

• Strengthening the government’s right to recover its costs should a judge determine that a citizen or the media filed a public records lawsuit in bad faith or for frivolous reasons; the same privilege for the public was approved by the Senate but deleted by the House Judiciary Committee;

• Limiting access to the working records of government lawyers;

• Withholding information on pre-published materials used for university research and studies and financial-donor information. Also, information about government volunteers, private phone numbers of public-agency employees, government e-mail lists, and draft documents of government employees.

Thanks to Easley and his lieutenants, the public’s pocketbook and its right to know what state government is doing have taken a beating in the past five years. The administration has little time left to repair significant damage. It could start by reopening government to its citizens.

Richard Wagner is the editor of Carolina Journal.