RALEIGH – Gov. Beverly Perdue is pitching an idea that deserves universal approval: rewriting the organizational chart of North Carolina state government to eliminate some of the dozens of separate agencies, boards, and commissions.
Don’t expect reorganization to erase the state’s budget hole. There’s not that much savings available. It’s still well worth doing, though.
In addition to the fiscal savings, reorganization would improve the operation of state government in other ways. For high-priority state functions such as education, public safety, and fiscal management, consolidating redundant and overlapping agencies would improve performance by making someone clearly accountable for results.
As for low-priority state functions such as regulating occupational licensure, it’s well past time for North Carolina to focus its efforts on a few professions that truly pose with significant health or safety risks or receive significant taxpayer funds, rather than retaining licensing boards for the likes of cosmetologists and auctioneers. Most of those boards exist to protect existing businesses from competition, not to protect consumers from harm.
The governor said last week that she’ll be offering the General Assembly a list of boards and commissions to be eliminated during the 2010 short session, while fashioning a wide-ranging reorganization plan to be presented later in the year.
If I may be so bold, I think Perdue should take a close look at the model for state-agency consolidation that the John Locke Foundation developed several years ago. By studying the operations of other state governments and the history of North Carolina’s organizational chart, my colleagues and I came up with an outline for reform with two key elements:
• Consolidate functions and reduce the number of major administrative departments to 13 from 26. These and other agency reorganizations could save taxpayers as much as $54 million a year.
• Amend the state constitution to eliminate all elected state executives except the governor, lieutenant governor, and state auditor, and to downsize and streamline accountability for appointed state boards.
The first element is a much easier sale than the second. While few people are opposed to agency consolidation in the abstract – the difficulties come when you start getting specific – while a few people are wedded to the notion that North Carolina’s long ballot ensures more democratic accountability via the popular election of many executive- and judicial-branch officials. My view is that the long ballot inevitably yields many elections in which the candidates are scarcely known by voters, thus weakening accountability.
The problem is that some of the most logical consolidations involve both appointive and elective offices. For example, there are five major departments or offices that oversee state finances: the Department of Revenue, State Treasurer, State Controller, State Auditor, and the Office of State Budget, Planning, and Management. Most of these separate units could be merged into a Department of Finance, headed by an appointed secretary.
Another example is business regulation. There are currently six departments or agency categories that attempt to regulate business activities in North Carolina. These should be consolidated (when not eliminated outright) to form a single Department of Commerce devoted to providing consumers with reliable information and protection from fraud.
In JLF’s Agenda briefing book for candidates, the agency consolidation section includes “before and after” organizational charts to illustrate how reorganizing North Carolina government would clarify lines of accountability and ensure a more efficient provision of public services.
Would these changes be easy? Not at all. There’s a reason why our state government has resisted reform for so long. But Perdue and legislative leaders have both a compelling reason and an excellent chance to make some headway on the issue this year.
I hear tell that politicians should never let a crisis go to waste.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.