Each week, staff at Carolina Journal looks back at the week in N.C. politics and chooses several interesting, relevant stories you may have missed. Reopen the schools: Five parents are challenging Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ decision to start the school year with full-time remote…
Lawmakers are trying to fix the Department of Transportation’s spending problems that triggered mass layoffs, project delays, and chaos in the transportation industry. The department’s overspending exposed failures in oversight, both in the department itself and in the Council of Internal Auditing. The department’s internal oversight…
The state Department of Transportation defended its overspending and planned reforms to a skeptical Senate Transportation Committee on Wednesday, May 27. Lawmakers asked department officials how, in fiscal year 2018-19, the DOT spent $742 million more than its budget, based on a May audit…
Lawmakers blasted the N.C. Department of Transportation for careless overspending, suggesting the DOT is using the coronavirus to “cover up” irresponsible cash management. The Senate Transportation Committee used a Wednesday, May 20, meeting to lambaste DOT for overspending hundreds of millions of dollars. The agency was…
The Cooper administration may be inviting Medicaid fraud, thanks to an executive order the governor issued Tuesday, May 12. Among other things, the order lets state officials suspend or modify checks that ensure people who apply for Medicaid — the government health insurance program for low-income…
Now that North Carolina knows how much it can borrow, politicians are arguing about how much the state should borrow. But while the legislature and Gov. Roy Cooper wrestle over “credit card limits,” they are ignoring the red flags raised in the…
State Auditor Beth Wood says passage of her agency bill to help clean up local governments’ slipshod financial bookkeeping is a major win for taxpayers across the state. The House passed a Senate-revised version of House Bill 233 115-0 on Tuesday, May 28.
The state’s tax-supported managed care agencies for mental health are a mess. That’s the gist of an audit released Monday, May 6, by State Auditor Beth Wood. It rebuked the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services’ oversight of seven Local Management Entities/Managed Care Organizations. And…
The state Department of Health and Human Services improperly paid more than $100 million in Medicaid claims during fiscal year 2018, State Auditor Beth Wood reported. An audit released Monday, April 8, highlighted a series of errors and weaknesses in DHHS operations. Some…
The state panel that determines how much money North Carolina can prudently borrow over the next 10 years rejected an appeal Wednesday by Gov. Roy Cooper’s budget director to triple the state’s debt ceiling from $2.03 billion to more than $6 billion. The 6-3 vote of…
