Opinion

Editorial: Let Cooper do the job voters elected him to do

Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017 -- It is past time for the secret, hyper-partisan machinations from legislative leaders to end so the governor can do the job he was elected to do. With the delays, ambushes and subterfuge, Senate leader Phil Berger, House Speaker Tim Moore and those who follow their dictates have produced a perfect storm of incompetence, disrespect and petty spite.

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House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger
CBC Editorial: Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017; Editorial # 8225
The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

Did Senate Leader Phil Berger, House Speaker Tim Moore and others at the North Carolina General Assembly miss the election for governor a while back? While a very select sample of voters in their gerrymandered districts elected them to run the legislature, the voters across North Carolina elected Roy Cooper to be their governor.

That may not be a result the legislative leaders preferred, but it is time for them to stop working so hard at preventing the governor from doing his job.

The latest in their secretive plot to thwart the governor’s constitutional leadership has been months-long stonewalling critical gubernatorial appointees, most significantly to the State Utilities Commission, State Board of Education and trustees for the Teacher’s and State Employees’ Retirement System . It is just another chapter in the legislature’s growing collection of case studies in bad management.

Those case studies in malfeasance and mismanagement already include:

  • Draconian budget cuts that hobble the state Justice Department, all without consulting the attorney general or public hearings.
  • Creating chaos in the management of public education with secretly concocted changes to the roles of the state Board of Education and Superintendent of Public Instruction.
  • Weakening Cooper’s ability to run his administration by slashing, without any public discussion, the number of exempt state. workers after allowing a massive increase for former Gov. Pat McCrory.
  • Wreaking havoc on the state’s judicial system by gerrymandering judicial districts, eliminating judicial primary elections and less than a day ago preparing to ram a constitutional amendment through to shrink all judicial terms to two years, all concocted behind closed doors.

For months the nominations from the governor have gathered dust. At the same time, legislative appointees to some of the same boards have sailed through without a peep.

This is serious business. There are important rate-setting cases before the Utilities Commission. The state Board of Education is facing a variety of critical issues concerning the education of our young people. Assuring that the state’s retirement system is properly managed is fundamental to keeping our obligation to those who have served the state.

The governor was right to adopt a stern tone in his letter to legislators this week seeking action. Legislators are “disrespectful.” Their treatment of the appointees is “dilatory” and “unacceptable. … This is not the way to treat these appointees who have committed themselves to public service.”

Berger’s defense was more illustrative of a banana republic’s tin-horn dictator than the leader of a legislature in the greatest democracy on the planet.

"The governor, really, until we got this letter today, had not been pushing for these nominees to any appreciable extent that I'm aware of," Berger told WRAL-TV’s Travis Fain. Did Berger really say that with a straight face?

It is the duty of Berger and the other leaders of the General Assembly to hear from the nominees and vote on their confirmation. It’s mandated by law. “You could look it up,” as Annie Savoy says in the classic film “Bull Durham.”

It is past time for the secret, hyper-partisan machinations from Berger’s junta to end.

With these delays, ambushes and subterfuge, Berger, Moore and those who follow their dictates have produced a perfect storm of incompetence, disrespect and petty spite.

And closer to home, what justification do members of the Wake County legislative delegation – Senators John Alexander and Chad Barefoot along with Representatives Chris Malone, Nelson Dollar and Linda Williams – have for their continued votes to prevent the governor from doing his job?

Listen to the voters. Let the governor do his job.

North Carolinians deserve better.

Election Day 2018 can’t come soon enough.

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