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NC lawmakers gut nonpartisan oversight agency

State legislative leaders are abolishing the legislature's nonpartisan watchdog division after 14 years of oversight under both parties.

Posted Updated
General Assembly Entrance
By
Laura Leslie
, WRAL Capitol Bureau chief
RALEIGH, N.C. — Republican state legislative leaders have decided to abolish the legislature’s own nonpartisan watchdog division.

The Program Evaluation Division was created by legislation in 2007. Since then, it’s served as the legislature’s internal audit division, investigating state programs and agencies at the request of lawmakers on the Joint Program Evaluation Oversight committee.

Its evaluations generally center on accountability, efficiency, resource management and cost. They were highly regarded, thanks to an expert staff of more than a dozen investigators, and often contained policy recommendations that would be adopted as law.

All of its reports and recommendations – hundreds of them over the years – are publicly available on the division’s website.

Sources close to PED say staff were informed Monday morning by Legislative Services Officer Paul Coble that their jobs would end in two weeks. They say they were not given a reason for the unexpected layoffs.

Coble did not respond to a request for comment.

Legislative staff, partisan or nonpartisan, serve at the pleasure of legislative leaders. WRAL News asked House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger why the division was dissolved.

“The General Assembly leadership is evaluating its current oversight functions to improve outcomes and remove duplicative processes," Lauren Horsch, a spokeswoman for Berger, R-Rockingham, said in a statement. "By reinvigorating an existing bipartisan process, the General Assembly will have greater flexibility to examine issues in a more timely and efficient manner."

"The General Assembly is re-envisioning its bipartisan oversight of the executive branch to focus on solutions through a more responsive joint committee process that has the authority to compel timely and comprehensive answers from public agencies, a new direction for fulfilling the legislature’s responsibility to identify and address inefficiencies in state government," Joseph Kyzer, a spokesman for Moore, R-Cleveland, said in a separate statement.

Joint oversight committees also share some of the oversight work PED was tasked with. But those committees and their investigations are partisan by nature, while PED's investigations were done by nonpartisan professionals.

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