News-Record.com

Friday's lead editorial.

North Carolina scores only a hair's breadth above a C in the latest national report card on government management.

At least it isn't New Hampshire, which rated a D-plus. But it isn't Virginia, Utah or Washington, either, which scored the only A's (A-minuses) in the nation.

The less-than-stellar B-minus comes in a Pew Center evaluation of state governments. Based on interviews with North Carolina officials and "opinion leaders," the report cites a number of hopeful developments: an upgrade in computer technology that replaces a quilt-work of incompatible systems; the state's first comprehensive capital plan for infrastructure (despite an alarming inventory of subpar bridges and stalled highway construction); and a new "Program Evaluation Division" that will assess the effectiveness of various state agencies and programs.
The report card also gives the state strong marks for tying the budgeting process to results and performance. Then the gold stars come to a screeching halt.

"As things stand," the report says, "the governor's budget document is the place where the transparency ends." "Some budget information published by the legislature can be difficult even for experts to follow," the report adds, "and public input in legislative hearings is in most cases severely limited."

The study does not even mention perhaps the most irksome feature of the state budgeting process, where lawmakers slip additions into the final budget bill at the 11th hour, devoid of any meaningful debate or discussion.

In fact, when it comes to transparency, the Pew people don't know the half of it.
This week, Gov. Mike Easley still was lamely fending off criticism that his administration systematically has kept information from the press and the public. Recently revealed notes have made evident an edict to state agencies to promptly delete e-mails to and from the governor's office, lest the press and the (gasp) public get access to them. The governor insisted on Tuesday, April Fools' Day, that the notes don't prove an attempt to purge information.

To be fair, this grade isn't based entirely on a curve. The report does reflect tangible improvement.

In 2005 North Carolina received only a C-plus, based largely on the state's technology woes, described in the Pew report as "a passel of IT problems." Those issues can be fixed with the state's new computer system. But how to fix a culture of secrecy and vagueness among some of the human beings who operate those computers?

The last thing the state needs to be, or to seem to be, is reluctant to share the people's business with the people.