Looking for cuts: Do we really need another education bureaucrat?

There must be better ways to spend $248,000 in North Carolina right now.

The announcement that Gov. Bev Perdue's first act as governor was to sign into law her new education CEO is a telltale sign that perhaps someone in Raleigh needs to better explain to the leadership up there what tightening your belt really means.

The new state employee -- who joins, by the way, a new deputy secretary of communications for the N.C. Department of Transportation, also recently announced, also a more than $110,000 hire -- has created a bit of recent confusion in the ranks already. No one is quite sure why the state needs an education CEO when there is a state superintendent of instruction. Seems to be a bit of overkill, they suggest.

And do keep in mind that the state superintendent is elected and the governor has appointed this new overseer.

The last thing North Carolina needs right now is more employees in the state government -- especially when there are school districts that are wondering how to balance their budgets.

You would think that would be obvious to anyone who had ever worked to balance a budget before.

So while Gov. Perdue continues to threaten even more draconian cuts to eliminate a huge -- and ever-expanding it seems -- state deficit, taxpayers had better beware.

It seems that those cuts do not include more bureaucratic roadblocks to getting work done efficiently and cheaply.

Published in Editorials on March 5, 2009 10:41 AM