New provision will let NC lawmakers launch partisan probes cloaked in secrecy | Opinion

The media and public interest groups are alarmed by a state budget provision that removes virtually all legislative records from public disclosure, but there should also be alarm about a provision that will allow the legislature to trample others’ privacy and confidentiality for partisan gains.

The new budget allows staff from the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Commission on Government Operations, a panel commonly called Gov Ops, to enter all state and local government agencies and the offices of government contractors and charities receiving state support to demand access to all records, including those deemed confidential. Those who fail to cooperate or who tell a superior, the media or anyone else about the existence of an investigation will be subject to a criminal penalty.

Republican leaders say the changes will improve the legislature’s ability to root out waste, fraud and abuse. But state Sen. Graig Meyer, D-Orange, is calling it what it really is: Politically appointed staffers, newly empowered and cloaked in secrecy, will pursue the partisan aims of Republican legislative leaders.

“It is not too extreme to call this a non-judicial secret police force,” Meyer said in a statement. “The new agency has no known parallel in the U.S. And state law provides for no independent oversight of the committee.”

Gov. Roy Cooper said the legislature is shielding its own actions as it assumes new powers to pry into the executive branch, local governments and government contractors.

“Intentionally, they block the right of the public to see legislative records on backroom deals with special interests, give themselves more power to seize state and private company records and unconstitutionally set up a secret police to intimidate and silence executive branch employees,” Cooper said in a statement. “This is all a recipe for legislative corruption and abuse of power.”

The state auditor, the attorney general, the state treasurer, the State Bureau of Investigation and others already provide checks on the waste and abuse of state funding. That this Republican-controlled legislature is interested in strengthening that oversight is a parody.

This is the legislature that has approved millions of dollars in vouchers going to private, mostly religious schools with virtually no accountability. This a legislature that does most of its business behind closed doors.

And this is a legislature that disbanded a unit that did fairly review state spending. The Program Evaluation Division (PED) began work in 2008 with a staff of nonpartisan experts and served the legislature much as the nonpartisan General Accountability Office serves Congress. John Turcotte, who led PED, said the unit saved the state $38 million annually while its annual operating cost was only $1.7 million.

Despite that return to taxpayers, Republicans shut down PED in 2021 and replaced it with partisan staff under Gov Ops. The panel, co-chaired by House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger, includes lawmakers from both parties but the majority membership is heavily Republican.

Republicans said in 2021 that the change to partisan staff would make the Gov Ops oversight work more focused and efficient. But two years later, it has produced little.

Expect more action now. The top Republican leaders now have broad and unchecked powers to hound the executive branch and target cities led by Democrats. If a Democrat is elected governor in 2024, North Carolinians can expect the kind of oversight abuses that has marked the U.S. house under Republican control.

Berger signaled what is to come. He told the Associated Press that expanding Gov Ops powers has made it “modernized to actually function in an environment where we likely will have divided government.”

Rather than cutting waste and rooting out fraud, Gov Ops will pursue cooked-up allegations while exempting its own records from public scrutiny. Republicans have replaced a nonpartisan watchdog with a partisan attack dog.

That’s a scandal, but GovOps will not be looking into it.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com