- [Kelly] State auditor Dave Boliek testifies to why he can oversee a DOGE-like North Carolina government project.

And Attorney General Jeff Jackson says he has 230 million reasons to join a new lawsuit against the Trump administration.

This is "State Lines."

- [Presenter] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBSNC.

[bright music] ♪ - Welcome to "State Lines," I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today, political analyst, Joe Stewart, Senator Brad Overcash of Gaston County debuts on "State Lines."

Always welcome you to the hot seat number two.

You're with a great crowd and welcome.

- Absolutely.

Happy to be here.

Thank you.

- Good to see you here.

And thanks for being on.

Our representative, Maria Cervania of Wake County is here.

Always great to see you.

- Thank you so much for having us - [Kelly] And take time out of your busy schedule to be here, it's an honor.

Jeff Moore of the Carolina Journal is here as well.

Jeff, always great to see you.

- Thanks for having me.

- As always, we have a half hour to talk.

There are more topics that you two are debating in our legislature than I could ever cover, so I hope I picked the right stories.

But I will start, because Dave Boliek got our attention here at the editorial office.

He's the state auditor.

He was in Raleigh in support of Senate legislation that could empower him as a DOGE-like overseer of government operations.

This bill puts pressure on state agencies, however, to send reports to him, justifying their existence in any long vacant positions as well.

Boliek would then recommend jobs and agencies for abolishment, but he can do no direct firing outside his own office.

The state employees association is piped up on this when they say, "There's already a 20% vacancy rate across state government, Joe, as it is."

And there's no rules yet on how agency reports to Dave Boliek.

It could actually be used to make smart decisions on how to reduce state government.

Did I say that correctly?

- Yeah, absolutely.

Well, you know, one of the interesting things when this bill was being discussed in committee, the state auditor himself said, "I already have the authority to do a lot of this."

So the legislation, I think, places an emphasis on the desire on the part of the legislature to have the state auditor look really seriously if there are efficiencies that can be achieved in state government, and like any large institution.

Undoubtedly, there are.

The challenges that we face with the number of vacancies in state government is it slows the process down.

The things that people need out of government sometimes are harder to obtain as a result of these positions being vacant.

But undoubtedly, it's not a bad exercise to try to determine if there's a better way to provide these services, technologies.

And even we should start to look at, are there AI systems that could be put in place to provide some functions that have historically been done by people in state government?

Licensing and certifications is just data in.

It may be that AI is a better system.

But I think the state auditor will take these responsibilities very seriously as state auditors have historically come back to the legislature with some good recommendations on ways to improve the efficiency of state government.

- Senator Overcash, but in this case, it would be you justify your existence to me as a report coming into Dave Boliek, that would not have necessarily create a collaborative environment.

That's a fight for survival, I would think.

But is that the right tone to take?

Is that what we need right now?

- Yeah, I don't see this as forcing agencies to quote, unquote "justify their existence to the auditor."

This is a healthy exercise.

It's a healthy exercise for our growing state.

We have a large state government now.

We're soon to be the seventh largest state in the country.

And these agencies, it's probably a good exercise for them to review their processes, to review their personnel, and try to take a look at whether things that were started decades ago, in some cases, are still the right way to go for efficient government.

So I think it's a healthy exercise.

- Representative.

- So as you said, he's doing these core responsibilities already.

And now there's added duties to do these actually quasi legislative decision making that we really should have that, this is what the voters in North Carolina had asked us to do.

This function and this creation of a department is duplicated in and of itself.

So is Dave gonna assess Dave to whether it should be DOGEd out of state government?

I think that there's many entities already.

We have a DOGE within the house.

Again, that auditor, there's other oversight committees that in our joint and in the Senate and the House, let's have what already exists look at these things, 'cause it's already in our responsibility and we don't need to create this other entity.

- Well, to be clear, if I can, there's nothing about this process that's usurping any legislative power.

There will be a report that's made after the agency's self-reflection and reporting to the auditor's office.

The auditor will then ask follow up questions as necessary and then make a set of recommendations to the legislature.

There's no usurpation of our authority.

- Why not trust that house subcommittee, that's the DOGE subcommittee, why not trust the auditor as is?

Why not give Josh Stein's team a chance first?

- On the trusting the auditor as is, this is not a lack of trust in their abilities, but the auditor's office has key auditing responsibilities.

We don't need to pull auditors away from those auditing responsibilities.

If we're going to go through this exercise, we need folks that are not already out in the field conducting those key audits.

- Do you have trust in any one of those three offices or committees that are set up now that?

- So that State Auditor's Office is one of the only areas that are encouraging public trust.

So, I agree with actually, Senator Overcash, we have auditors that have responsibilities.

We don't have enough auditing in their core functions to do that responsibility.

Sometimes the auditor's office, does it not annually for some of these areas, do their core functions add more people in the proper auditing function and don't create another division.

We don't need it.

- Jeff, there's 20% state vacancy if you believe the State Employees Association.

So let's take it to face value.

They would know that that's a fact.

That's 20% of state government.

You could just vacate those jobs, abolish them, and save millions of dollars.

Why not just go that route and make this a simple exercise?

- And that may be one of the pieces of low hanging fruit that they actually go after.

But there's probably a lot to do with visibility and expectations in this environment doesn't happen in a vacuum.

We've mentioned DOGE several times, obviously there's a national narrative geared toward rooting out waste and fraud and getting efficiency there.

So you've got the name, Dave, that resonates with the Doge branding.

And so it is playing into communicating more, I think, and actually sharing some of that public trust from the State Auditor's Office and able to reach into some of the state government.

So everyone knows that everything is above board and you've got eyes on and creating more efficiencies in state government because over the last several years, the level of trust in government overall and institutions in general is low.

So even if it is duplicative in some sense, is much more visible and it's out front and forward facing.

And I gotta imagine the communications team at State Auditor's Office has something to do with presenting this kind of approach.

- Joe, what do you make of the auditor taking on a DOGE-like role?

He was elected by every voter in North Carolina where it's in the house subcommittee for Government Operations and Efficiency, those two gentlemen that are at those committee chairs were elected in their own home counties.

So at least we have a statewide elected official, I guess.

But why would he be on up at the legislative building having to testify in favor of his own bill?

- Well, I think as Jeff said, I mean, sometimes public policy has a season and I think there's a lot of desire at this point, at all levels of government to try to scrutinize and see if there are inefficiencies that can be improved upon.

One of the things that having had a 10-year tour of duty in state government myself, a lot of times vacancies allow an agency to generate some salary money that they can then use to try to supplement other positions.

One of the things we don't do well in terms of looking at government is to try to figure out what's the right compensation to attract and retain the kind of person that we need for the skills or technical ability in that particular position.

Undoubtedly, the scope of state government could be much smaller.

I don't know if the salary money needs to be less.

It just needs to be better applied to the skill sets that are needed for a particular state agency to do for the people of North Carolina what the statutes say that agency should be doing.

- And Dave Bullock's now gonna tackle the DMV and the entire state government now, first two months on the job, Joe.

Alright, Representative Cervin, you ready for the next topic?

- Sure.

A good first, good kickoff, attorney General Jeff Jackson has joined another federal lawsuit to restore healthcare cuts worth over $200 million to North Carolina.

Our state would actually receive $230 million of an $11 billion funding round, but it was canceled by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

The Attorney General says North Carolina's DHHS is legally required to spend money that it's been given.

Now it can't do that now with canceled funds and that the funding cancellation didn't follow legal procedures.

Representative Cervin, a judge did step in and has supposedly halted this one as of Thursday.

So we're in a bit of a limbo for now.

Jeff Jackson's at it again.

- In a good way.

He's doing what he is voted in to do and in the trust of our North Carolina voters to be our lawyer for our people.

This issue is not a partisan thing.

We often say healthcare is a policy, a partisan we issue.

It's not, and in this situation, this funding supports hospitals, seniors, children's families, all over the state.

And it's regardless of political affiliation, and like you said, the federal government, the US DHHS just stopped funding altogether.

And in this lawsuit it only identifies $230 million.

But we know as, as time goes by, this is going to be more.

Now, as you said, also we are obligated to spend these funds and it's not just merely Medicaid, it's mental health, it's public health, it's keeping our North Carolinians alive and thriving.

This is going to affect a lot of families, and really actually in a lot of ways destabilize our healthcare system in North Carolina.

This is very dangerous, and I'm so glad that our Attorney General is supporting us to defend our healthcare rights, but also to say we pay federal taxes.

- Get your taxes back.

- Yeah, get your taxes back, this is our fair share.

- Alright, Senator Overcash, we'll turn it over to you.

- I think Attorney General Jackson's going in exactly the wrong direction, and sometimes when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If the state of North Carolina believes that some portion of these funds were legitimate and not wasteful of taxpayer dollars, there's a case that can be made.

Secretary Kennedy has already said that he is looking at potential restoration of some funding.

And so if there's a case to be made that it's not wasteful, let's make that case.

But to just haul off and file a lawsuit and put us in this adversarial position, it's wrongheaded.

- Let me ask you about that funding.

You can take it all away and then put it back once you screened it for waste.

But what is, as a state senator, with 230 million being paused, how do you weigh that?

How long should it take the feds to screen it, to audit it, and then?

Should they put it back or would you support them taking it all away if they just wanted to, whether there's a lot of waste there or not?

- Well, I can't get into the details of those dollars.

I don't know the specifics of every dollar that's being withheld to make a judgment on what should be returned or not.

But I think it's a healthy process.

It's a process that the American people and the people in North Carolina expect of government.

We have to quit wasting taxpayer dollars.

- So I've been working in this space for 25, 30 years.

There are evaluation processes.

The grant portion of this, you have to be accountable to key performance indicators and that you're fulfilling your promise when it comes to this money.

It has been longstanding that if you don't fulfill those responsibilities, that funding's already going to be taken away.

It's, this was not done in within our system that we already have that's established.

This just was an outright cut and it is already affecting a lot of our people.

- Jeff, people do want a good scrutiny of our government at all levels.

I think the electorate has spoken on that for last fall, but then when you start pausing funds to review it, it's also a punch in the gut as well.

So how should the public interpret this effort that if money is paused, does that mean it goes to zero and you lose services or a safety net?

- Yeah, I think maybe pausing to actually assess if it's gonna have that downstream collateral damage in the end, the provision of healthcare is obviously not partisan, but Attorney General Jackson's decision to join this lawsuit is definitely a partisan pattern of contesting those policies coming out of the other side of the aisle.

It's par for the course as far as an attorney general in North Carolina stepping out against what the opposite partisan controlled legislature would do.

So that's nothing new here.

I think it's probably incumbent upon Attorney General Jackson for his constituency and the people that actually elected him to office to actually step up and do this.

We've seen Attorney General Josh Stein do it plenty of times when he was in that role.

So I don't think there's anything surprising here.

I do think that it won't be the kind of gut punch that you might expect from the 230 million level right off the bat, but down the line, you may have some costs that go along with it, but it's when things are deeply rooted within state government and government's very big and the bureaucracy's are very big and the money sums are very large, it hurts when you take it away.

- Joe, let's pivot from, why talk policy?

You can talk politics, this is the Jeff Jackson brand.

You knew he was gonna do it if they elected him.

We elected him, and that's what he's doing.

So is he right on target?

And if you're a Republican looking at him thinking he may think 26, 28, I guess 30.

He's building a brand as a Democrat, but also an opposition folder for the Republicans.

- Well, I will say this, every attorney general sees it as part of their responsibility to jump into something where there's a question of law, and there is a question of law on this.

Is it appropriate for the federal government to pull back funding that's already been authorized and approved by Congress?

That notwithstanding, some significant part of this has to go back to the fact that this country has borrowed over $30 trillion.

We do not run a balanced federal budget.

We owe more than the country itself is worth.

125% are debt level in comparison with the gross domestic product of this country.

This particular president came into office saying that he was gonna do things to try to bring some fiscal discipline back to the federal government.

Now this is a very jarring way to do it, and that kind of abrupt shift is very disquieting when you're talking about programs that people consider to be essential.

And it's very hard to plan for providing those services when there's some question about the flow of the money, whether it's state or federal.

But at the end of the day, this is the serious public policy question before us, what does this country need to do to put its fiscal house in order?

Because we are on the track to financial ruin.

- If we don't do something about the federal debt.

- Legislators in North Carolina quickly approved a billion dollars in Helene recovery funds last fall and winter.

But a mid-February 2025 review shows that two-thirds of that billion dollars has not been spent yet.

Some recovery programs have, in fact, fully spent their budgets.

The Governor's Recovery Office for Western North Carolina tells legislators that money is being held to match future federal grants.

They say federal funds are covering many of the costs right now, so state funds just aren't needed yet.

They'll be tapped as needed.

Jeff, okay, so now we're getting into the boring phase of Helene policy.

And the first articles are coming out accusing the state of not spending Helene funds or sitting on it when it could be grant matching and other things.

Is the public getting the right story with Helene recovery?

- Well, it may be a case of deja vu or anticipated deja vu.

Obviously we've had problems with disaster recovery funds getting out to where they need to be- - [Kelly] Paranoid.

- In the years past, yeah.

So out of the gate, I think Governor Stein actually did a pretty good job of reaching out to the legislature, setting up this new program to try and ensure that we didn't have a repeat of what we saw with Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence, and which still have people out there waiting for funds.

But this seems to be the first kind of slippage where the messaging around it and the expectations of the people may be a little bit different, where you're gonna want that money to get out there as soon as possible.

There's gonna be some process=oriented things that actually prevent some of that that may be completely legitimate.

But as far as the public perception, they're gonna start to think, oh, here we go again.

And those people in Western North Carolina may be starting to fear that they're gonna have the same years-long delays that the people of Eastern North Carolina got.

- Representative, I read a fair amount of news, as you might think I would, to get ready for this show, but I've had to read some articles twice to make sure I understand the context.

And it seems like there needs to be money set aside to wait 'cause if you spend state funds ahead of federal money, the federal money will go away and go back to D.C. - Correct.

- Is that correct?

I'm not in the system, so I don't know.

- Yes, so I'm fortunate in my professional experience to work in emergency management, excuse me.

And so it's not just North Carolina, it's many other states that prioritize the spending of federal funding before state funding.

And then also there is cost sharing.

So we need to be good in balancing how much we do spend at certain amounts of time.

So it's not just about being irresponsible, it's being disciplined in a lot of ways.

And we're not talking about the big elephant in the room.

It's that when there's talks of cutting FEMA or might not getting that federal funding that we desperately need, we need to reassess how we need to spend this money that we have so far.

- Senator Overcash, that does bring in the national political talk about FEMA maybe being restricted, downsized at the federal level.

Are states well prepared or, North Carolina, do you believe it's well prepared that if they did away with some federal agencies and dropped a load of cash on North Carolina for recovery, could the state handle it?

- I would hope so.

You know, in this situation we hear stories like this, and I agree with Jeff.

We immediately think about the unacceptable slowness of rolling out aid funding in Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence.

But I don't want to overreact to this.

I do agree with my colleague that there are certain parameters in which you don't wanna risk federal funding and you have to spend state dollars through that lens.

I can just say from a legislative standpoint, we're gonna remain committed to the people of Western North Carolina.

We have appropriated almost $1.5 billion to the relief efforts, and we're hard at work on a Senate budget, and I think you're gonna see some additional assistance coming down.

- For what you've seen, what is the fast work that can be done?

I think Lake Lure has at least been scrubbed of trash.

They still need to dredge it or remove the sediment is it the highway construction where it becomes the years long project?

Or are they still removing trees?

How does it break down from your experience sitting on committees and having briefings?

- Yeah, I think you're right.

I mean, debris removal is obviously first of mind because you can't start the process of rebuilding where you've had these major mudslides and huge portions of the mountain have come down and that's gonna take a while.

And that work's being done now, hopefully as efficiently as possible, as quickly as possible.

You know, on the highway rebuilds, we're seeing some temporary roads and bridges and trying to get flow of traffic open, even if it's in a more limited way.

And that way the more permanent fixes can come later.

- Joe, the Republicans and the legislature, they did approve money quickly, but they promised they would be measuring how it was dispensed and they would be measuring things.

I heard 30, every 30 days.

- Right.

- Looks like Stein's teams doing the same thing.

Should the public just be patient?

Make sure the money's spent, money spent well in government seems to be money spent slowly.

- Well, you know, I used to think it was amazing that our system of government work despite the usual tension between the legislative and executive branch.

And now, I know that it works because of that tension.

So, I think the amount of scrutiny the legislature is applying to how these funds are being used is an important way to make sure they're being used effectively and efficiently.

But a lot of what takes time is that you want to use the money in a way that helps mitigate the potential of losses going forward too.

And we've made some suggestions for things like a loan program to make sure people are able to elevate their properties, so they're above flood line.

It makes it easier to ensure and less likely to cause damage.

We wanna make western North Carolina, all of North Carolina, more resilient to natural disaster.

That takes a little bit of thoughtfulness, but we also know you need to get people restored quickly, so that the economy can start to turn and they're less reliant on the assistance.

- Joe, you're in the insurance industry.

In your civilian role, how do you convince people who live in the mountains to carry flood insurance?

No one would think that makes any sense at all.

- Yeah.

This is tough.

And there's a certain libertarian streak through the politics of west North Carolina.

Many counties there don't even have zoning ordinances.

It's just been part of the history of that part of North Carolina.

People have more or less wanted to do what they did.

And what we will find is some of the federal money that's available will restrict people from rebuilding where the structure was originally 'cause from a standpoint of "Was that a safe place to build it?"

Probably never was.

But if the house was built a hundred years ago and people wanna rebuild it there, the answer may be that you simply can't use this money for that.

- May I add?

This was unprecedented.

- Sure.

- Like no one probably in history obviously of North Carolina, but even the United States, had a disaster that was this type in that type of area.

So, we need, we don't have a model that we can follow, so we need to work in the way that we are, unfortunately.

- [Kelly] Final topic tonight, fewer North Carolina public school teachers left the North Carolina classroom last year.

The turnover rate was still 10%.

To put in perspective, the teacher turnover rate dropped from 11.5% down to 10%.

So, it is an improvement.

The News & Observer reports that enrollment in traditional teacher training programs has dropped by 10% as well over the past three years.

It does appear from early estimates, the current average teacher pay in North Carolina will now be $61,450, making us sixth of 12 US southern states.

So, statistics can be painted anyway.

More teachers did stay.

We still lost.

One in every 10 teachers said, "I've had enough," and the pay is going up.

What's the condition of the public school teacher these days?

- Yeah.

well, I guess it depends on which teacher you're asking and what age children they're teaching maybe.

But I think when, we've been dealing with this issue, as long as I've been involved in state government and politics and policy in North Carolina.

A focus on the teachers, I think, sometimes, we, especially on the teacher pay portion, we kind of think of ourselves as an island sometimes in the messaging and communication around all of it.

But of course, this is not a problem unique to North Carolina.

You've got high turnover in other states.

This report also doesn't take into account some of the mobility metrics and things where you've got teachers leaving and getting picked up somewhere else.

And also doesn't account for public charter schools and some other schooling options too.

So we've had kind of proliferation of different education options in the state.

You've got a proliferation of different teaching kind of models as far as the teachers that are getting in there.

- Yeah, time's running short, Representative Cervania, hey, pay's going up and fewer are quitting, but double digits still quit.

- Yes, and we have to consider the fact that there's less new teachers and more people leaving.

So this statistic will be good going down, it's, job is not done, we need to do more.

- Senator Overcash, the Republicans control it all except for the governor's office.

Little improvement here and their pay's going up.

Is there something about the ratio that could still be tweaked to get more teachers teaching?

- Yeah, I think you have a commitment from the Republican-led legislature to support our students in any form or fashion there in education in North Carolina.

I think you're gonna see continued support of our public schools and our school teachers.

We've implemented advanced teaching roles to give teachers an opportunity to make more money while staying in the classroom, not losing them always to principalship and administration.

And we're gonna continue to work hard to make sure that students in North Carolina are highly educated.

- Joe, I've got one minute, you get 45 seconds off it.

Tie a ribbon on this show with teachers.

Let's keep them in the classroom if we can, sir.

- Yeah, no, this is a challenge, and I've said this before when these questions have come up on this show before, we still basically educate kids the same way we did in the third century BC, where we build a facility and everybody in proximity comes there to learn.

We probably do need to think about all of the different ways that are available to educate people today and make sure all options are on the table and we're doing what's in the best interest of all of the families of North Carolina.

- Perfect ending.

Great show, Joe.

Thank you for coming on, Senator Overcash, Representative Cervania, always a pleasure, for your second, I think it's your second venture on the program.

- I think so.

- Third or fourth, okay.

The producer jumped into my ear.

And Jeff, Always good to have you from "The Carolina Journal."

Most of all, thank you for watching and enjoying "State Lines."

Email me your thoughts and opinions.

I'll share it with them, statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

[bright music] - [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.