John Hood: Name Calling Won’t Help Cooper

RALEIGH – Governor Roy Cooper is in for a long reelection campaign, even longer if he’s already resorting to vitriol in lieu of an actual defense when confronted with unscrupulous acts he’s ultimately responsible for. The insulting juvenile response to Treasure Dale Folwell’s exposing of alarming financial splurges at the NCDOT belies Cooper’s own absence of credibility on spending issues.

He’s not helping himself, or taxpayers, with such behavior, says chairman of the John Locke Foundation John Hood. The people are owed answers, on this and myriad other issues.

From the Laurinburg Exchange:

“Gov. Roy Cooper is a likeable and experienced politician. But he’s not made of Teflon. His administration has taken a number of heavy blows over the past month, and his aides have done him no favors by reacting flippantly rather than substantively.

Consider, for example, the current cash crunch at North Carolina’s Department of Transportation. Secretary Jim Trogdon blames the problem on hundreds of millions of dollars of hurricane damage and payouts to property owners whose rights were violated by the state’s abusive Map Act.

While these costs are real, they don’t fully explain DOT’s overspending. An outside consultant’s report dinged the department for faulty forecasting and cash management. State Treasurer Dale Folwell cited the report’s findings as well as DOT’s transfer of $1.1 billion from the Highway Trust Fund to the Highway Fund without his legally required authorization as reasons why Cooper should replace Trogdon.

Rather than responding to these specific concerns, the governor’s press office put out a statement rejecting what it termed “a financial lecture from the nation’s least effective state Treasurer.” DOT’s money woes have complex origins and consequences, to be sure. But Trogdon’s defense neither required nor was advanced by such adolescent name-calling.

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