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A Letter from Phil Kirk

Filling an important job with the wrong person


On one of the slowest news days of the year late on a Friday afternoon just three days before Christmas, the governor’s office announced a holiday present for a year-long unemployed liberal Democratic activist, former Labor Commissioner Harry Payne.

Gov. Mike Easley’s office announced that it was placing Payne in the vacant position of chairman of the Employment Security Commission.

While this appointment was a good one for the Payne family at Christmastime, it was a dramatic insult to the state’s business community. The appointment was greeted with applause by the AFL-CIO, which yields more influence in the Democratic Party than its small numbers justify.

Why should the business community be concerned about this appointment?

First, the selection of Payne marks the first time a person with a clearly anti-business record and bias has been named to head the agency, which is perhaps the one that works most closely with the state’s business and industry community.

Payne was an anti-business legislator from New Hanover County before defeating John Brooks, the incumbent commissioner of Labor, largely on the Hamlet fire fiasco. He continued his anti-business bias as the head of the Labor Department with his fanatical campaign to install an unwise, unnecessary, too costly ergonomics regulation.

Despite a lack of scientific evidence that his solution was cost-effective and despite several rebukes by the Democrats and Republicans in the legislature, Payne planned recklessly ahead. It took a costly legal battle, legislative lobbying effort and grassroots campaign — plus the election of Republican Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry (Payne wisely did not seek re-election, saying he wanted to spend more time with his young children) — to end the ergonomics regulation.

Second, the Employment Security Commission needs an experienced, tough manager. Payne, a lawyer, is neither. That’s not his fault, but the governor’s office staff was told of this need repeatedly, yet still did not agree. Recent news stories about something as fundamental as an inadequate phone system for the unemployed to register for benefits are only one example.

Third, the governor’s office said Payne would be helpful in working to pull the myriad of workforce preparedness programs scattered throughout state government together in a coordinated, effective way. Perhaps his appointment will push the legislature to strip the ESC of its independence and lack of oversight and move it 100 percent into the Department of Commerce, where it could receive some attention. But to say a person with Payne’s partisan, anti-business background can put together a bipartisan, non-bureaucratic turf plan is wishful thinking.

Fourth, there is no trust between those in the business community who have worked with Payne, who is as smart intellectually and almost as smooth a talker as former President Clinton.

The ESC has a reputation among many for siding with the unemployed in contested cases with those paying the bill — the business community. Payne’s first major action will probably be to advocate a gigantic tax increase on business in order to replenish the Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund. That may have happened without Payne, but it most certainly will now.

About the same time, Gov. Easley appointed a budget and tax fairness advocate for the poor, Dan Gerlach, to the newly created position (when most of state government is downsizing) of senior advisor for fiscal policy. Like Payne, Gerlach is intelligent, but clearly anti-business in his thinking and advocacy. His appointment has angered the banking community as well as those interested in economic development and the creation of new jobs.

The governor then threw a small bone to business when he reappointed Diane Sellers to her seat on the Industrial Commission after a delay of more than six months. I say “small bone” because he was required to name an employer representative. We pushed for Sellers’ reappointment and commend the governor for the action.

We are counting on the recent arrival of John Merritt, former Hardee’s executive and top aide to former Congressman Charlie Rose, to bring some balance and understanding of what it means to meet a payroll to the governor’s office.

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