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.
Return to magazine index
|
|
