Fitzsimon File

Secretary of Transportation Lyndo Tippett announced this week that the department was being reorganized. If ever a department needed reorganizing, DOT is it. Tippett says the changes will make the department more efficient, accountable and transparent, though you could argue that in one sense transparency has not been the problem.

It has been plenty clear that campaign contributors and fundraisers have been influencing many transportation decisions, often from the seats on the DOT board that their access to wealth has purchased.

The Department has also been plagued by management problems that a report from an outside consultant documented as various levels of dysfunction. The new DOT structure will give more authority to Chief Deputy Secretary Dan Devane, a former member of the General Assembly, and create an inspector general in the department to provide more accountability.

The changes seems to make sense, but it is hard not to wonder what effect they will have on DOT since Tippett leaves his post at the end of the year to make way for the new secretary who the next governor will appoint.

Problems at DOT have known no political party. There have been scandals under Republican governors and Democratic governors. Both Republican Pat McCrory and Lieutenant Governor Beverly Perdue have promised to reform DOT, but candidates for governor always promise to reform it, then end up appointing donors and fundraisers to the board and the cycle begins again.

One person mentioned as a possible DOT Secretary if Perdue wins in November is Lanny Wilson, a well-known campaign donor and fundraiser who lives on Figure Eight Island and is a member of the 21st Century Transportation Committee.

Wilson earlier this year hosted a private dinner for committee members in apparent violation of the state's open meetings law. He has given more than $175,000 to Democratic candidates in the last four election cycles.

Davis may be a nice guy and may have some qualifications to be DOT Secretary, but his appointment would simply continue the practice of turning the department over the highest bidder, which is both transparent and wrong.

Many of the most strident anti-government think tanks and advocacy groups like to rail against pork barrel projects at the state and federal level as examples of wasteful spending and a corrupt budget process. Pork barrel was cited often by speakers at a rally in Raleigh last month sponsored by Americans for the Prosperous.

Former Senator Bob Dole was the featured attraction and there were plenty of signs supporting Dole's wife Elizabeth's bid for reelection to her Senate seat. The group is now running a radio ad supporting Dole's energy policy, such as it is.

But the Prosperity folks have been strangely silent about a recent story in the Salisbury Post, Dole's hometown paper, that says Dole "brought home some bacon Monday," citing new federal appropriations for local airports, roads, and downtown revitalization projects, exactly the kind of pork barrel that the group usually jumps up and down over. 

Wonder if there is an American for the Prosperous radio ad in the works about that?

A recent headline on the website of the Raleigh News & Observer announced that "the Wiggles are coming."  That means that a well-known children's musical group will be in the area, not that more political debates have been scheduled.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.