NCDOT prefers to kill the messenger

Fresh off the news that the hard-pressed state budget, which cut spending across all state departments, actually increased spending on state ferries comes this story today from the News & Observer revealing that Department of Transportation bigwigs have fired the man hired to straighten out the ferry division. Kill the messenger, and we can all go back to what we were doing.

State legislators have known for years that DOT is a cesspool of political influence, inefficiency, ineptitude, nepotism and favoritism, but year-after-year they refuse to root out the problems. This is the department that had to repave I-40 at a cost of millions of extra taxpayer dollars, had to repave I-795 (more millions) because the paving was laid too thin, had to pay a huge federal fine because of illegal dredging by the ferry division, provided a fraudulent auto title to a friend of a high-ranking official, and had two employees convicted of contracting fraud. The Division of Motor Vehicles, a DOT entity long known as a political dumping ground, had policies so lax that illegal immigrants could easily obtain N.C. driver's licenses and has recently instituted a policy that sends driver's licenses via mail rather than handing them over in person. Mail, you see, is more "secure" in the delusional world of DMV.

Hired to clean up the ferry division, Harold "Buddy" Finch, a career Coast Guard officer, found a division reeking of nepotism and without a detailed budget. Finch told the N&O that he was informed that the division simply "received money from the state and spent it." Trying to straighten out this mess made Finch an "enemy of the state," so he was fired last month. The official reason: His boss determined that he could not "meet the expectations" of the job. Remember that whenever you want to get rid of anyone for any reason.

There's only one solution to the problems at DOT. Legislators have to demand a complete audit of the entire division, both financial and performance. They have to find out where the money is going and how effectively it is being spent. But don't expect that to happen. DOT, remember, is a political swamp, and the politicians flooding that swamp include members of the legislature.