'30s-style tax structure no longer fits the state.

• Author: Cline, Ned
• Position: Capital

If he could get one good budget year under his belt, Mike Easley probably would feel like someone who has won the lottery. The governor, of course, fantasizes a lot about a state lottery, but that's another story. This one is about the current budget mess, some of which amounts to little more than politicians gambling with other people's money.

The budget mess has been with Easley every day of his 2 1/2 years in office, and right now things are as bad as they've ever been. There's hope, but solving the problem will take political and personal courage, two things that have been as short as state revenue in recent years.

More on how the state slipped into financial quicksand in a moment. The more pressing question is, how do we get out? Picture a business started in the late 1920s and early '30s, with a mission and vision to fit those times. Fast forward to today. Could that business have survived if its owners were still using Great Depression guidelines? Would you buy stock in such a company?

This is pretty much the way the business of state government operates as elected officials try to dig out of a $800 million financial pit, despite a constitutional prohibition on budget deficits. The basic foundation of state government hasn't changed since Gov. O. Max Gardner (1929-33) and Gov. J.C.B. Ehringhaus (1933-37) created the existing system, especially the tax code. Politicians fall all over themselves in election season talking about how government ought to be run like a business. Let's hope not many would run a business the way they have allowed state government to function. Outdated policies and inefficiencies are as prominent as political promises.

For example, there are three state agencies that operate public museums. The only reason seems to be that nobody ever tried to eliminate duplication. There are three personnel departments within the university system. Rules and policies overlap, and inefficiencies are ignored. State government has 40 different payroll systems, all computerized but not one that can communicate with another. There is a system of automatic pay raises for selected court officials and magistrates whose salaries increase every year for no reason than they're still there. It's called longevity pay, and it has long outlived its worth.

Last year, there were about 10,000 vacancies in state jobs, not counting the prison, the university and public-school systems. Each one is included in budget requests, though there's no...