Tar Heel voices.

• Author: Loven, Jennifer
• Position: Includes survey results - Opinions of 20 executives of North Carolina's largest private companies on business and economic matters

As entrepreneurs, they're risk takers, the kind of people who know what they want and are willing to do what it takes to get it. And if that means flouting tradition, so be it.

State government needs more money? So raise the tobacco tax and start a lottery.

Nobody seems to be running the show in Raleigh? Blame the legislature, but give the governor the tools he needs to do his job.

The schools aren't turning out the kind of workers business wants? Well, business should step in and do something about it.

This year, we played Twenty Questions with top executives of some of North Carolina's largest private companies, and their responses indicate they want a game plan for the state that emphasizes change. That's part of their "strong executive mindset," according to Rollie Tillman, chairman of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC-Chapel Hill, a think tank that studies competitiveness, job growth and entrepreneurship.

"It's not surprising that CEOs of pacesetting private companies are open to innovative financing of both firms and governments," Tillman says.

These are people who look for new ways to solve problems and come from a corporate culture where usually one person is clearly in control. That's one reason 90 percent of the executives responding to the survey said the governor needs veto power. Sixty-one percent favored streamlining the administration of the state's public-school system.

The responses came from CEOs of 71 of the companies on last year's North Carolina 100, the annual ranking of the state's largest private companies. Arthur Andersen & Co. sent our survey with the questionnaires the accounting firm used to narrow the field for this year's list.

To ease the state's fiscal woes, 62 percent of the respondents favored a state lottery, even though opponents say those most likely to play are those least able to pay. "People will spend their money one way or another," says Rick Ray of Raycom Inc., the Charlotte producer of TV sports programming, which is 75th on this year's list. "If the state can take advantage of that and fulfill a need, I think it should do it."

An even higher figure - 66 percent called for raising the state excise tax on tobacco products, long considered heresy in Raleigh even though the 2-cent levy on a pack of cigarettes is the nation's lowest.

Tobacco companies, workers and consumers paid a total of $700 million in state taxes last year, according to Charles A. Harvey, executive...