This business about the budget.

• Author: Mooneyham, Scott
• Position: CAPITALGOODS

Back in January, leaders of the new Republican majority in the General Assembly spoke of working in partnership with the Democratic governor. They talked about bringing a businesslike approach to lawmaking. They pledged to put together a state budget--the chief task of any state legislature--well before the July 1 start of the state's fiscal year. The Democratic governor sounded just as conciliatory. She told reporters that she didn't know how to spell the word "veto."

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Five months later, a lot of that talk turns out to be, well, just talk. Gov. Beverly Perdue has mastered her spelling lesson, vetoing five bills by the end of April. Just before swatting three of them, she told an audience in Winston-Salem that she had been given a quart jar of red ink for her veto stamp. After she nixed a legislative fix for the state's ailing employee health-insurance plan, House Speaker Thom Tillis questioned her leadership. "Tell us what you want," he said.

Perdue and new Senate leader Phil Berger traded jabs over jobs. She accused GOP lawmakers of wasting time on kooky ideas--such as creating a state currency, subject of a bill filed by one legislator--rather than putting people back to work. Berger's response: "The one job that Gov. Perdue is worried about is her own." Failing to overturn two of her early vetoes, Republicans responded with a move many political observers saw as ill-conceived--tying an extension of unemployment benefits to an unrelated measure restricting the governor's budget-negotiating ability. Perdue vetoed it anyway.

All this portends a long, hot summer in Raleigh. It's not that Tillis, Berger and other GOP leaders haven't tried to back up their words with action. They've been busy--at times, maybe too busy. Some legislation they've taken up, including gun-related measures and undoing local ordinances, has appeal for the party's conservative core but probably won't win over moderates and independents who decide elections. Still, they've stayed on track to put together a budget plan by early June and pushed ahead with an ambitious agenda that includes business-friendly tort reform and workers' compensation changes.

Tillis, with a background as an IBM management consultant, works the House hard. Long days, packed with committee meetings and lengthy floor sessions, have become the norm. In keeping with his corporate mentality, where middle managers make the trains run on time, he and his key lieutenants have done...