Fumbles: N.C. drops the ball during the shutdown

Editorial Published in Fayetteville Observer - October 17, 2013

With the federal shutdown finally resolved, life for most of those affected by it is returning to what passes for normal.

Civil servants are back at work, departments are open and perhaps most important, federal funding for state and local programs is flowing again.

This is especially good news for the state's less-fortunate residents who must depend on various assistance programs for food and shelter.

But before anyone forgets what we just saw, it's worth taking a look at how North Carolina government handled the crisis. Especially at the Department of Health and Human Services, the performance can be expressed in one word: Lousy.

Last week, the department shut down the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, a federally funded initiative for poor women and their children. The program helps 264,000 women and children in North Carolina alone. Health and Human Services shut the spigot because federal funds stopped coming. Every other state in the country found alternative funding to keep the program afloat. This state found it too, after a two-day uproar. After the program was restored, department secretary Aldona Wos said, "We take the impact of the shutdown very seriously." It sure didn't look that way when she flipped the "off" switch.

When the WIC program returned, Wos' department turned its attention to the Work First program, also called Temporary Aid to Needy Families. Work First keeps nearly 21,000 people afloat in North Carolina, 14,000 of them children. The assistance program is meant to keep families off long-term welfare and also is underwritten by federal funding. On Monday, the state stopped taking applications for assistance. Once again, we were the only state to do that. Others kept it rolling with state funds in anticipation of the resumption of federal cash flow.

This state has a "rainy day" fund with hundreds of millions of dollars in it. It would have been simple to keep both programs running, since it was a certainty that the feds would have reimbursed the state when the shutdown ended.

We're not sure if this reflects mean-spirited leadership or just a bumbling bureaucracy. We're leaning toward the latter, given Gov. Pat McCrory's finding $750,000 to help the state's food pantries restock during the shutdown.

But we sure can't call it good government.