McCrory's staggering start to another year
Published January 23, 2015
by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, January 22, 2015.
Last Friday was supposed to be a moment for Governor Pat McCrory to shine, to stand in front of the UNC Board of Governors and unveil another part of his strategy to create jobs, to keep what he calls the Carolina Comeback in the headlines.
McCrory was there to tout an “Innovation to Jobs Initiative,” a plan that includes spending $120 million on a venture capital fund that he said would help North Carolina compete with Silicon Valley and the Boston area in technology and innovation.
It’s fairly unusual for a sitting governor to come talk to the board of governors and WRAL-TV was there to livestream McCrory’s remarks. Press advisories from McCrory’s office encouraged the media to attend and a lot of reporters did on a day where not much seemed to be happening in the state government and policy world.
The stage for McCrory was set. And then everything changed.
Word leaked out early Friday morning that the board was planning to force UNC President Tom Ross to step down and reporters listened to McCrory only because he spoke first, before the board headed into a closed session to decide Ross’ fate.
The board reconvened in open session to approve a plan to fire Ross and the decision dominated the state government and policy news world for the next few days.
Not much was said about McCrory’s jobs initiative or all the work a committee had put into it. McCrory’s rushed statement about Ross’s dismissal put out by his office later in the morning received more coverage than the venture capital fund proposal.
Coming at a time when McCrory is still struggling to define himself and assert his authority and power as governor, the episode is revealing.
McCrory was apparently left in the dark about the decision to fire Ross, that itself a reminder of how removed the governor and his staff are from the machinations of the folks who are really running things in Raleigh these days.
The Board is almost entirely made up of influential Republicans, many of whom are financial supporters of legislative leaders and McCrory himself. The board was handpicked by the leaders of the House and Senate and it’s a safe bet that Senate leaders not only knew the decision to fire Ross was coming but had a hand it. The fact that the staff of the governor of the state was not consulted is shocking.
They are all Republicans remember. This is not a split government in any way.
Putting aside whether or not McCrory could have stepped in to prevent the horrible decision to fire Ross—a man he called a “long-time friend of his family,”—at the very least you would think the leadership of the board would have given McCrory’s office a heads up and rescheduled the governor’s presentation to the board so it wouldn’t be swallowed up by the events of the day.
But that didn’t happen and it’s not the first time in recent weeks McCrory hasn’t exactly been treated with respect by leaders of his own party.
McCrory made a big deal of his recent meeting with President Obama, after which he said Obama was open to McCrory coming up with a North Carolina-specific way to expand Medicaid in the state under the Affordable Care Act.
Last week, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and new House Speaker Tim Moore said Medicaid expansion was not going to happen. They didn’t say they were willing to work with the governor or wanted to wait and see the details of his proposal for expansion, they said they did not want to expand Medicaid, period.
McCrory has said several times he needs quick action on businesses incentives to recruit industry and wants lawmakers to pass legislation in the first two weeks of the session. Legislative leaders don’t seem to be in much of a hurry at all and some of them aren’t even sure the incentive programs McCrory wants renewed should even exist.
A committee of the General Assembly is now considering taking Medicaid out of the Department of Health and Human Services and creating an politically-appointed independent board to run it. The effort comes despite vehement opposition from officials in the McCrory Administration.
This was supposed to be the year that McCrory asserted himself in Raleigh and emerged as something more than a rubber stamp for the radical legislation coming out of the General Assembly.
He’s not a new governor anymore. He has had two years to figure out how things work and assemble a staff to help him take charge of the state he was elected to lead.
The events of last Friday show clearly that not much has changed. Governor McCrory is still not in charge in Raleigh.