In accepting the endorsement Tuesday of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, Republican gubernatorial hopeful Patrick Ballantine was refreshingly blunt about how his approach to state budgeting would differ from Gov. Mike Easley?s and might affect state employees on the whole:
Ballantine, who has argued there’s a lot of pork in the state’s $15 billion annual budget, has said state government might have fewer employees if he’s elected. But he’s said those employees will be paid better overall and that those who work harder will be rewarded for it.
That?s what the John Locke Foundation has been arguing for years ? choose more carefully what state government gets involved in, and then perform those few services well. For some state employees, this will mean finding more productive ways to employ their talents, in the private sector. For others, it will mean rising to the challenge and being more productive, with rewards tracking more closely to performance. For these and many others, then, it will mean better pay and working conditions.
For the tasks we truly need government to perform, the taxpayers have a strong interest in attracting and retaining good-quality public employees. There is nothing inconsistent about pursuing that goal and the goal of economy in government, properly understood.
