A panel Gov. Bev Perdue appointed to review State Highway Patrol practices to restore the agency's integrity has come up with some good ideas.

Former N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Burley Mitchell, a panel member, is right that redeploying 18 headquarters positions to the field will improve Highway Patrol management. But after considering the panel's proposals against the ragged context of the patrol's recent history, two questions jump out:

Why haven't such recommendations as requiring supervisors to live in the districts they serve been standard practice all along?

Why should the state retain a flawed law that requires the patrol's commander to come from within its ranks? The fact that the patrol has so many problems is a clear indication the law has not worked well to solve them.

The panel believes Gov. Bev Perdue should name a new commander from the patrol ranks to avoid an "indefinite limbo" in leadership. We believe Perdue should do the unexpected: Call lawmakers back to Raleigh for a quick session to change the 1975 law, enacted during Republican Gov. Jim Holshouser's administration.

That law may have seemed like a good idea to some legislators at the time, but it ties the governor's hands. It means the commander may be part of a patrol tradition of looking out for one another, turning a blind eye to sexual misconduct, drunkenness and other misdeeds. It means the commander might be part of an outdated political tradition that serves the governor's interests, not the public's.

That's one reason many municipal governments choose highly qualified candidates from other states to head their police departments. Some organizations are so rooted in tradition and bad habits that they need outside leadership to shake an organization out of its old ways.

We don't argue that North Carolina needs such an outsider to replace former Cmdr. Randy Glover. We do argue that the governor needs the freedom to consider an outsider when she or he makes a choice in the future. As long as the 1975 law remains on the books, it's going to look like an exercise in the same old same old. It's a bad law. Get rid of it.