Sic the DOGE on North Carolina | Opinion

The way the government works, you often don’t find out there’s a problem at an agency until it runs out of money.

It happened with the Department of Transportation, when it suddenly needed a billion-dollar bailout after blowing through its budget. It happened with the state’s hurricane recovery office, which fumbled disaster relief for years before anyone noticed.

And it happened again when Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s family nonprofit allegedly overbilled the state by more than $100,000 — something that likely only came to light because he ran for governor.

If this is what we catch after the fact, imagine what we’re missing.

Conservatives have talked for years about eliminating government largesse, but it’s just now that we’re seeing it happen at the federal level. Through the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, President Donald Trump has given tech titan Elon Musk a long leash to sift through executive branch expenditures to identify areas of waste or abuse.

The department is already embedded in federal agencies, syncing up data feeds to spot-check spending data in real time, using artificial intelligence to track iffy spending as it happens.

That kind of watchdog doesn’t exist in North Carolina — yet.

But with new leadership in the state auditor’s office and atop the N.C. House, there appears to be a desire for it.

A real-time watchdog

Our state constitution sets up an independently elected state auditor, and the office has been given quite a bit of power to request documents, conduct interviews and watch out for the interest of the people.

Up till now, the auditor’s office has mostly worked backward — reviewing financials after money is spent, producing audits years too late to do much good.

I asked newly elected State Auditor Dave Boliek about whether that could change. Could a DOGE-style approach to reform work in North Carolina? The answer came back pretty quick: “Clearly, yes.”

Soon after taking office, Boliek revamped a software contract proposal to seek a modern, AI-driven system that will allow his department to implement real-time spending oversight.

He’s also negotiating with Gov. Josh Stein’s office to get Hurricane Helene recovery spending data immediately flowing into the auditor’s office. Through monthly, weekly or even daily audits, the idea is to flag waste, fraud, and abuse as it happens, not years later when it becomes a public scandal.

“That’s a different approach,” Boliek told me. “But I’m up to the task.”

It’s also what House Speaker Destin Hall’s new government efficiency committee is pushing for in the General Assembly. They don’t want to wait for bureaucracies to flag problems on their own. Committee co-chairman Rep. Keith Kidwell (R-Beaufort) specifically ties the new body’s efforts to what’s happening in Washington, D.C.

“As the new Trump administration rightfully takes aim at Washington D.C.’s wasteful spending and inefficient bureaucracy, it is time for us in Raleigh to do the same,” he said in a statement.

Why this can work in NC

At the federal level, DOGE is already running into legal challenges. Critics argue the White House doesn’t have the authority to cut spending mandated by Congress.

It’s a fair point, but North Carolina doesn’t have that problem.

The General Assembly has broad power over the budget, and if lawmakers decide an agency is wasting money, they can cut it. There are no legal gray areas.

Even better, the state auditor has an infrastructure that doesn’t depend on who’s in the governor’s mansion, and Boliek tells me that there’s already a top-notch team of data scientists within the auditor’s office. That should help alleviate privacy concerns.

And while North Carolina’s state government isn’t as bloated as Washington, there’s bound to be plenty of waste.

Even with a Republican-controlled legislature, state spending has grown rapidly over the last decade. No one has seriously reviewed state commissions, nonprofit contracts or bureaucratic redundancies in decades.

That doesn’t mean it will be easy. The state government budget is $25 billion, and nobody is going to want to give up a piece of it without a fight. It will take plenty of political will to not just identify waste but vote to eliminate it.

But at least the desire is there, and that’s what makes this moment so significant.

With the right tools, North Carolina could lead the nation in state government efficiency and sniff out problems before they become crises. That’s a goal we can all support siccing the DOGE on.