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"If we've got cutting-edge civil engineers, then why is it we're not paying them?" Jenkins said. "We pay the doctors. We pay the professors. What are we spending, $3 billion a year over there?"

Politics vs. merit

Other employees said the department rewards connections. A Division of Motor Vehicles employee said: "The NCDOT is too political. Friends looking after friends. You can come in and do nothing or you can be productive, but it pays the same."

Even before the report's release Wednesday, department officials and state leaders acknowledged that the department suffers from a "silo" mentality, where different sections do not talk to one other. As one information technology employee said, "There are three different versions of IT, they all fall under different bosses and they are each accountable to different policies."

DOT officials also have previously said, and the report repeats, that the department's employees have no unified vision in terms of goals and direction.

In recent years, Triangle drivers have had reason to complain about the department. A DOT blunder during a 2003 project to widen Interstate 40 required workers to close lanes nightly this year between Durham and Chapel Hill to resurface the road. At night and on weekends, backups extended two to three miles. That mistake was a big factor in the department's decision to hire McKinsey.

Jenkins said the legislature let the department know in February that things needed to change. "Our leadership wasn't inclined, to send any money over there until they changed," Jenkins said.

Despite the consultant's recommendations that the department be transparent and open to help restore public confidence, much of the work by McKinsey was at first done in secret. The department had agreed to keep confidential much of the consultant's work, including its proposal to the state. After The News & Observer published a story about the secrecy, Gov. Mike Easley ordered the department to release contract documents.

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