Easley detached amid sticky issues

Facing trouble in road-building, mental health, the Highway Patrol, the governor seems aloof

Gov. Mike Easley's printed schedule is full of empty days.

Easley keeps his own calendar, and he purposefully avoids a lot of appointments. He says he doesn't like distractions, things that break his concentration or focus.

Easley's quirky -- some say detached -- mode of operating was well known and chronicled when he took office. He shuns cutting ribbons, glad-handing or talking to reporters.

Easley and his supporters have a simple response: So what? For nearly eight years, Easley's low-profile style drew grumbling but served him well as he chalked up one legislative victory after another.

But Easley's final term is coming to a close, and a series of high-profile problems at agencies in his administration could overshadow his goals for his last nine months. In recent weeks, Easley's behind-the-scenes approach has often left silence instead of a commanding voice to answer questions and criticism. Most of the candidates running to succeed Easley as governor have made a point of how they would be different from Easley.

Over the past 18 months:

* Members of a key legislative committee said they had lost confidence in the Department of Transportation, one of the largest agencies in the Easley administration. The department spent millions to have a consultant change the way it operates.

* Overworked and understaffed probation offices in Durham and Wake counties lost track of two men who stand accused of killing the student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill. One of those men is also accused of killing a Duke University graduate student. The probation offices are part of the state Department of Correction, another agency in the Easley administration.

* The state Highway Patrol has turned into a punch line after news stories revealed that troopers had engaged in misconduct including sex on duty.

* The state's efforts to reform the mental health system plummeted into an expensive and deadly failure.

* Easley's response to the mental health problems led to a series of ongoing questions over his administration's handling of public records.

Easley has said the problems predated or were not caused by his administration, or he played down their significance. He emphasized that he is fixing the problems.

"I think any governor has to accept responsibility for things that go wrong," Easley said last week in an interview. "People don't want to see the governor out tap-dancing in the spotlight. ... They want to see a governor who's working, not who's cutting ribbons."

Achievements add up

When asked about his performance, Easley rattled off what he considers the success stories of his two terms: establishing a pre-kindergarten program, reducing class sizes in elementary school, establishing a high school program that links students directly to a community college degree, keeping the state budget balanced while increasing educational spending in the middle of an economic downturn in 2001 and 2002. He cites a loss of 250,000 manufacturing jobs and his efforts to recruit new, diversified industries to replace them. Easley also managed, after years of lobbying, to get the legislature to establish a lottery in North Carolina.

By his own admission, Easley achieved his successes incrementally. It is a pace that suits him, but one that has left critics and supporters alike urging him to do more.

"He appears to be very disengaged, except in times of disaster," said Phil Kirk, a former chief of staff for Republican Govs. Jim Martin and Jim Holshouser and a former chairman of the State Board of Education under former Gov. Jim Hunt and Easley, both Democrats.