NC Auditor’s lengthy report on DMV’s troubles could have been be told in a sentence | Opinion

State Auditor Dave Boliek this week issued a 435-page audit report that analyzes what ails the state Division of Motor Vehicles and how to fix it, but his office didn’t need to go to all that effort.

The DMV’s troubles can be summarized in one sentence: When you financially starve the state government, it shows.

Boliek’s report calls for making the DMV a freestanding agency and for overhauling its operations, but eventually it lands on the real issue when its says: “DMV leadership has historically emphasized that chronic staff shortages, coupled with North Carolina’s rapidly growing population, are driving long lines and extended wait times at DMV.”

The report suggests that the lack of hiring is because the DMV’s parent agency, the state Department of Transportation (DOT), did not include all of the DMV’s staffing needs in its budget request. But that’s not the real issue. Republican lawmakers have controlled the state legislature and the state budget for 15 years. Surely they’ve heard enough from their constituents that they didn’t need transportation officials to tell them that DMV offices are short staffed. They knew, but didn’t spend tax dollars to fix it.

Wayne Goodwin, the DMV commissioner for three years before declining to seek a new term this year, said the message of austerity that filtered down from the legislature was clear. “We were told you’re not going to get anything so don’t ask for it,” he said.

The commissioner asked anyway, but mostly what he got was a public browbeating from Republican lawmakers who said the problem was Goodwin’s management, not their lack of funding. Goodwin, who feels vindicated by the auditor’s report, said, “You can’t manage what you don’t have.”

In his first year, Boliek, a Republican, has brought new energy to the auditor’s office and it’s encouraging to see it take a long look at what’s causing the DMV to be overwhelmed.

Boliek should undertake similar examinations across the state government. If he did, the reports would show other agencies struggling to serve the public after years of state spending falling well short of what a growing state needs.

The DMV is not an isolated problem. It is just the most visible one. Its lack of staff reflects a chronic shortage of state employees across the board. One in five state jobs is vacant.

It’s not hard to see why. State employees’ pay has lost much ground to inflation. The employees who remain face burnout from doing more than one job to make up for the gaps in staff.

Ardis Watkins, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, said of the staff shortage: “It’s a massive issue, the one that’s least talked about, but affects the most people.”

Too often the result is that the state’s work is delayed or left undone. The Department of Health and Human Services, where there is a 23% vacancy rate, said in a statement: “Staffing shortages translate to fewer available services, such as behavioral health treatments and delays in inspections of facilities that care for North Carolina’s most vulnerable people.”

Across the state prison system, there is a 40% vacancy rate for correctional officers, a shortage that raises safety risks for workers and inmates alike.

The state Department of Environmental Quality lacks enough specially skilled employees who can issue permits and conduct inspections that protect the public from environmental hazards.

A shortage of school teachers, who are among the lowest paid in the nation, is hurting public education.

North Carolinians are getting less because Republican lawmakers have cut taxes at the expense of basic services.

According to the nonprofit NC Budget & Tax Center, the state’s spending as a share of the state’s economy has dropped steadily in the past 15 years and is approaching a 50-year low. If the state had maintained spending at its pre-Great recession level, its spending would be $12 billion above what it is now.

That $12 billion could do a lot to improve public schools, support public health and, yes, provide fast and efficient service at the DMV.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com