“…Two lawmakers will lead North Carolina’s DOGE-style initiative to cut wasteful spending, including the lead sponsor of a bill to prohibit the attorney general from arguing against Trump administration executive orders. The other co-chair has faced ethics complaints related to his administration of taxpayer funds.
House Speaker Destin Hall
announced the creation of the interim House Select Committee on Government Efficiency last month to track down wasteful state and local spending, mismanagement and constitutional violations. Rep. Keith Kidwell (R-Beaufort) and Rep. John Torbett (R-Gaston) will serve as chairs.
The new committee will hold organizational meetings during the 2025-2026 session, but the majority of its work will be carried out in the interim period. Hall’s press release about its formation highlighted items such as DEI policies and excess state property as examples of public spending the committee is authorized to investigate.
… An earlier North Carolina watchdog task force — the nonpartisan Program Evaluation Division — exposed
millions in wasteful and fraudulent spending over a 15-year period before Senate President Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore dissolved it in 2021. Former PED executive director John Turcotte told
NC Health News he believed legislative leadership eliminated the program because they did not have direct control over the watchdog agency.
PED’s 14 nonpartisan staff members have since been replaced by partisan appointments in the Joint Legislative Commission on Government Operations, commonly known as Gov Ops, a committee similarly aimed at reducing fraud, waste, and abuse at state and local levels. Torbett is a member of the Gov Ops committee, which the 2023 budget granted expansive powers including authorization to carry out warrantless investigations for “possible acts of malfeasance.”
… Kidwell — chair of NC’s DOGE-modeled initiative —
introduced a bill last Monday to prohibit Attorney General Jeff Jackson from making any legal arguments against Trump’s executive orders. According to reporting from ProPublica, Kidwell is affiliated with far-right militia groups the
Oath Keepers and
AP3. …”
…
Torbett has been subject to several ethics complaints regarding his appropriation of taxpayer funds. The Legislative Ethics Committee adopted
new standardsprohibiting lawmakers from using state-funded reimbursements for lodging or travel while simultaneously using campaign funds for the same purposes in 2020. The rule
came after veteran watchdog journalist Bob Hall reported Senate President Phil Berger collected more than $50,000 in lodging reimbursements despite paying his mortgage with campaign donations.
Hall filed a similar “double dipping”
ethics complaint against Torbett later the same year, but the committee responded by rescinding its new rule. The watchdog reporter again filed a complaint against Torbett in 2021 for failing to disclose his wife’s position on a charter school board receiving state funds in his
annual ethics filings. Torbett was chair of the House Education K-12 Committee at the time.
“I think he’s been involved in unethical practices,” Hall told Port City Daily. “To put him in charge of weeding out waste and corruption — he could begin by his own personal use of state money and put a halt to that to save taxpayers’ money.” …”
NORTH CAROLINA — Two lawmakers will lead North Carolina’s DOGE-style initiative to cut wasteful spending, including the lead sponsor of a bill to prohibit the attorney general from arguing against…
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