Democratic Governor Cooper of North Carolina wins a round – if temporarily – against the GOP in the area of Cabinet appointees, as reported by ABC News:
Cooper won the latest battle Wednesday as a three-judge panel temporarily blocked a new law that required Senate confirmation for the governor’s Cabinet members, using a process similar to what the U.S. Senate does for the president’s Cabinet choices.
The state law was passed in the waning days of GOP Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration and seen by Democrats as a way to undermine the new governor’s authority. Cooper sued over this and other laws that reduced his powers after he was sworn in Jan. 1.
Sounds encouraging, doesn’t it? But here’s the sad part:
Republican lawmakers say the state Constitution gives the senators “advice and consent” powers over gubernatorial appointments. The leaders say the public has the right to see a governor’s Cabinet face questions in an open forum.
Senators have laid out a schedule to examine Cooper’s eight picks through mid-March. They said they weren’t aiming to be confrontational and wanted to determine if Cooper’s choices were capable of performing the job, lacked conflicts of interest and planned to follow the law.
It sounds, from this faraway vantage point, actually rather reasonable. The problem, of course, is that the law was a rush job, ramrodded through the legislature after the election was decided, and is perceived as an attempt to wound a political rival, rather than a wise addition to the sober job of governance. If this had been passed a couple of years ago, there probably wouldn’t be a bit of controversy.
But it also seems likely that if the law was permitted to stand, none of his Cabinet picks would be confirmed unless they were GOP members in good standing. That’s how partisan it seems to be in North Carolina. I don’t know about the Democrats, but the GOP plays this like a game, not like adults dealing with government.
