Executive Director Ardis Watkins sent a letter to Gov. Josh Stein, House Speaker Destin Hall, and Senate President Phil Berger laying out SEANC's concerns with State Auditor Dave Boliek's recent report on lapsed salaries and vacancies, which will likely be used to justify job cuts in the short session.

In the letter, Watkins noted that agencies are not allowed to fill some 3,000 vacant jobs because the legislature has not passed a state budget. A general statute requires any vacant job slated for cuts in the House's or Senate's budget proposals to be frozen until a budget is passed.

She also pointed out that investment in state services, especially salaries, has lagged for more than a decade. The state has added less than 1% to its workforce since 2009, even as North Carolina has grown by 2 million people. Virginia and Georgia have increased their workforces more than we have, and their state economies have grown faster than ours in that time.

"When delays occur, when systems fail, or when services fall short, it is state employees who are blamed — publicly and loudly — while the policies that created these conditions go unexamined," the letter states. "Lawmakers express shock when something goes wrong, even as the workforce is thinned, underpaid, and constrained from hiring. These outcomes are not surprises; they are the predictable results of chronic neglect."

Boliek told reporters at the legislature on Thursday that some jobs were "low-hanging fruit" to cut. He also recommended increased salaries for some hard-to-fill positions.