Tony Tata To Lead DOT = A Favor for The Pope

So Pat McCrory appoints the former Superintendent of Wake County Schools, the controversial Tony Tata,  as his Secretary of Transportation, and everybody goes "Say whaaa?" Does that make any sense? Tony Tata got fired as Superintendent of Wake County Schools for botching school bus management, among other things, and compared to the man he's succeeding, Gene Conti, he's woefully under-qualified for this job.

This a.m., a News&Observer editorial gives an explanation for this puzzling appointment: Art Pope wanted it:

The DOT, long riddled with political patronage problems under Democratic governors, was straightened out by the departing secretary Gene Conti, who had experience in the state department and in the federal Department of Transportation before taking the job. Tata’s lack of experience is quite a contrast, and raises suspicions that his appointment is a political statement by McCrory’s budget guru and adviser Art Pope, the Raleigh businessman who contributed heavily to the GOP majority in the General Assembly. Prior to that, Pope helped win a temporary Republican majority on the school board. That majority hired Tata in 2010 despite his scant qualifications as an educator.

We're in for a lot of this sort of thing as long as Pat McCrory plays Assistant Governor to Art Pope.

Applause for Gov. Perdue

Guv Bev is off to a bold start -- signing executive orders to remove political patronage from the road-building process, among other things -- and thereby setting up a massive confrontation with the grandees in the state's General Assembly (we're talking Democrats here) who kinda basically like their patronage and their money-raising powers and will likely not take kindly to the Guv messing in their sandbox. But she needs to mess with 'em.

And we've glad that on his way out the door, Mike Easley signed an executive order that e-mails sent by state employees are properly part of the public record and should be saved. The governor's office was being sued by a number of newspapers for deleting e-mails. It's sooo Mike Easley to wait until he's almost out of office to tacitly acknowledge that the newspapers were right about this issue all along.

Bev Perdue Names New DOT Top Dog

Eugene A. "Gene" Conti Jr. will head the NC DOT for Gov. Perdue. Good choice.

Gene was a VISTA volunteer in eastern Kentucky back in the mid-'60s, and after earning his undergraduate degree in sociology and anthropology at Eastern Michigan University, he completed both a master's and his Ph.D. (in anthro) at Duke. I knew him back in those days for his work on cultural change in the Appalachian mountains, before he shifted gears, got another degree in Policy Sciences and Public Affairs, worked as a policy analyst with the North Carolina Department of Administration, and headed to D.C. as a Presidential Management Intern and then onto the staff at the Office of Management and Budget. After other distinguished service, he became Congressman David Price's chief of staff for several years.

He knows transportation issues. When he left Congressman Price's office, he served a couple of years as assistant secretary at the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, and from 2001-2003 he had the number two job in the NC DOT.

Massively and uniquely qualified, this guy. With a BIG job ahead of him, draining that particular swamp.

ADDENDUM: Tom Jensen says that Perdue's appointment of Conti is (as much as anything) a positive signal of gubernatorial independence from NC Senate grandee Marc Basnight.