- A recent oversight hearing in the North Carolina House provided fireworks, but it also made an honest assessment of problems in Mecklenburg County and took steps towards addressing them
- Legislative oversight maintains the balance of power in government and helps protect our liberties, especially after the rise of bureaucracies
- North Carolina’s General Assembly generally performs strong oversight, but there is still room for improvement
We all know that legislatures exist to make laws and pass budgets. Of equal importance is ensuring that those laws and budgets are faithfully executed.
The World Bank’s textbook on legislative oversight explains that “legislative oversight in particular seeks to ensure that the executive and its agencies, or those to whom authority is delegated, remain responsive and accountable.”
Spectacle and substance in a Mecklenburg crime hearing
On Feb. 9, members of the North Carolina General Assembly’s House Select Committee on Oversight and Reform grilled Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden on allegations of mismanagement and corruption.
The hearing was part of a larger investigation into concerns about security in the county following the murder of Iryna Zarutska and security deficiencies discovered in a Federal Transit Administration audit of the Charlotte Area Transit System.
Among the other topics raised in the hearing were the 21 deaths in Mecklenburg County detention centers since McFadden took office in 2018 and allegations of misuse of sheriff’s department resources.
The hearing had a viral moment when McFadden failed to answer preliminary questions from Rep. Allen Chesser (R-Nash) about how many branches of government there are. McFadden then claimed that, as sheriff, he was part of the judicial branch. A dumbfounded Chesser responded, “This was not where I anticipated getting stuck.”
The committee also questioned several other officials involved in public safety in Mecklenburg County, including Charlotte Chief of Police Estella Patterson, Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, and Spencer Merriweather, the district attorney for the 26th Prosecutorial District (Mecklenburg County).
While McFadden dueled with committee members, the other witnesses offered substantial responses. Merriweather, a Democrat, testified in support of giving officials more authority to get habitual offenders off the street:
By the time a resident in a community knows that that person is a cancer on that community, we ought to make sure that we’ve got the teeth to deal with it. … But every time that we can have an opportunity to have a piece of legislation with more weight, more teeth, it certainly helps us in exercising that discretion [in prosecuting crimes].
Republicans on the committee responded by asking Merriweather to work with them to craft legislation supporting his efforts.
While one hearing will not solve all of Mecklenburg County’s problems, it was a step toward better protecting citizens and more efficiently spending taxpayer money.
Legislative oversight maintains balance and protects us from government overreach
In addition to making government more accountable to the public, legislative oversight helps maintain constitutional balance and protects our liberties.
In Federalist No. 51, James Madison wrote:
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
Legislative oversight is part of how government controls itself.
According to Madison, “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.” Unfortunately, the rise in executive power, particularly since the FDR administration, is akin to the “fortified” executive power that Madison warned might be “perfidiously abused.” Legislative oversight is a check that protects our liberties from such abuse.
The rise of the administrative state since the FDR era has made legislative oversight even more important. Legislatures have delegated rulemaking authority to bureaucrats, and many bureaucracies have acquired quasi-judicial authority to adjudicate disputes between themselves and those they regulate, violating due process rights and breaking the separation of powers envisioned by the Framers.
To help counter that, legislators must exercise vigorous oversight.
The Supreme Court affirmed the authority of Congress to investigate and compel the sharing of information from the executive branch, including the bureaucracy, in McGrain v. Daugherty (1927):
A legislative body cannot legislate wisely or effectively in the absence of information respecting the conditions which the legislation is intended to affect or change; and where the legislative body does not itself possess the requisite information — which not infrequently is true — recourse must be had to others who do possess it.
The rise of the administrative state has made legislative oversight more critical than ever.
Legislative oversight in North Carolina
Oversight is also critical at the state level. So, how is North Carolina doing?
A 2021 report by the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University Law School gave the state mixed grades for legislative oversight. The report stated that the General Assembly had high capacity for oversight through analytic bureaucracies (such as the state auditor and the Program Evaluation Division, or PED) and appropriations. On the other hand, it performed more limited oversight through committees and monitoring government contracts. In 2021 the General Assembly dissolved PED “in favor of giving members more involvement in the oversight process.”
The Rules Review Commission (RRC), appointed by General Assembly leaders, “reviews administrative rules” created by state bureaucracies to make sure that they comply with legislative intent. The RRC is also mandated to ensure that agencies follow the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirement that “the functions of rulemaking, investigation, advocacy, and adjudication are not all performed by the same person in the administrative process.” The Levin Center’s report noted that the “legislature has no authority” over the RRC once it appoints its members.
Other than reporting requirements on state government contracts over $25,000, the legislature “has no oversight authority over contracts in the state.” Although recent legislation has expanded the General Assembly’s scope for reviewing contracts, the state auditor provides most oversight of them.
One way state legislatures are reclaiming authority from bureaucracies is through REINS Acts (REINS stands for “Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny”). Those acts require that “any regulation that has an economic impact greater than a threshold set by the legislature must be agreed to by the legislature.” The General Assembly passed its version (House Bill 402, “Limit Rules With Substantial Financial Costs”) over Gov. Josh Stein’s veto in July of 2025.
The law requires supermajority votes on boards or commissions for any regulations that would cost persons an aggregate of one million dollars during any five-year period, and it requires legislative approval for any rules that would cost persons an aggregate of $20 million during any five-year period.
While House Bill 402 can help, it applies legislative oversight to only those few proposed regulations that would reach the $20 million threshold. Legislatures must be diligent in exercising their oversight functions to rein in bureaucratic excess and protect us from government overreach.
