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Demystifying Government Efficiency · The SEANC View

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Music.
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Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
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I'm Jonathan Owens, your communications director, and we have the usual crew in here today.
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I'll start with Artis Watkins, the executive director of Scenic,
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is in the house, along with Suzanne Beasley, the government relations director,
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and Sam Klein, our podcast producer.
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Everyone's here and excited about the big podcast episode that's about to happen.
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How are you guys doing today?
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Let's go. I feel like that was the smoothest intro you've ever done.
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It was. You knew all of our names. He did.
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It's crazy whenever you prepare, you know. I actually prepared today.
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So, yeah, I'm reading my Word document here.
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I'm very relaxed in here in the studio. This new studio.
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It's great. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah, but Sam, you did make it kind of chill, though.
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It does take our crazy edge off, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad. We'll find out.
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We can add some other things to bring back our crazy edge. I don't know,
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get some awesome trinkets and plants to go in here. Something.
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Plants might be. Yeah, plants. That'll make us rowdy.
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Nothing like a plant. Woo!
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That fills you full of energy. I was rowdy at Home Depot last week,
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and I spent $140 on plants. Welcome to adulthood.
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Plants. You can't walk in someplace like that without... Yeah.
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There's the question of the week. What's your favorite plant?
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Moving right along. So what happened this week at the legislature?
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We'll start with Suzanne, as always. Yeah, so it was a busy week.
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You know, the Senate had their bill filing deadline to meet last week. We got through that.
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This week, the House has their bill filing deadline, which late yesterday afternoon
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got extended through next week, but only for legislation that's already in the pipeline.
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It's simply that there are so many bills that have not been time stamped with
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the principal clerk's office. For them to get through all of those bills and
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assign a bill number, they need a little extra time.
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So if it's already in the pipeline, it'll go through next week.
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There's over 700 bills already that were filed this week. And I spoke with the
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principal clerk today, and he said they're expecting a thousand and some change.
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So what was the reason to extend it, just because bill drafting is so swamped?
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I don't think it's bill drafting because this would be legislation that's already been written.
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You know, you've already turned it in. It just hasn't had the time stamp and
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a bill number assigned to it.
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So they're going to run out of time before they give every piece of legislation a bill number. Gotcha.
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Maybe that department is understaffed. That's a possibility.
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Vacancy rate at the bill. State employees, so probably. That's a possibility.
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I mean, I've heard that there's a shortage of legislative assistance. So, you know.
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I'm sure it's across the board everywhere. So, you know, it's a busy week,
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reading bills, trying to keep up with things.
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Did the house have their own version of the state hip-hop song, Bill?
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Did not see that, but that doesn't mean it's not coming. We still have several hundred bills.
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Well, maybe like a J. Cole song.
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Because he's from Fayetteville, right? Woo!
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So no crazy bills that you've seen yet? I mean, some of them are crazy. You just don't know.
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Yeah, nothing new at this point. We're still reading bills.
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So let me make that very clear that between committee meetings,
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after we get home from work, this afternoon, after this, you know,
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Senate had adjourned, we're reading bills,
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trying not to get overloaded, you know, all in one day, which will probably
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happen anyway, because there'll be a dump at the end of next week.
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So, yeah. It's a crazy business, feast or famine.
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Speaking of feast or famine, you also have maybe a little information about
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the Senate's budget that's coming out?
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Yeah, a little bit. We were successful in getting hold of Senator Lee and Senator
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Jackson, who are big co-chairs in the Senate, and they both confirmed that the
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Senate budget will come out before Easter.
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We heard an array of different times yesterday. I heard everything from next
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Monday to April 17th to just sometime before Easter. All of that's before Easter, so whenever.
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Obviously, they didn't share specifics of what's in that budget,
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but, you know, as soon as we've got that kind of information,
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we'll share it with y'all. But it's coming soon.
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And Senator Lee got a promotion this week, right? He did. He is the new majority
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leader of the Senate. Okay. Congratulations, Senator Lee.
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I guess we don't have any real news to report on pay raises or COAs,
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which is always a hot topic for us, right?
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Yeah, not until we know what's in the budget. Although we do feel like there
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is a pretty good little movement over there to try to do better than Governor
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Stein's budget did, the 2%.
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Yeah. Which, by the way, I have to point something out on this podcast because
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Kristen Walker, the governor's budget director, was on Colin Campbell's podcast.
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And she was saying the 2% plus one-time $1,000 bonus, which,
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as we talked about, wouldn't be $1,000 after tax, but that the 2% and the bonus
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equates to around a 3.6% for most state employees.
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That is not how bonuses work. That doesn't turn your raise into a bigger raise.
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Your raise is still just the 2% because next year, that part that was the bonus
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won't be there. Yeah, don't confuse people. It doesn't change your salary.
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Recurring salary is the same as the bonus. Yes, Sam's got her hand up.
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Do they think that that $1,000 bonus is going to be added every month?
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Because that's not... No.
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So they know it's not. Yeah. They just thought that's the way it should be looked
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at, and that's crazy talk.
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I spoke about it in one of my videos I did last week about how skewed that number
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is, because Director Walker actually had said that in Appropriations Committee
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when they presented the governor's budget to the legislature.
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So, you know, it's just a skewed number because recurring salary increases and
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one-time bonus money or two different pots of money, so you can't put them together
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and make it be something.
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And if they weren't, if they're so alike, just give it all as recurring. Right, right.
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And yet they're not. That's why you're not giving it. My thought was,
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what do you mean it's a 3.6%?
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It's just not. It's not. To be clear. If it's not recurring, then it's not.
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But what concerns me, though, is legislators hearing that might feel like,
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that's true, it's kind of a 3.6%. It's not the first time that this kind of
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rhetoric. I hate it, though.
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Because it's wrong. Right. And Kristen Walker is very properly respected in what she does.
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So it's tough to hear that because she knows a lot better than that about how bonuses work.
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So another big thing that happened this week was artists made her triumphant
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return to the legislature as. Triumphant return?
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Like what? A few days before that? Making a speech before the Senate regulation
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reform. Regulatory Reform Committee.
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And that was about the DAVE Act, which is the Senate's kind of attempt at government
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efficiency committee work, right?
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Right. So we talked about this a little last week. We now have,
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there are actually three separate legislative committees that exist to look
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at studying, evaluating programs or agencies, anything government.
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So there's three in the legislature. The House has their doge-style effort.
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Governor Stein announced he was going to have an effort that wasn't really defined
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either, except that they're going to use a scalpel, not a chainsaw.
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And then yesterday in reg reform, we heard the DAVE Act, which would give the
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state auditor the power to, well, first of all, they said there would be positions involved.
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So the auditor's office would get a little bigger and that these people would
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look at agencies and vacant positions and determine using in part AI,
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artificial intelligence, as a tool, which agencies and which vacant positions can be cut.
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And that rang a dozen different alarm bells for us.
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But that would make number six in terms of government committees on how to make
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government more efficient by spending money for all these efforts to try to
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make government less wasteful and more efficient.
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Really let that part sink in.
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There's six different efforts, none of which are free to do,
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all of which take taxpayer resources to try to figure out how to be more efficient.
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So it's ironic that your committees looking for waste, fraud,
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and abuse are wasteful, fraudulent, and possibly abusive.
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Okay, I'm not going to label them with those kind of pejorative monikers because I don't know.
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You know, somebody may do an amazing job, but the part that's not in any of
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this is the actual employees.
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Now, all of them would have to rely in part on agency heads or I don't know
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how far down the supervisor track in an agency they go to say,
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tell me about these jobs that are vacant. How important are they?
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But if you're using artificial intelligence and Auditor Bullock did come to
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the committee and he said, you know, we want to be data driven,
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basically, that it would all be assessed.
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The data would drive these decisions. But data can't tell you some things.
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Like, how is the AI going to tell somebody, hey,
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we don't only need more probation parole folks, but we also need them to have
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bulletproof vests that are of a higher quality than they have,
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or we'll have more people die the way they did in Charlotte in April when they
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were backing up U.S. Marshals.
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I actually had a question about this, and it's kind of rhetorical,
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but it's serious as well.
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If the state auditor finds places where we actually need more state employees,
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do you think we'll ever hear about that?
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Well, that's not what he's been charged with. And I don't know,
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maybe he'll come back and say, yeah, we can't cut any of this stuff.
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Good grief, I looked at it and it's kind of important.
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But I don't know. But AI is not likely to do that. But again,
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how does AI tell you, I mean, what do you plug in?
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Here's how many probation parole we need per quarter million population.
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Somebody's got to plug things in. And that's the other question we had.
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What are the parameters?
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No one laid out anything about other than he can use AI and we're going to give him more people to do it.
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Nobody said what the parameters of examination would be.
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How can you know? Yeah, and I thought you're, as part of your speech,
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you said that this look at government efficiency is, what was that?
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It's position efficiency.
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It's actually looking for position.
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People think government efficiency is position, is the number of state employees. Yeah.
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People think the government is the employees, period, that we're not spending
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money other than on state employees.
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If you ask somebody, that's really the first thing they think of.
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Well, we've got to pay the people. And OK, they might say in the equipment they're
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working with, the building they're in, and that's it.
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And that quote really struck a chord, I think, with all the reporters who were
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in the room because a lot of them.
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They all used it in their stories. And then we posted it on Facebook and it
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got a lot of response as well. I mean, I think it's... Well, think about all those.
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There's so many government contracts, either in the budget to non-governmental
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entities who literally get handed money from the state. Here you go. Boom.
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This is your money. And, you know, a lot of people have things in their district
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that seem very important.
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And so they try, they're doing their job as a legislator, try to get those resources
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back home. And sometimes that's to non-governmental entities who get funded
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in part or in whole by the government.
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Then you have the contracts that the agencies themselves put out for bid, and somebody wins that.
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They do the contract. And what we understand from employees in these departments,
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and that's what's going to make this so interesting to see what they find or
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don't, we hear all the time there is absolutely not oversight over these contracts,
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that we would need a whole lot more people inside than we have.
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To adequately supervise what we're paying other companies to do.
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And that, you know, you got to think, nobody's going to want to do a government
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contract unless there's money to be made for the company.
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So, yeah, I sent y'all another Jon Stewart podcast this week.
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I don't know if you've gotten listened to it, but it had Michael Lewis,
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the author of Moneyball, which is.
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Oh, I remember that. But now he's he's written a book about government employees,
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about public sector employees.
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And it's it's a really interesting. But one of the huge takeaways I took from
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that podcast was the statement that government exists to handle things the private sector won't do,
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which is kind of the crux of why we're here. Right.
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So he gave the example of rural broadband, you know, like there's no market
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for broadband access that will be profitable for a private company. Right.
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Right. So like prisons, there's things that the government, obviously,
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that's why we support the people we do. the government does things that the
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private sector will not do, right? That's true. So.
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Or the private sector will do, they'll do it only if there's enough money in
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it to pay people to do it and still have a good amount of profit left over.
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So I guess what my argument is that, like, you can't run government like a business.
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And that's kind of how all these efficiency efforts are kind of aimed at,
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you know, making government profitable or getting to the bottom line.
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Yeah. So my thought was, as you said, the government is here to do the jobs
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that the private sector doesn't want to do.
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Then why are we contracting everything out to the private sector if that's what we are doing for?
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Look, I'm not hating on anybody who bids for these contracts and does them.
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The work needs to be done if it's chosen to contract it out.
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The beef I have about it is that it almost never is going to be cheaper nor
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more efficient and better quality than what you get out of your own internal
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people that you can literally supervise without a problem every day.
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Because if it was, they would already do it. That's it. Exactly.
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Like they would do it. You wouldn't need government to run a prison.
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That's right. Right. Because you're paying extra people to do this as a contract
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rather than just paying the employees. You already have more to do the job that
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they were hired to do. And prisons are a great example.
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We had to take prisons back in North Carolina. They contracted some prisons decades ago.
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Had to pull them back inside because it was a cluster.
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Because once it's not profitable, you know, you're not going to run your company
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into the ground trying to maintain them at a certain level.
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But we are not alone. This is all over the country. People have prisons are a big one.
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Contracted out, you end up with either a lot of lawsuits because at the end
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of the day, this is a whole other discussion, but the state does hold liability.
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No matter who does the work, you can bet that a good plaintiff's lawyer is going
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to make sure the state of North Carolina is one of the defendants because that's
14:46
the deep pockets. Yeah, because the state is who is ultimately responsible.
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That's who put the person in prison.
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You know, that's why they're in prison.
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So but that's a huge, like you said, another discussion maybe for another podcast,
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just the whole issue of privatization.
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But I mean, obviously, this is probably you think this will probably be like
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the biggest focus of our year.
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I mean, I mean, I think it's very clear that with the governor and both chambers
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of the legislature having their own efficiency movements that everybody is trying to do.
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To at least feel like there must be some big public outcry for just cutting jobs.
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At the end of the day, that's what no one has said yet.
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We're going to pull all these contracts and we're going to examine them deeply.
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No one has said that. Governor Stein's office didn't say that.
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They gave very little information except they're going to use a scalpel. And to be honest,
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When you're talking to state employees, they do not care if you're using a chainsaw
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or a scalpel because you can kill them either way.
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That's a cut. Yeah. And Representative Torbett, actually, when he was on our
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podcast, did say they would be open to looking at the contracts.
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But I don't know how much in terms of resources they have to do that work.
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So that'll be I do think there would be a desire there based on what he said,
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but I don't know if it'll end up something they can do.
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And then in the Senate, this DAVE Act doesn't talk about that at all.
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Did absolutely no reference to government in terms of government,
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just positions, vacant positions.
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And just a reminder, 20% overall of the positions are vacant,
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more than 60% in some of our prisons, but 20% across government.
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And they are not vacant, no matter what anybody says, because,
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you know, people haven't been trying to fill them, because, you know,
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just some sort of administrative buffoonery.
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Yeah, well, it's just not attractive to come to work for this.
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Yeah, we don't pay enough.
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When we're the third lowest paid in the country for our prison personnel,
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and we've heard this from, when we put that thing up about prison personnel,
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we heard from, I don't know how many other people working in state government
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saying, we don't make as much as our counterparts in the Southeast either.
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And that wouldn't be a shock. Yeah.
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You said something earlier, or maybe it was the end of last week,
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that the stats have stuck in my head, though, relevant to all of this,
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that the population of North Carolina has actually grown in the last 15 years 16 percent.
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And the government workforce has shrunk 24 percent.
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So you've got 24 percent fewer employees providing critical public services
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to 16 percent more population. Yeah.
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You know, Grover Norquist said years ago he wanted to drown government in a bathtub.
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But what you've really seen at state government level around the country is
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more of a waterboarding of government, a slow process.
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Awful. Your metaphors are so great. Waterboarding.
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And I think it's important for us to always go back to perception of state employees.
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You know, we talked about it last week. They just. It's always a challenge.
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Yeah. Just always a challenge.
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But I think that it's kind of drives a lot of this government efficiency talk,
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you know, that there's always such a bad perception of state employees.
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But you got it. They have to remember that the state employees don't set the
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policies. They don't fund the policy.
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I think that the people at the DMV, for example, would love to be able to do
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an awesome job with enough employees.
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How in the world would they not? Because people are coming in screaming at them.
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They're not screaming at legislators.
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They're screaming at the people in the DMV office who have not done a darn thing
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to start any trouble for the citizens. But the citizens are frustrated.
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And having worked for the state government at one point, I know we were told appropriately.
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Hey, understand that people are just upset when they call the government.
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It's not because things are going great.
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So be patient. You know, you don't have to take a cussing out.
18:38
You can politely ask them to talk to, you know, I was with Department of Labor,
18:42
ask them to speak to the commissioner about it and tell them you were instructed
18:45
to hang up if people start cussing you out.
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But that was it. Otherwise, we were told you need to listen and they're frustrated.
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And DMV people, we all go to DMV. We have to.
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And we get frustrated too. But I watch, I don't know about y'all,
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I watch the people that work there and what's going on.
19:02
And it's just, it's a terrible situation for them.
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But you're right, John, they didn't create it, but they have to deal with it. Yeah.
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And I think, I just keep saying this just in random conversations with people.
19:12
These cuts, these jobs are,
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On any level that are being cut, they are working people just like everybody else.
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So your neighbor who works for DOT, who may lose his job or DHHS,
19:25
loses their job. They're working people just like you.
19:29
Yeah, that affects the economy, first of all. It does. I mean,
19:32
which is happening in North Carolina.
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The federal cuts have now, they're starting to hit home.
19:37
And there's the business right over here. I don't know if it's a business,
19:40
but RTI deals a lot with the USAID contracts and things, and they've had lots of layouts.
19:47
I mean, a lot of the grants and, I mean, these things fund positions.
19:51
So what you're going to have is a spike in unemployment in the state at the
19:56
same time as there's going to be definitely less money coming into the state.
20:00
We were talking to the speaker yesterday. I don't know how they're going to even write a budget.
20:03
How do you write one not knowing what's coming down the pike?
20:06
You know what I mean? How much of this is just kind of a copy of cat of what's
20:10
going on at the federal level?
20:12
You know, just wanting to win some of those political points.
20:15
I hope a lot of it is, and I'll tell you why.
20:17
Because this doge mess that sounded like everybody's dream, everybody loved
20:22
it, the public is souring hugely on it.
20:25
Because it sounded good, and it's somebody who came from business with no governmental
20:30
experience who said, this is what we're going to do.
20:33
And it's causing, there's been some clusters as we went along.
20:36
Nuclear scientists who, oops, we need to put you back.
20:39
Those kind of things have made the public unsure of the Doge effort,
20:44
and that's good, that's appropriate, because something like that shouldn't be
20:49
done at warp speed, or that's exactly what's gonna happen. You're gonna send some people home.
20:54
Thinking you're making people happy because you're putting some tallies on the
20:57
chalkboard in the cut column, but then the public's going to suffer from the
21:02
lack of whatever important thing they did.
21:04
And we gave newborn screening as an example yesterday because I can't think
21:08
of anything that freaks me out more than delaying the treatment or diagnosis
21:13
of terrible things with babies.
21:15
And the bottom line is we weren't able at HHS for years to keep enough people
21:20
in those positions to get those tests turned around as quickly as we used to.
21:25
So literal newborns were going without needed treatment. That should just scare anyone.
21:31
That kind of thing, though, there's a million stories like that.
21:34
Yeah, that's where there's got to be a human element. Yeah.
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In all of this. And the bottom line is, if you want an efficient.
21:41
Effective government, you have to fund it and you have to fund the positions
21:44
for it and fund it well enough to the to keep people, for one thing.
21:48
Well, actually, I had someone who works in the correction community reached
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out to me on my Facebook page, and we were just talking about the step pay plan
21:57
that the state highway patrol correctional officers have.
22:01
You know, he wanted to know why someone in another position,
22:04
why they don't have that. And we just got to talking about step pay plans,
22:08
pay plans in general, and we talked about the pay plan for the entire state
22:11
workforce that we used to have when I first started with scenic.
22:15
There was a pay plan. Well, it was in law, but it was never funded. It was never funded.
22:20
Right. And so I had to explain that to him that, yeah, I mean,
22:22
that's a noble goal. And yes, we would love to see, you know,
22:26
that kind of a pay plan for everybody. But if the General Assembly doesn't properly
22:30
fund it, then it means nothing.
22:32
And to be clear, my understanding is that was passed in like the late 90s.
22:36
Yeah. And so Democrats didn't fund it for however many years before Republicans didn't fund it.
22:42
And eventually they did take that off the books. Sure did. a couple years ago
22:45
because it was never going to be funded.
22:48
So people say they want everything based on merit, but when there's a merit
22:51
component, nobody funded it.
22:53
So nobody gave anybody incentive to be amazing ever, ever.
22:58
So this week you also spoke in committee, Suzanne, on the proposed DEI bill.
23:04
I did, because it's still that bill that's a solution to it,
23:07
hasn't found its problem yet.
23:09
And we don't understand. Well, what's DEI?
23:11
Diversity, equity, and inclusion. So this bill filed by Representative Brendan
23:16
Jones and the co-sponsors that have signed on to it would remove those kinds
23:21
of policies from state agency across the board.
23:24
And those kinds of policies are, what is DEI policy? I think that's the whole question. Exactly.
23:30
No one can say. Yeah. Because here's no, yeah.
23:34
That's the solution part that we're still trying to find. Exactly.
23:37
And here's the problem with the whole thing, is that people believe when they
23:42
see that bill, because we get
23:44
the calls, that there's some sort of quota program in state government,
23:48
you know, hire this many of this kind of person and whatnot.
23:52
There is not. There is no quota system in state government.
23:55
That's not happening. But that's one thing that's believed because of the DEI
23:59
bill. My understanding was it was heavily questioned in House rules yesterday
24:04
afternoon, particularly about the quota.
24:06
Artis and I were meeting with the speaker, so I was not present for that meeting.
24:09
But yeah, we still are not sure what that bill is trying to solve.
24:13
And that's all I said in committee is we're just not here to argue a bill.
24:16
I'm just not sure what it does. If there's some big problem,
24:19
we're just still trying to figure out what it is.
24:21
But at the same time, it does play into this kind of greater issue of public
24:25
employees being thought of as not efficient or wasteful.
24:30
But also that makes it sound like public employees, a lot of them are in their
24:34
jobs because of some immutable characteristic of birth. That's not true. And so.
24:40
And I said in committee, too. It's very disheartening. You guys,
24:43
we're the first people that hear when something like that happens somewhere,
24:46
we're going to get phone calls. Complaints.
24:48
But if you've got a 20% vacancy rate across the board.
24:52
You're taking whoever you can get. Well, yeah, there's that.
24:55
But the demoralization of your workforce seems a really inefficient thing to do in and of itself.
25:01
Clearly, people don't realize it. I don't think they would intentionally try to hurt people.
25:04
But we just need them to hear that unless there's some big problem that needs
25:09
solving with that, it is really demoralizing a lot of people.
25:12
Because, you know, what you hear from the employees is that they want to point
25:16
at people at the top and say, I can tell you who's not qualified.
25:20
And, you know, this kind of rigmarole just goes round and round and doesn't get you anywhere.
25:25
I kind of feel like bills like this are just looking for a fight,
25:28
that they want folks like us to stand up and shout bloody murder.
25:33
And we. Maybe. I mean, but we don't have anything to shout at.
25:35
If you don't know what it is, you can't shout at it. OK.
25:38
Yeah. Yeah. And we still extended the invitation in committee.
25:43
We've invited Representative Jones before committee to join us on the podcast.
25:47
And that invitation still is open. And we'd love to talk about this.
25:50
We'd love for him to have the opportunity to talk about his bill.
25:54
So, you know, he's been quite a busy guy.
25:56
And as always, we invite anybody who wants to come on to come on.
26:00
Because there are so many things that somebody may have a number of stories
26:04
they've heard or something like that that we don't know about.
26:06
And those are the kind of things that we want people listening to this to have access to.
26:10
Because when they call here, you know, sometimes we just have to tell them,
26:14
I'm not real sure why that's happening or why that's out there.
26:17
So what are the prospects for that bill? I know it's gone through one committee, right?
26:21
And it passed. It passed both committees this week? It passed rules yesterday.
26:25
So it'll be on the floor next week, right?
26:26
I would assume it would be on the floor next week, yes. Okay.
26:30
We'll be watching that. And then what? Does it go to the Senate, I guess?
26:33
The Senate doesn't have a version. If it passes on the House floor,
26:36
then. But there's no Senate complement to this? No companion bill.
26:40
Okay. Well, good luck with that. Thanks so much.
26:45
Makes me think of Mosby from Sweet Life with Zack and Cody. Good luck with that.
26:50
Oh, gosh. See, that's one of those references. But we just talked.
26:54
Even I'm too young. That is my nostalgia.
26:58
We just talked about a show she'd never heard of. That's true.
27:01
I mean, I've at least heard of the show she referenced. Zack and Cody.
27:05
Yeah. So I have something to admit. Whenever I hear the term DEI,
27:08
I always think of NASCAR, Dale Earnhardt Incorporated. Yeah.
27:15
Oh, my gosh. That's like what I was thinking the whole time.
27:19
That's a thing. That may be why it rings something inside of me every time I
27:22
hear the expression. That was his, like, race team.
27:25
Because Earnhardt, man, he was the man.
27:28
Praise hell, praise Dale. Anyway, I digress. Rubbing his racing.
27:32
So the only other topic I had down here was I wanted to kind of ask you both,
27:37
because you're knowledgeable folks about the retirement system,
27:40
How the tariffs that have been proposed and the subsequent stock market reaction,
27:46
how retirees should feel about that?
27:49
Should they be worried about the reaction?
27:52
The stock market is pretty down today. Today is Thursday.
27:55
I think it was down 3% when we came in here. Well, number one,
27:59
Dale Falwell probably feels really vindicated today in his conservative investment
28:03
style that people keep bashing because today would be a good day to invest the way Dale invested.
28:08
But it depends how long this lasts in terms of any fallout in the market from the tariffs.
28:13
And saw someone from the Treasury, not Treasurer's Office here, the U.S.
28:18
Treasury, who was being interviewed saying, we could expect at least a couple
28:23
of quarters at a minimum of the fallout from the tariffs.
28:26
In other words, the market remaining suppressed for probably a couple of quarters.
28:31
In a system, our size will probably be okay, but will it take a hit and be that
28:36
much harder for Treasure Runner to build up? Yeah.
28:39
Yeah, I don't know if it's an analogous situation, but I just think back to
28:43
when, you know, COVID first hit and there was a significant downturn in the market.
28:48
And at that time, Treasurer Falwell and I think everyone was saying,
28:53
you know, it's a long term strategy of investment.
28:56
Oh, yeah, they were picking on him really bad in the six months prior to COVID
29:00
hitting about the conservatism of his investment approach.
29:03
He's like, see, I told you. Yeah. So then after COVID happened,
29:06
which, of course, he had no way of knowing it would happen, the bottom line
29:09
is anything could happen anytime. And that was kind of his thinking.
29:13
And certainly there's a more aggressive approach investment-wise that Treasurer Briner's after.
29:17
And by more aggressive, I don't mean he doesn't sound like he wants to be at
29:22
all a super aggressive investor because it is a pension fund.
29:25
It's not just somebody's personal money.
29:27
And so I think he's going to have the proper amount of caution,
29:30
but it sounds like he does want to take more risk.
29:32
And that's fine. You know, you have different investment strategies with different
29:36
treasurers and, you know, it's going to be OK, but the market will be down for a bit, it looks like.
29:42
And I had read something that Bitcoin is actually the reverse,
29:45
that it would be up during times like this. Yeah, it'll be kind of like bonds in a weird way.
29:51
Yeah, but it's actually it started the day going way up and now it's kind of leveled out.
29:57
So I'm just checking the old ticker there. But I think that retirees don't have
30:02
to worry too much, but they do need to be aware. You always hear investment
30:07
planners will tell you not to panic.
30:09
I mean, I know they do hear for us. Sure, you got to hold. Don't panic.
30:13
Just sit tight. That's hard.
30:15
I mean, it's hard not to think about it and hard not to feel some level of fear.
30:19
I think two quarters into it, if we're still looking at the pain,
30:22
quote pain, being extreme.
30:24
Yeah, I mean, you're starting to look into, can you fund the retirement system
30:27
the way you need to? And things like that, because it would be a great time
30:30
for big systems like this one to be buying, but you can't buy if you're not properly funded. Yeah.
30:36
Well, that was just a kind of out-of-the-blue question for y'all.
30:39
I'm sorry to throw that one out there, but I think it's the topic of the day,
30:43
so we might as well address it.
30:45
Anything else going on we want to talk about before we get to my awesome question of the week?
30:49
I think that covers it. Well, for the biggest thing. For the time,
30:53
I mean, my goodness. We're probably already over. Yeah, we're over, I think.
30:57
So this week I consulted Google for a question because I am out of topics.
31:02
And we kind of talked about them beforehand, and Sam thought this one was a good idea.
31:08
So play my song.
31:11
Music.
31:17
All right. So what surprises you about yourself? Start with me. Yeah, it's always you.
31:24
Always me. I'm the first one. Surprise myself daily. Honestly,
31:28
my career with Scenic is probably the biggest thing.
31:31
I was actually having a conversation with a coworker here in the office earlier this morning.
31:35
She asked me how I even ended up, you know, being a lobbyist for Scenic.
31:39
So I told her about starting in the finance department and that artist gave
31:43
me an opportunity in the legislative affairs department. Next thing I knew,
31:46
I was sitting in committee meetings and trolling the legislature.
31:49
So and here I am today. So I still have moments where, you know,
31:53
I'm standing in committee. I actually spoke in committee and I'm like, how did I get here? Yeah.
31:57
So I don't know. This is not what I would have planned for a career.
32:01
I don't know that you planned for this, but it's been a good one.
32:06
Awesome. So yeah. I think that's a good one. Yeah. Sam, you're next.
32:09
What shocks you about yourself?
32:11
I think how many opportunities I'm willing to take shocks me about myself because
32:16
I'm very much a creature of habit.
32:18
I like my consistency. I don't like big changes, but recently I've been allowing
32:24
myself to like more big changes Like, when I went to Hawaii,
32:29
I did a lot of walking around by myself.
32:32
I am terrified of doing that anywhere in Raleigh.
32:37
And it's been a big adjustment adapting to knowing that I can do those kinds of things in Raleigh.
32:43
But it kind of has shocked me being like, dang, I'm a lot more comfortable taking
32:48
chances now than I used to be.
32:51
That's awesome. That's inspirational. I can remember being a little shy.
32:55
I think we all remember when we first moved out and got out of college and we
33:01
were... Strike out on your own, be independent. That's cool.
33:03
Maybe a little afraid of everything. Everything.
33:07
I'm still afraid. My parents kicked me off their insurance today and I had to
33:10
get my own policy. I was freaking out.
33:13
What about you, Artis? So I tried to Google an answer since you Googled the question.
33:19
Because I was going to use AI to do the work for me. Chat GPT says. Yeah. Yeah.
33:24
I wasn't very efficient at it, though. So I think that when I watch those commercials
33:30
for Don't Become Your Parent and they try to coach people through,
33:33
you know, don't get on an elevator and talk to everybody.
33:36
I'm shocked at how many of those little examples where it's making fun of the
33:41
way people start acting at a certain age.
33:43
And we act out. Just like their parents. Yeah.
33:45
I'm shocked, surprised, and sometimes appalled at how I do that.
33:49
I also do that. So, yeah, that would be mine.
33:52
That's a good one, too. Yeah. I love those commercials.
33:55
I'm surprised that it really is true. You do become your parents.
33:58
I find myself not understanding some technology these days, you know,
34:02
and my daughter will have to teach me.
34:04
So what I'm hearing is I should never own a home because it's saying that homeowners
34:08
turn into their parents.
34:10
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Big time. I don't need to own a home. Big time.
34:12
I don't want to turn into my mom and dad. Just rent.
34:14
Yeah. Just rent for the rest of my life.
34:17
Yeah, I heard that you should always rent where you live and own where you rent.
34:24
So you should rent your the house you live in and
34:27
then own properties that you run out me and my friends will
34:30
buy a beach house one day we'll do that sounds like a great strategy you
34:33
have to be very rich like a lot of capital yeah it also sounds
34:36
very expensive yeah a lot of capital outlay i think that mine would probably
34:40
be how much i like being a dad when i grew up i was growing up you know i've
34:45
always i've been the baby so maybe i was a little selfish but like you know
34:50
i never really thought about it too much, how much I'd want to be a dad.
34:53
And it's like the best thing on earth. Awesome.
34:57
That's my favorite answer today. My favorite thing in life right now.
35:01
So that's what shocks me. Good stuff.
35:03
Claire is at such a good age. Yeah. It's just me and her today.
35:07
Mom is out on work. Special time. I'm a single dad tonight.
35:11
So thanks for everyone for joining us this week and we'll see you next week.
35:15
Music.