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Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Barrett of Mocksville says he would bring the discipline of the private sector to state government.

He also wants to see a closer working relationship between Raleigh and the state’s localities, which he says have been neglected and saddled with an unfair share of the burden.

Barrett spoke with members of The Pilot’s staff during a recent visit to the paper. Here is an edited transcript of that tape-recorded interview.

Q: About your background: You’re a commissioner in Davie County? Mocksville?

A: That’s right. I was born in Fayetteville. Our first destination was Raeford. My dad worked in textiles there. We moved to Laurinburg when I was 4, lived in Laurinburg from age 4 until 18. My father was in textiles there and was a city councilman. My mother was a public school teacher.

Went to public school in Laurinburg and worked on a farm in Scotland County growing up. I got fortunate enough to get a scholarship to Wake Forest undergraduate and went to Wake Forest undergrad and to Wake Forest Law School. I got out and have been an employment attorney, representing businesses for basically the last 18 years or so. I’ve been in the Winston-Salem area the vast majority of that time —almost 18 years.

I now live in Davie County. I’ve got a wife and two children. I’m a county commissioner — was the chairman for a year. We rotate the chair, so I was chairman from 2001 to 2002. I’ve been chairman of the board of trustees of the Davie County hospital, which we reopened since I’ve been the county commissioner.

I announced for governor in May of 2003.

Q: What do you think you bring to the race?

A: I think several things. One is that I do come from a private sector background, having worked for businesses for nearly 20 years in employment law. So I understand what it takes to create jobs in the private sector. I understand how to run business efficiently, and I can take that to Raleigh to help create jobs and run state government efficiently.

I also know something about the red tape of state government, having represented businesses in issues with state government. But I think, really, the real distinction focuses back on the local government background and local government perspective. The thing that I’ve seen statewide is that state government is not doing its job in terms of being a partner with local governments and local communities across the state.

An example that is the most egregious is the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars from local governments, when the state government couldn’t get its act together and couldn’t balance its budget, so it took money from local governments all across the state. But it occurs over and over and over again. It occurs with unfunded mandates. You see the massive Medicaid — the unfunded mandate that was placed on the counties — and if your Medicaid expenditures increase every year, then you don’t have the monies necessary to provide the essential services people need.

Q: If you do take some of the burden back off of the local governments, then that’s good for them, but how do you make up the deficit in Raleigh?

A: How you make up the deficit in Raleigh is applying the same principles that people do in their private lives and their business lives: You don’t spend more money than you take in; you prioritize; you spend money on things you need versus what you want.

The concept that I promote is zero-based budgeting, which is what we do in Davie County and most people do in their private lives. That is, they evaluate their spending periodically to make sure they’re spending money on things that they should be spending it on. But in Raleigh, they don’t believe in that. They believe in what’s called a continuation budget, which means that this core massive budget increases percentage-wise every year without any kind of evaluation as to whether or not those programs are serving any legitimate need.

So the only things they debate are the expansion budget items. They continue to fund the same core budget year after year at an increased percentage, which makes it grow like a snowball, bigger and bigger and bigger. You can’t get hold of spending until you look at that core budget.

Then you get squeezed and you start taking money from the highway trust fund. You start taking money from local communities. You are not able to fund Medicaid.

Q: You mentioned that your father is in textiles, which, obviously, is an industry that’s got a lot of problems right now, most notably the thing with Pillowtex, which used to be Cannon Mills. What would you do as governor to help the textile industry?

A: I think there’s a series of things. First off, you have to have a governor who will stand up for the jobs here in North Carolina. I’m a strong supporter of President Bush. But as governor you represent the people of North Carolina. You have to realize that if the trade policies aren’t enforced, that can have a detrimental impact here in North Carolina.

We need a governor who will stand up and work with the president and work with the administration to make sure that the trade policies will protect our jobs here in North Carolina. That’s one thing. The other thing is that we’ve got to get the environment in North Carolina suitable for textiles and other types of businesses to do well here.

We have tax rates that are higher than surrounding states. We have a bureaucracy in terms of regulation that is not business-friendly. We have an infrastructure that is declining in terms of, for instance, roads. We’ve gone from being called “the Good Roads State” to now being called “the Bumpy Roads State.” Statistically, the roads aren’t at the level they were when I was growing up. We used to be in the top 10, now we’re in the bottom 10 of states, in terms of the quality of our roads.

Our schools still need a lot of help. Those kinds of infrastructure needs have to be met in order to have a business climate that will be suitable for businesses to do well to create jobs. And that will be true for textiles and everybody else.

Q: You touched on, in some of your answers, the notion that North Carolina is a collection of small towns. For the most part, the prosperity seems to be — what prosperity there is, I should say — seems to be centered in the metropolitan areas. Is that true? And if it is, what can you do to bring some of that prosperity to rural North Carolina?

A: It is true that our metropolitan areas have, by and large, been better. And I know it’s called different things. We’ve got to recognize that North Carolina is one state. It’s big towns, it’s small towns, but we’re all in it together. For too long we’ve had this situation where it almost like we tend to turn people against each other — east vs. west, the big towns against the small towns.

As important as anything, we have to realize we’re all in it together. If Charlotte does well, but Laurinburg, where I’m from, doesn’t do well, that’s still going to have a negative effect on Charlotte. Or if Bertie County doesn’t do well, but Hendersonville does well, that’s going to have a negative effect. So we’ve got to have a partnership, not only between state government and local communities, but between our local communities across the state.

Q: I’m sure you’re aware that this is the home county of Richard Morgan. I wondered how you think the co-speakership has worked out, and how you could work with those guys, say if they were still in there at the time you were in office?

A: I’m not taking sides in that particular dispute in terms of how we got to that point. But I think that too much time has been spent fighting about who’s sitting in the speaker’s chair, or how we draw district lines, or any number of issues that have very little to do with how we create jobs in North Carolina, how we can work on the tax burden for our citizens, how we work on health care and education — the things people care about.

I think people are, frankly, tired of the political bickering in Raleigh. They want to see us get to work, put the personal issues behind us and work together — Republicans and Republicans and across party lines. There’s a time for, sort of, getting after each other, which is the election process. But when that election process is over, we need to make sure we take care of the issues that face North Carolina.

Q: A couple of issue questions. Where are you on the lottery? Are you for it or against it?

A: I’m against it. My point on this is give me four years to balance the budget using commonsense business principles, and I don’t think the lottery would be near the issue that it is now.

Governor Easley is trying to use the lottery as an excuse or sort of a dodge for the fact that in the years he’s been in there, he hasn’t been able to get spending under control.

Q: Even though you’re not in favor of it, would you be in favor of a referendum on it to let the people decide?

A: The North Carolina Consti-tution provides that, except in the cases of bonds and certain kinds of indebtedness, that this is not a referendum state. John Hood made an interesting point when he said if we’re going to start talking about the lottery being a referendum, then before we do that we need to start talking about whether tax increases should be a referendum or other things. If we’re going to go to a referendum state, there’s a host of issues that I would look at to make referendum issues before a lottery.

Q: Where do you come down on the notion of cash incentives for industrial recruitment?

A: I’m a big believer that lower taxes across the board is the best incentive for businesses. I see it as the fairest way to do that. There are times when economic infrastructure incentives are appropriate to benefit both the businesses and the citizens at large, but I think this last two-day session that we had in this last General Assembly is sort of a bad way to do economic development policy.

For one thing, it’s reactive and it’s singling out a couple or three companies for certain special treatment. What we need is a proactive economic development strategy, where we plan in advance what it’s going to be.

You all know that small business creates most of the jobs across the state, and to single out a couple or three companies for special treatment is not fair, and it doesn’t really benefit the job creation that we want across the board.

Q: What about the Navy’s landing field plan?

A: I support the Navy, and I support the military. Obviously, we all do because they protect our lives and preserve our freedoms. As governor of North Carolina, I’ve got responsibility to represent the people of our state. What concerns me with the OLF is — and I’ve been there, so I’ve talked with people folks there and I’ve gotten as much information as I can — is it’s going to have a hugely negative impact on that county. It will take 30,000 taxable acres out of their tax base.

The county is already one of the highest-taxed counties in the state. And they’re really getting no economic benefit from the OLF. Now, it may be that that is the only site that will suit the Navy’s needs. If that’s the case, then I would be very interested to learn about that. I would want to work with the Navy to find alternative sites, if possible, that would not have the kind of burden that that particular site is going to have on Washington County.

Q: When you talk about economic development, obviously you have to talk about education. We haven’t had a chance to talk about that yet. Is the state doing enough? Is it doing it right in the way that it funds education on a local level? As governor would you continue that model? Would you change it? How would you treat the challenge of educating our state’s children?

A: I would want our state to focus more on the mission of education, which is the teacher-child relationship and the teaching that goes on in that relationship with parental involvement. Sometimes the focus gets to be too much on bureaucracy and buildings and things like that.

I’ll just give you some examples of some things. For instance, counties have to have coordinators to communicate with Raleigh, and Raleigh has to have coordinators to communicate with counties. You have to have separate checking accounts in the county and with Raleigh.

I think there has to be a decentralization of education, where the local school systems are given more control for education — because I think, once again, that is where accountability occurs, where parents and teachers and administrators can hear from each other and there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Another thing that really concerns me — I’ve heard this from teachers all over the state — is the level of paperwork and the bureaucracy and the testing takes teachers away from teaching. Teaching is an art form. We need to allow teachers to teach. They’re getting taken out of the classroom for too many things and kids are getting taken out of the classroom for too many things. We need to return to focus on the teacher.

Q: Is there anything else that we should have touched on that we didn’t?

A: I think that we need systemic change in Raleigh. We need real change in Raleigh. It’s going to take somebody coming from outside of the beltway to do it. I’m independent of special interests. I’m independent of the career politics that sometimes prevents things from getting done.

My responsibility will be to the people of North Carolina, and that’s who I work for. I think that’s something people are looking for: somebody who will represent them. As we travel all across the state, we’d listened to people, we’ve heard from them, we’ve heard their concerns, and we’ll keep doing that all the way until Election Day.