Berry: 'Shocked and outraged'

In a statement issued Tuesday, N.C. Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry weighed in on the national recordkeeping program.

Here's the statement she emailed to the Observer:

Thank you so much for drawing public attention to this National Emphasis Program’s outrageous waste of taxpayer money. We volunteered to participate in this National Emphasis Program before it was mandated so that we could monitor its implementation and outcome and currently have two open inspections. As the program was put into place, we were shocked and outraged given our current state budget deficit and federal budget deficit at the waste of $2 million in taxpayer money. The ill-conceived program was then mandated by federal OSHA for all state plan states. The Feds then suspended the program July 27, 2010, because it did not produce the desired results. On Sept. 28, federal OSHA sent a new set of instructions.

North Carolina and other state plan states received no funding. I’m glad we didn’t because it has proven to be a total waste of taxpayer money given our current economy. This is why we don’t need Washington trying to micromanage North Carolina’s successful OSH program. They even wanted us to do an NEP on oil refineries. Guess what? We don’t have oil refineries in North Carolina.

The PEER group press release appears to be an effort to gin up support for the over-reaching, job-killing PAWA legislation in Congress.

- Ames Alexander