NORTH CAROLINA — Two lawmakers will lead North Carolina’s DOGE-style initiative to cut wasteful spending, including the lead sponsor of a bill to prohibit the attorney general from arguing against Trump administration executive orders. The other co-chair has faced ethics complaints related to his administration of taxpayer funds.
House Speaker Destin Hall announced the creation of the interim House Select Committee on Government Efficiency last month to track down wasteful state and local spending, mismanagement and constitutional violations. Rep. Keith Kidwell (R-Beaufort) and Rep. John Torbett (R-Gaston) will serve as chairs.
The new committee will hold organizational meetings during the 2025-2026 session, but the majority of its work will be carried out in the interim period. Hall’s press release about its formation highlighted items such as DEI policies and excess state property as examples of public spending the committee is authorized to investigate.
“As the new Trump administration rightfully takes aim at Washington D.C.’s wasteful spending and inefficient bureaucracy, it is time for us in Raleigh to do the same,” Kidwell said in the release. “This committee will investigate ways our state government can maximize value for North Carolina taxpayers, protect constitutional rights, and end the weaponization of state power.”
An earlier North Carolina watchdog task force — the nonpartisan Program Evaluation Division — exposed millions in wasteful and fraudulent spending over a 15-year period before Senate President Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore dissolved it in 2021. Former PED executive director John Turcotte told NC Health News he believed legislative leadership eliminated the program because they did not have direct control over the watchdog agency.
PED’s 14 nonpartisan staff members have since been replaced by partisan appointments in the Joint Legislative Commission on Government Operations, commonly known as Gov Ops, a committee similarly aimed at reducing fraud, waste, and abuse at state and local levels. Torbett is a member of the Gov Ops committee, which the 2023 budget granted expansive powers including authorization to carry out warrantless investigations for “possible acts of malfeasance.”
North Carolina is one of at least five states to enact a task force mimicking the federal Department of Government Efficiency since Trump took office last month.
The president established DOGE in an inauguration day executive order to modernize federal technology to increase efficiency. He issued a separate EO last week directing DOGE to carry out the transformation of the federal bureaucracy by eliminating wasteful spending.
The White House does not have an official public tally of how many federal workers have so far been fired, but DOGE’s stated target is eliminating 75% of the federal workforce. The Trump administration began to fire at least 6,000 IRS workers Thursday, including thousands of auditors hired as part of an Inflation Reduction Act program.
Trump and billionaire Elon Musk — who donated $288 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign — have repeatedly claimed Musk is leading DOGE; attorneys representing the informal agency stated Musk is only a “senior advisor” in a Monday legal filing. The Trump administration is facing over a dozen lawsuits challenging DOGE’s role in the firing of thousands of workers, obtaining confidential data, and blocking payments appropriated by Congress.
Musk has not filed public ethics disclosures or undergone a confirmation hearing, raising conflict of interest and security concerns as his companies have received billions in federal contracts and subsidies. DOGE has carried out sweeping staff cuts at agencies regulating Musk’s businesses, which were under investigation by at least five of the 18 inspectors general Trump fired in the first week of his presidency. DOGE is rejecting public records requests despite receiving at least $40 million in public funds and is staffed largely by individuals connected to Musk’s companies.
Attorney General Jeff Jackson is representing North Carolina in a lawsuit to block DOGE’s access to confidential Department of Treasury payments information; a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on the agency earlier this month. Separate court rulings have granted DOGE access to a broad range of other agencies’ data. The organization has attempted to access a classified Internal Revenue Service system containing personal financial information of U.S. taxpayers and confidential Social Security Administration datasets.
Kidwell — chair of NC’s DOGE-modeled initiative — introduced a bill last Monday to prohibit Attorney General Jeff Jackson from making any legal arguments against Trump’s executive orders. According to reporting from ProPublica, Kidwell is affiliated with far-right militia groups the Oath Keepers and AP3.
The representative is chair of the House Finance Committee. Kidwell has worked for tax preparation services multinational H&R Block for decades and owns a franchise business of the company.
“We need somebody up here that understands taxes writing some of these laws,” Kidwell said in a 2018 interview. “That was really one of the precipitating events that told me, you know what, it’s time to run.”
Center for Economic Policy Research co-founder Dean Baker has repeatedly criticized H&R Block and Intuit, the country’s other top tax preparation firm, for contributing to inefficiency and increased expenses in the American tax system. The companies have faced controversy in recent years for lobbying to increase the difficulty and complexity of filing taxes and claiming tax credits.
“Musk is doing lots of things that have no plausible connection to efficiency, like shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and getting rid of the auditors at the I.R.S,” the economist told Port City Daily. “These moves are about letting businesses rip off people and the government. It sounds like this is Kidwell’s plan for North Carolina. He will use the cover of seeking efficiency to increase business for his tax-filing company. It is pretty sleazy stuff.”
Congress directed H&R Block and other major tax preparation firms to offer free tax preparation services to eligible taxpayers in 2003. In exchange, the IRS agreed to not compete with the private sector by creating its own free tax-filing option. More than 30 countries offer free automatic tax filing services for citizens, which Baker and other advocates argue provides a cheaper and more efficient option for taxpayers who have simple filing requirements.
Federal probes in recent years — including a Treasury Department audit and $7 million Federal Trade Commission penalty — found H&R Block used deceptive practices to prevent taxpayers from using its free service.
Last year, the IRS opened a pilot program in 12 states to give taxpayers a “direct file” option to automatically file taxes without charge. The Treasury Department and IRS announced it would make the program permanent after finding 140,000 participating taxpayers claimed $90 million in returns and saved $5.6 million in filing expenses. The program is open in North Carolina this year for approximately 1.25-million eligible state residents.
H&R Block has spent millions lobbying to remove the direct file program because it eliminates demand for services and threatens revenue, according to financial disclosures. Tax preparation industry representatives have donated hundreds of thousands to representatives opposing the program.
Congressmember Chuck Edwards (R-NC) co-introduced the “FAIR PREP Act” to prohibit the IRS from continuing it last month. Edwards argued direct file represents government overreach and believes investing millions to establish the program is a waste of taxpayer funds.
Trump’s nominee to lead the IRS, former Missouri Congressman Billy Long, opposed the creation of a direct filing system during his time in Congress and advocated eliminating the agency. Musk and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have similarly voiced interest in its abolition.
PCD reached out to Kidwell to ask if he supports getting rid of the IRS direct filing program, if he has any immediate goals or targets with North Carolina’s Select Committee on Government Efficiency, and if he has any concerns regarding DOGE and Musk’s access to confidential information. A response was not received by press.
“We think the idea of a committee scrutinizing the spending choices of the North Carolina legislature is a terrific idea,” Blair Reeves, executive director of progressive nonprofit Carolina Forward, told Port City Daily. “But given that the Republicans have had complete control of those spending choices for 14 years running, we have our doubts about how thorough that scrutiny will be.”
The Office of State Budget and Management released a two-year budget forecast last week anticipating North Carolina’s revenue growth to slow from 3% this year to 0.5% in fiscal year 2026 and decline by 2.4% in fiscal year 2027. Economists from the OSBM and General Assembly Fiscal Research Division attribute the decline to scheduled corporate and income tax cuts, which the NC Budget & Tax Center found primarily benefit higher-income earners.
Those cuts were part of the 625-page 2023 budget, which lawmakers revealed less than 48 hours before their vote. The bill’s broad-ranging provisions include exempting lawmakers from public records requests and allocating $1.4 billion in no-bid contracts to private organizations.
Department of Public Instruction officials raised concerns about wasteful and non-transparent spending in the budget, including a $3 million contract for a politically-connected video game company.
Torbett — co-chair of the new DOGE-inspired committee and the House’s education spending budget writer — pushed DPI officials to allocate the funds despite educators’ concerns about its ineffectiveness with students, according to Raleigh News & Observer. An October Assembly investigation found North Carolina made its largest expenditure on closed-door, no-bid contracts in the state’s history in 2024.
“North Carolinians deserve a state government that works for them,” Torbett wrote in the release. “Unfortunately, our government agencies and public universities have been bogged down by bad policies and programs, like DEI, limiting their ability to enact their core purpose: serving citizens. I am proud to chair this committee alongside Rep. Kidwell to continue improving our state.”
Torbett has been subject to several ethics complaints regarding his appropriation of taxpayer funds. The Legislative Ethics Committee adopted new standards prohibiting lawmakers from using state-funded reimbursements for lodging or travel while simultaneously using campaign funds for the same purposes in 2020. The rule came after veteran watchdog journalist Bob Hall reported Senate President Phil Berger collected more than $50,000 in lodging reimbursements despite paying his mortgage with campaign donations.
Hall filed a similar “double dipping” ethics complaint against Torbett later the same year, but the committee responded by rescinding its new rule. The watchdog reporter again filed a complaint against Torbett in 2021 for failing to disclose his wife’s position on a charter school board receiving state funds in his annual ethics filings. Torbett was chair of the House Education K-12 Committee at the time.
“I think he’s been involved in unethical practices,” Hall told Port City Daily. “To put him in charge of weeding out waste and corruption — he could begin by his own personal use of state money and put a halt to that to save taxpayers’ money.”
Tips or comments? Email journalist Peter Castagno at peter@localdailymedia.com.
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