(TNS) — A N.C. Senate bill that would review state agency performance and staffing levels, relying in part on the use of artificial intelligence, cleared its first committee step Wednesday.

Senate Bill 474, titled “The DAVE Act,” was recommended by the Senate Regulatory Reform committee after nearly 30 minutes of at times contentious debate.

Although the bill is being fast-tracked to gatekeeper Rules and Operations committee, the legislation is expected to be inserted into the 2025-26 state budget bill to fund additional state Auditor office job positions.

Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, is in the rare role of being a primary bill sponsor.

According to a news release from Berger’s office, the legislation is designed to “get a complete picture” of how state agencies are utilizing taxpayer funds “and determine if the agency should continue to exist.”

The acronym DAVE stands for Division of Accountability, Value and Efficiency, which would be housed in the State Auditor’s office of Republican Dave Boliek.

Bill sponsors say the key areas for state agency review — so far — includes: amounts spent, including the entities receiving funds and the intended purpose of the amounts spent; effectiveness of any amount spent in achieving the intended purpose of that spending; and duplicative spending.

Each agency is to report all job positions that have been vacant for six months or more. Agency reports would have an Oct. 1 filing deadline.

SB474 was amended to establish a sunset that was not specified, but to occur after the 2028 general election, and allow Boliek to request annual reports.

Berger said SB474 “facilitates the auditor’s ability to move forward on examining how monies that are appropriated by the General Assembly … are actually deployed … effectively deployed and whether or not there’s a failure on the part of an executive agency to utilize the funds as directed by the legislature.”

The bill is likely to join the growing list of Republican-sponsored bills that may serve as the first test of Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s ability to sustain a veto vote.

Senate Republicans hold a 30-20 supermajority that gives them the votes to override a Stein veto. However, House Republicans are one vote shy of a supermajority at 71-49.

Boliek, in his first term as auditor, said SB474 empowers the state Auditor’s Office “to do that what we already have the authority to do” in terms of auditing for operational, funding and overall program efficiency.”

Boliek said the proposed objectives of SB474 should draw bipartisan support.

“What this bill does is it puts together the legislature, the executive branch and the state Auditor’s Office,” Boliek said.

“It is designed to do better government, a date-centered approach that gets real, impactful results.”

Boliek claimed SB474 is needed in part because previous state auditors provided “bread and butter financial audits that are a 30,000-foot views that does not — quite frankly — give members of this body the type of information you need and you expect … to make competent, judgmental decisions as they run their agencies.

“My commitment is to do this in a nonpartisan way that’s data centric. … not emotion. The proof will be in the pudding.”

Boliek said the expanded use of artificial intelligence is warranted “because we’ve got to start somewhere in the state of North Carolina because it’s coming, and there’s no better place than the state Auditor’s Office to get started with that.”

Several Senate Democratic committee members critical of SB474 claimed Senate GOP leaders want to establish a N.C. version of the controversial federal DOGE initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk.

They expressed concerns that state departments and agencies, already are dealing with staffing vacancies reaching 20% to 25%, could have their workforce experience more cuts based on assessments from artificial intelligence algorithms.

Sen. Caleb Theodros, D-Mecklenburg, said there needs to be firm restraints and transparency on the use of artificial intelligence in evaluating the performance of agencies and their employees.

Berger said legislators will employ artificial intelligence as a tool in determining funding appropriation levels and whether state funds are being wasted or not.

“Your comments point out exactly why we need something like this,” Berger said.

Sen. Lisa Grafstein, D-Wake, said the auditor’s office focuses on accounting functions, and is not meant to be a program evaluator of the work of state employees and “whether they are necessary.”

“I think we are getting really close to the idea that we’re demonizing state employees who are trying to do their jobs, and folks who are trying to make our communities better.”

Sen. Sophia Chitlik, D-Durham, said moving forward with SB474 is harmful when state government is struggling to fill about 14,000 job vacancies, in part because of the pay scale compared with the private sector.

“Behind every one of these jobs there is a reason for them, a community need,” Chitlik said.

“It strikes me as actually very inefficient to potentially leave it up to AI to eliminate them because we can’t fill them.”

Chitlik said the DOGE initiative is putting about 35,000 federal jobs in N.C. at risk of elimination.

She cited as an example the elimination of a UNC Health laboratory workforce dedicated to studying youth vaping “because their NIH (National Institutes of Health) grant had the word equity in it.”

“We do not need to look any further than our state for examples of what happens when you let an algorithm take control of our workplace,” she said.

Berger responded by saying Boliek “has no authority to discharge anyone. He has the authority to identify problems in any discharge.”

“Any elimination of positions would be left up to the General Assembly.”

Sen. Woodson Bradley, D-Mecklenburg, said it is critical that whatever authority that DAVE is given by the legislature has bipartisan support.

“We can’t let this infect the entire (state) budget, not let it hurt people with zero accountability,” she said.

Meanwhile, public speakers called out Senate Republican leadership for what they termed hypocrisy.

They said the call for more stringent evaluations of how government agencies operate runs counter to legislators sticking into the 2023 state budget bill language that allows legislators to determine whether documents are public records, shield them from public release and destroy them if they choose.

© 2025 the News & Record (Greensboro, N.C.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.