Editorial: NCDOT has some explaining to do

State auditors on Thursday released a damning report that concluded the N.C. Department of Transportation essentially flushed $152.4 million in taxpayer money down the drain over a three-year span on unnecessary costs related to delayed road projects.

According to the Associated Press, the State Auditor’s Office studied nearly 400 highway projects and determined that NCDOT missed the start date by more than a year 40 percent of the time. Those delays cost tens of millions because of inflated costs.

As worrisome as the waste of taxpayer money is, the most troubling aspect of the audit is that, barring significant changes, there’s little reason to hope that real and meaningful improvement is on the horizon.

"DOT is a multibillion-dollar state agency that appears to operate on hunches and intuition rather than hard data analysis," State Auditor Leslie Merritt said in a statement.

In his response, Secretary Lyndo Tippett cited increased fuel and asphalt prices and funding issues as a partial explanation for the cost overruns. He has also created a special team to research and implement improvements.

There’s a better chance that the state’s important road projects would be completed on time and on budget if the secretary and other bureaucrats managed taxpayer money like it was their own.