Goals and Policies Board

In 1971 the General Assembly created the Council on State Goals and Policies to work with citizens "to identify the kind of future they want for themselves." In this long-range planning context, the council's task was to present the governor with goals and policy recommendations that would lead to the future that citizens desired. From 1975, when the council was given full board status, until the summer of 1977, the Goals and Policies Board was inactive. It was reactivated in July 1977 by Governor James B. Hunt, who desired the board to serve as his "chief citizen advisory body" in policy matters.

As its first step in the citizen participation process, the board conducted a "North Carolina Tomorrow" survey in the fall of 1977. More than 100,000 responses to a questionnaire of 15 items were received. Concurrent with this effort was a scientific telephone survey, administered by the National Testing Service of Durham, which consisted of a random sample of 1,400 people. About 7 percent of the respondents in this mass survey believed the top four problems in North Carolina to be jobs and the economy, education, welfare, and crime/law enforcement.

In 1980 the Goals and Policies Board issued a report titled "North Carolina Tomorrow: Year Three," which pointed out that the state had acted on about two-thirds of its 1979 recommendations that same year. A March 1987 report by the board called for a major economic initiative to prepare the state for the possible loss of tobacco as a vital income crop, to accelerate the development of additional or alternate crops, and to assist farmers in marketing those crops profitably.

In succeeding years, the Goals and Policies Board received considerably less attention by the citizens and state government officials. It was repealed by the legislature in 1995.