David McCoy will be the next state controller for North Carolina.
The House voted 113-0 Thursday to confirm McCoy's nomination, the final major hurdle before McCoy can assume the office. The Senate voted 44-0 in favor of confirmation in May, David Ingram reports.
The 200-person controller's office is considered among the most important in state government. It is responsible for keeping the state's books, handling payroll for 90,000 state employees, managing cash flow and describing the state's fiscal health to Wall Street bond raters.
The job of state controller carries a seven-year term, making it largely independent of legislators and the governor, and a salary this year of $153,319, or about $14,000 more than the governor's salary.
McCoy has served as Gov. Mike Easley's chief budget officer since 2001, and Easley nominated him to be controller in April. McCoy will be the fifth person to hold the job since legislators created it in 1986.
Legislators weighed McCoy's qualifications, which are different from those of his predecessors. He is a lawyer and has master's degrees in education and public health, not in business or finance. But there was no debate in the House Thursday.
The term of outgoing controller Robert Powell had been scheduled to expire July 1.
