# North Carolina Council of State The **Council of State** is North Carolina's collective executive: ten officials elected statewide and independently of the governor — the governor and lieutenant governor themselves, plus the secretary of state, state auditor, state treasurer, superintendent of public instruction, attorney general, commissioner of agriculture, commissioner of labor and commissioner of insurance. Its practical significance is a concurrence requirement written into state law. Under **G.S. 166A-19.30** the governor may, during a declared state of emergency and acting alone, mobilize state resources, waive environmental permits for road repair and direct state and local law enforcement. But the largest powers require the **concurrence of the Council of State**: compelled evacuation of a population, economic controls over food, clothing, shelter, fuel, rents and wages, regulation of traffic and of the congregation of persons in public places, appointment or removal of the executive head of a state agency, and procurement "by purchase, condemnation, seizure, or by other means." This is a check on emergency power exercised **inside the executive branch, by officials the governor cannot remove**. Nothing in the federal system resembles it: the President's Cabinet serves at pleasure, and no one in the federal executive holds an independent electoral mandate. ## See also - [[Plural Executive]] · [[State Emergency Powers Crosswalk]] · [[US Governors Hub]] · [[Federalism]]