Some goings-on in the capital city are reminiscent of the fellow who appeared before a judge on charges of kicking his dog.

Faced with the prospect of a few days in jail, the fellow calls his neighbors to testify on his good character. “Yes, sir,” one neighbor says to the judge, “that dog was always howling, night and day. I don’t blame him one bit for kicking that ole thing. And mostly, he treated that dog mighty fine. Why, he even fed him ... at least once a week.”

The moral to the story: Sometimes it’s good to just hush and take your punishment.

Lately, though, Gov. Mike Easley and the state Democratic Party have been playing the role of kindly neighbor to that dog-kicker of state government, the Department of Transportation and its governing board.

Easley recently rejected criticism that the Board of Transportation shouldn’t be involved in political fund-raising. He said it would be hypocritical to ask its members to refrain from political fund-raising when others in state government are allowed to do so.

The state Democratic Party then weighed in on a Department of Transportation audit that found $150 million in road-building waste because of construction delays. Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek accused Republican State Auditor Les Merritt of partisanship.

“We know why it costs more to build roads,” Meek said. “Why does it cost more for Les Merritt to run his office?” Apparently Meek didn’t notice that the dog had begun yelping again.

Just as Merritt issued his audit, top DOT officials were explaining why they ignored an agency engineer’s warnings in 2003 that asphalt on the state’s newest stretch of interstate, I-795 from Wilson to Goldsboro, would be too weak. Sure enough, the asphalt has begun cracking, and repairs could cost as much as $10 million. The problem follows a botched paving job on Interstate 40 in Durham County that cost $22 million to correct.

DOT Secretary Lyndo Tippett was also defending his agency in the wake of the audit.

“I am confident that the improvement processes we have already developed and the work that is currently ongoing will continue to improve our delivery of transportation projects, programs and services to the taxpayers of North Carolina,” Tippett wrote in a response.

It’s good to be confident. But motorists driving down new highways with gaping cracks might not share Tippett’s certainty that much at the DOT is improving.

Obviously, some of the cost overruns and other problems associated with road-building are not the fault of Tippett or his employees. The rising price of petroleum — a key component of asphalt — is one reason that road-building costs have escalated.

Still, until the agency gets its act together, it hardly deserves some kind of collective “you poor old, picked-on thing.”

Oh, by the way, that dog that’s been kicked around? If you haven’t figured it out by now, it’s you, the taxpayers of North Carolina.