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Crime Control and Public Safety Secretary Reuben Young should resign for failing to investigate claims that former Gov. Mike Easley ordered e-mail messages deleted to prevent them from becoming public, North Carolina GOP Chairman Tom Fetzer said. Young was Easley's chief legal adviser.

"You can't be a reform governor who's really committed to ethics and transparency if you keep people like that around," Fetzer said.

Fetzer also said Correction Department Secretary Alvin Keller should step down because the state still has too few parole officers a year after the Perdue administration promised to ease the shortage.

There have been several killings and kidnappings in the past two years involving offenders who were supposed to be overseen by the state's strained probation and parole system. Perdue has supported filling nearly 150 vacant positions in the department to better monitor offenders, but officials have said recruiting officers was difficult because of the low pay and dangerous duties.

A spokeswoman for Perdue, Chrissy Pearson, said the governor "has made it clear to all her Cabinet secretaries that she has high expectations for their performance and conduct, and so far they have all served her — and, more importantly, the state — appropriately. Today's suggestions otherwise are just empty words."

There were 117 unfilled probation officer jobs and nearly 20 supervisor positions vacant on Monday, even though the state hired 220 probation officers last year, said Correction Department spokesman Keith Acree.

"They're vacant because we have a turnover problem," Acree said. "We get plenty of applicants and we hire plenty of officers. We just have a problem getting them to stay."