Gov. Bev Perdue recently signed the state budget and she's already making cuts.

The Governor issued an executive order late Friday afternoon reducing most state agencies budget allotments by 5 percent.

Public Safety is an exception with a 4 percent cut.

There are not further cuts to public schools, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

"Times are tough, we need to keep our belts tightened and be prepared for the unknown. That's good stewardship and good fiscal management," Perdue said.

The cuts are a precautionary step for cash flow issues as the state spends without revenue yet from the recent tax hikes.

"We don't know what's going to happen in the next nine or 10 months of this fiscal year and again it's always better to have some kind of cash flow withheld that you can use when you get to the end of the year," said the Governor.

Chris Hayes, a legislative analyst from the conservative think tank Civitas, countered the argument,

"This just proves the point they could do more with less. If they could come in and cut 5 percent off of what was supposed to be a barebones, lean budget and the Governor can come in with the swipe of a pen and cut the budget. It shows they weren't really cutting out all the waste and unneeded expenditures," said Hayes.

The same executive order also lifted the state's hiring freeze.

The Governor is adding a public policy and communications strategist to her staff to help her spread the message of new job intiatives.

The salary is $136,000 and the Governor called it a priority hire.

"I wanted to bring somebody in who had a tremendous capacity to help us move forward, building our new jobs platform around military, energy and agribusiness," said the Governor.

But with more than 700 state employees loosing their jobs because of budget cuts, Hayes made a suggestion, "Nice job for government work, $136,000 salary, how many teachers could've been rehired for that amount?"

Check out our NBC 17 broadcast story by clicking on the video above.