Wake travel records sent to DA

Wake ex-employee may be prosecuted

RALEIGH -- County manager David Cooke has turned over a packet of evidence to the Wake District Attorney's Office for the possible prosecution of Craig P. Wittig, the former recycling program manager.

A spreadsheet in the packet calls $29,509 of Wittig's charges to a government credit card "questionable," including $8,143 for which the county might seek restitution. Those include tickets to Disney World and a pass to Yellowstone National Park.

The spreadsheet, delivered Friday to the district attorney, also lists $1,694 in items Wittig bought that the county might seek to recover, such as clothing and a GPS navigation unit.

In a letter with the data, Cooke refers to an earlier meeting between staff members in the county's finance office and prosecutors.

"As stated earlier, we are interested in options that the county has to recover funds or property or take other legal action in this matter," Cooke wrote.

Wittig was fired June 3 over his expenses for a two-year period in which he took about 50 trips at county expense, including a whale-watching cruise off the coast of Maine and hiking trips in several state and national parks.

Wittig has said that he did nothing wrong and that all the trips and purchases were approved by his direct supervisor, James S. Reynolds. Reynolds resigned July 8 as county solid waste division director.

The packet turned over by Cooke did not include the purchases made by five employees supervised by Wittig who accompanied him on some trips. All told, Wittig and five subordinates charged $161,233 in travel costs and other expenses to credit cards issued by Wake County.