Wake commissioners to receive audit of employees' expenses

RALEIGH -- The Wake County Board of Commissioners is scheduled this afternoon to receive an outside accounting firm's audit report of county employees credit-card use.

The requested review came after the public disclosure of spending by a small group of workers in the county's Solid Waste Management Division. The publicly expensed charges included trips to Walt Disney World and purchases of clothing, camping gear and CDs.

The Raleigh firm Cherry, Bekaert & Holland, which is already performing the county's annually required outside financial audit, was asked to review all purchasing by the county's Environmental Services Department going back to January 2006 and all other county departments for the past year.

The period for the review in environmental services purchases, which includes the solid waste division, coincides roughly with the tenure of former recycling program manager Craig P. Wittig, who was fired June 3. In the little more than two years he worked for the county, Wittig took at least 50 out-of-town trips -- an average of two a month. He and five subordinates racked up $161,233 in travel costs and other expenses to credit cards issued by Wake County and paid for with public money.

The firm's total contract with the county will cost up to $237,500, of which County Manager David Cooke said between $125,000 and $150,000 would be for the audit of credit card purchases.