Public condemnation mounts for fired Wake manager

RALEIGH -- Public condemnation was swift today for a fired Wake County employee who took at least 50 trips on a government credit card, including a whale-watching cruise off the Maine coast and four visits to Disney World.

Grace Kirkland, a 30 year resident of Fuquay-Varina, was among those who attempted to call county manager David Cooke to complain about the spending only to find his voicemail box was already full.

"I wanted to give him a piece of my mind," said Kirkland, who plans to keep calling the county manager until she can get through. "People are doggone fed up with this stuff. I hope when we go to vote it reflects it."

Kirkland was among the dozens of local residents who called and e-mailed The News & Observer Tuesday following an article about Craig P. Wittig, the former recycling program manager for the solid waste management division. Additional readers posted comments on the newspaper's Internet site.

Five employees Wittig supervised also went on some outings, which included nights at a Las Vegas casino hotel and a visit to Yellowstone's Old Faithful geyser. Collectively, the government workers charged $161,233 in travel costs and other expenses to credit cards issued by Wake County and paid for with public money.

Wittig, 37, was hired in February 2006 to, among other duties, develop a conservation education program for Wake County and said his travels were legitimate business trips related to that task.

Cooke said he had emptied out his voicemail, which holds about 30 messages at a time, three times today, but it kept filling up. Most callers urged him to conduct a wider audit of employee purchases and questioned his decision to keep solid waste administrator James Reynolds, Wittig's direct supervisor, on the county payroll.

County records show Reynolds, who has since been demoted as director of the county's solid waste division, personally signed off on the trips and spending, including purchases of top-of-the line backpacking gear, a John Denver CD and a novel about elves. Efforts to reach Reynolds were unsuccessful.

Cooke said he would return the calls of all county residents who left their phone number and asked to speak to him. "I'm going to call these folks," he said.

Joe Bryan, chairman of the Wake commissioners, said that he had also received several calls from outraged taxpayers. Bryan said he and others on the county board would likely ask for a closed session with Cooke at their next scheduled meeting to learn more about the questionable spending. The county manager has said he is limited in how much he can say publicly about the situation, citing personnel privacy concerns.

"It's totally unacceptable," Bryan said of Wittig's charges. "We'll ask hard questions of the manager to make sure this never happens again. Misuse of county funds will not be tolerated."

Commissioners Lindy Brown and Tony Gurley each expressed disbelief Tuesday that the spending and trips could have gone undetected so long.

"I knew Craig," Brown said. "He was a decent, dedicated employee. I was shocked. Going to Disney World four different times? I'm not going to make excuses for that."

Gurley said he bristled when he read Wittig's comments making the distinction that the money spend for the trips came from tipping fees at the county landfills, not taxpayer money.

"It doesn't matter whether it's fees or property tax revenue," Gurley said. "That's not a valid distinction. It was taxpayer money that was wasted. I can't imagine how we did not catch the charges to Disney. That should have been a red flag. It's beyond my comprehension how someone could have spent taxpayer money like that."

Public disclosure of the out-of-line spending comes at a sensitive time for the board of commissioners, which voted 4-3 on June 16 to impose a 2.5-cent property tax rate increase while placing new restrictions on how the school board can spend money and giving the state's largest school system less money than school leaders requested.

The president of the conservative Wake County Taxpayers Association faxed a two page letter to the county manager responding to the news.

"I am totally disgusted at the report and the attitude expressed by the employee...." wrote J. Russell Capps, a former state legislator from Raleigh. "Just as sad is the fact that his boss is still an employee making $94,000 plus a year in taxpayer's money when he was fully responsible for what was allowed to take place."