NC Auditor Beth Wood sentenced after pleading guilty to misusing state-owned vehicle
State Auditor Beth Wood pleaded guilty Friday to misusing her publicly owned vehicle, resolving the last of two cases that had cast a shadow over her final year in office.
Appearing before Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway on Friday morning, her last day in office, Wood pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of misusing her state-owned vehicle. Wood, a Democrat in her fourth term, announced last month she would resign on Dec. 15.
Wake District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said during the hearing that Wood had paid $1,064 in restitution as part of a plea agreement. At the end of the hearing, Ridgeway sentenced Wood to 12 months of unsupervised probation, granting the sentence that Wood’s attorney had requested.
Wood was indicted by a grand jury last month following an eight-month investigation into her use of the state-owned vehicles she was assigned before and after she crashed one of them into a parked car in downtown Raleigh in December 2022, as she was leaving a holiday party.
The indictment alleged that over the course of two years, Wood used a state-owned car to run private errands like hair and dental appointments and go to shopping centers and spas. Under state law, misusing a permanently assigned state vehicle is a Class 2 misdemeanor.
During Friday’s hearing, Freeman offered more details about Wood’s misuse of her vehicle, telling the judge that between 2021 and 2022, Wood used her state-assigned car for more than a dozen trips to a hair salon in Fayetteville, more than 40 shopping trips to Knightdale and over two dozen trips to two different Raleigh spas.
Freeman acknowledged that Wood had cooperated with investigators and taken responsibility, but said that as an elected official, Wood had “violated the public trust.”
Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Wood’s attorney, Roger W. Smith Jr., said it was “a sad day” for Wood, and “an abrupt end to a great career as North Carolina’s state auditor.”
“For the past 15 years, she has been honored to serve the people of this state,” Smith said. “She absolutely loved her job and is thankful for the opportunity to have served. She has paid a heavy price, but she looks forward to her next chapter.”
Wood became the first woman to serve as auditor when she was first elected in 2008, after spending a decade working in different roles in the office. During her tenure as auditor, Wood identified millions of dollars in government waste and oversaw investigations into Democrats and Republicans, earning the respect of high-ranking officials and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Earlier this year, Wood pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor hit-and-run charge stemming from the December 2022 crash.
The crash, which happened as Wood was leaving a holiday party hosted by former N.C. Attorney General and Secretary of State Rufus Edmisten, and the misdemeanor Raleigh police charged her with, only became public knowledge more than a month later, when news outlets first reported the incident in mid-January.
Public scrutiny of Wood intensified over the following weeks as she faced questions about how the crash had happened and why she left the scene without calling the police or trying to contact the owner of the car she had struck.
Wood insisted throughout much of the year that she would run for another term, but while testifying before a House committee in November, she announced that she had changed her mind, and wouldn’t run for reelection.
A week later, after she was indicted on the charges of misusing her state-owned vehicle, Wood said she would step down on Dec. 15, and not serve the rest of her term.
Last month, Gov. Roy Cooper appointed former Wake County Commissioner Jessica Holmes to replace Wood. Holmes, who becomes the first Black woman to serve on the Council of State, has filed to run for the full four-year term that will be on the ballot next year.
This story was originally published December 15, 2023 at 10:12 AM.
