Wake DA says county commissioner’s travel spending is related to his elected role
Updated at 4:06 p.m. Feb. 28, 2020.
The Wake County district attorney said Friday her office found no legal basis to investigate a county commissioner’s travel spending.
“After reviewing the information provided, and county travel policies and practices, I have concluded that this does not warrant the opening of a criminal investigation or prosecution,” District Attorney Lorrin Freeman wrote in an email to The News & Observer.
“All the travel in question was related to Mr. (Sig) Hutchinson’s role as a commissioner. ... Our office review and determination is limited solely to whether there appears to be a violation of state criminal law,” she wrote.
Candidate Jeremiah Pierce had brought a complaint to the DA’s office claiming that Hutchinson has “improperly spent Wake County taxpayer money on travel” ever since he was elected.
The two are competing in Tuesday’s Democratic primary to be the party’s nominee for the county board’s District 1 seat. Hutchinson defeated Pierce two years ago during the 2018 primary.
“The complaint includes documentation that, according to Wake County budget documents, incumbent Wake County Commissioner Sig Hutchinson has spent $42,943 of taxpayer dollars since January of 2015 traveling to places across the country, including California, Florida and New York City,” according to Pierce’s website.
Pierce had dropped off his complaint at the DA’s Office last week and was told by the person working at the desk that it wasn’t within their jurisdiction. After a phone call, he said he was leaving the complaint for the district attorney.
Hutchinson called the complaint “political posturing.”
Most of the conferences he attends are “standard stuff” like the chamber’s inner-city trip where community leaders visit a peer city or the conferences of the National Association of Counties (NACo), he said. He also has leadership positions in some of those organizations and attends committee meetings in addition to their annual conventions.
“I am very proud at the opportunity to represent Wake County throughout the country and I am very proud of my leadership positions,” he said. “I feel like this is a huge benefit for Wake County, both (in) what I can represent to the country and what I can bring back to the county.”
Commissioner spending
Numbers provided by Wake County show Hutchinson has spent $43,621 on travel including airfare, hotel rooms, Ubers and food since 2015. That’s followed by Commissioners James West ($21,216), Jessica Holmes ($20,232) and Matt Calabria ($5,945) for the same period.
The board updated its travel policy in January to set a per-commissioner allotment that would be updated during the budget process. An amount for each commissioner has yet to be set.
Some of that traveling includes the NACo annual conferences in Long Beach, California, Columbus, Ohio and Las Vegas or are committee conferences like the Large Urban County Caucus in Miami. Other conferences include the U.S. Water Alliance’s One Water Summit in New Orleans, Austin and Minneapolis.
He attends many of these conferences, he said, because he’s been appointed by those organizations to national positions including the Healthy Counties Committee of NACo.
Pierce said “most” of the conferences are not related to the work of the county.
“He is using county dollars for his personal travel,” he said. “These are boards that are not county appointed. These are boards that he has gone and joined without being appointed.”
But Hutchinson said they are county-related and other county commissioners have attended the same conferences. He represents Wake County on a national scale and brings back ideas. While serving on one of NACo’s committee, he said he is in the process of trying to lure a national conference about how the county is leveraging its greenways to create healthy communities.
He recently suggested adding granny flat blueprints to the county’s website for residents to download and use if they want to build a cottage, he said. That idea came from a conference in San Diego, he said.
‘This isn’t a vacation’
His wife, Nancy, has accompanied Hutchinson on some trips, but he said the county isn’t footing that bill.
“When my wife does join me I pay 100% of her cost,” he said. “I sit in meetings all day long. At times I’ve had to take red-eye flights back from conferences so I can attend other meetings. This isn’t a vacation. This is anything but a vacation. The idea is that other commissioners don’t travel as much as I do. I’m seen as a national leader on these issues. And my other commissioners are not. What do you want me to say?”
Hutchinson’s Instagram account shows photos of his wife and him either before or after a conference at shows, restaurants or at parks in the cities where the conferences are held. If he stays before or after a convention, he covers those costs, he said.
This story was originally published February 27, 2020 at 5:50 AM.
