State auditor candidates want to track how NC tax dollars are being spent

A candidate for North Carolina state auditor thinks “2020” will become a curse word.

When Anthony Street won the Republican primary for auditor he had a plan. He wanted to travel the state and get his name out as a viable option to unseat his opponent, State Auditor Beth Wood.

He didn’t expect to be sidelined by an international pandemic.

“My plan consisted of putting myself in front of as many people as possible, but to say the least those plans have been limited due to COVID-19,” Street said. “That caught me off guard.”

Street is still visiting people.

He wears a mask when he has to, but only when it’s mandatory — he hates wearing things on his head.

It’s one noticeable difference between the two candidates. Wood, a cancer survivor, finds wearing a mask important.

And she’s undaunted by the COVID-19 pandemic affecting her campaign.

Instead she has found one of the few benefits of the virus: being able to hold more events in one night. Holding those virtually has saved her time going from one town to another.

From farm to elected office

Wood, 66, has served as the state auditor since 2009 and is the first woman to lead the office.

She studied at East Carolina University where she earned a degree in accounting. She has more than 30 years of auditing experience and served in both the auditor’s office and the treasurer’s office before being elected.

She said she started at the bottom at the auditor’s office but quickly realized the agency oversaw how her parents’ tax money was spent, and she knew she was where she was meant to be.

“I grew up on a farm and I know what it’s like to make ends meet,” Wood said.

She and her family would get up at 3 a.m. and work in the tobacco fields or pick beans in the garden all day.

In high school she remembers her mother asking her father if he had borrowed a quarter from his brother to buy their family dinner.

“I know how difficult it was for my parents to make ends meet, and they’re paying taxes,” Wood said. “So when I got to the state auditor’s office and I learned what it did, I was like, oh my gosh, this is the agency overseeing how my mom and dad’s tax dollars have been spent.”

Now she’s overseeing that agency and proud of what she and her team has done.

“They understand what I bring to the table,” Wood said of her constituents. “I’m the only CPA running and my record speaks for itself, that I put up some very impactful audits and recognized the hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted spending.”

She added that those audits have led to changes by both the General Assembly and the governor’s office.

DOT, schools, and auditing the auditors

Street, 39, a Brunswick County resident, said he has always wanted to work in government.

“I’ve always wanted to serve the public,” Street said. “Not for personal gain, but for the benefit of the public because I love people.”

Street said he went down a list of jobs he could run for and felt auditor was most closely aligned with his experience.

Street said he worked in construction and kept up all his own books. He has a master’s degree in public administration and studied business, economics, finance and budgets.

Street said he won’t speak badly about his opponent, and he wants to continue the work Wood’s staff has done, including with NC Department of Transportation spending.

In one audit this year, Wood’s team concluded that NCDOT overspent by $742 million.

Street also wants to focus on education.

“There’s a lack of accountability and transparency in how our school board spends the tax dollars they received from our state government,” Street said. “Education is something that I intend to look at very closely and investigate very heavily.”

Street said he wants to get schools back to “educating and not indoctrinating” students.

He said he feels students are being told what to think instead of being free thinkers.

Street said he can’t fix that from the auditor’s office, except in trying to educate the public.

Wood isn’t done with her to-do list either.

Wood said there are 34 state agencies and 17 universities, with 182 internal auditors spread out across the state.

And she wants to next audit the auditors.

“We spend $18 million a year and the program is a failure,” Wood said.

Wood said if the internal auditors program worked, misspent funds would be caught a lot quicker.

She added that she also needs to ensure that the $4 billion in COVID-19 relief money given to the state by the federal government is checked for any misspending.

Criminal charges expunged

Street said if he is elected he wants to model his career on that of State Treasurer Dale Folwell. He said he appreciates that the treasurer goes around talking with his constituents about what he does.

“I want to serve the public and work for the citizens of North Carolina to serve as their watchdog to help ensure that their hard earned tax dollars are spent as effectively, efficiently and conservatively as is possible,” Street said.

Street ran against his Republican opponents with very little money. He spent the months leading up to the primary meeting with constituents across the state.

And that went a long way for him. His supporters overlooked a lengthy criminal history and nominated him anyways.

In March, court records showed that Street was put on probation in connection with a 2018 stalking charge, his second.

He has also been accused of simple assault, refusing to obey orders from police, causing a scene at a concert, and threatening a man’s family over money.

He has not been convicted on the criminal charges — which are misdemeanors and date back to 2012 — but was given a conditional discharge on the stalking charge that included six months of unsupervised probation.

Street said in March that all of the charges had been dismissed and said he should have had his record expunged.

In an Oct. 1 interview with The News & Observer, Street said he took care of that expungement. Now the stalking and assault charges do not show up in a record search. And the only convictions that appear are for catching too small of a fish — people can catch red drum, North Carolina’s state saltwater fish, only if they are more than 18 inches long — and for not having working lights on a boat.