Wake County Manager David Cooke feels an expansive audit would stretch back more than two years and examine how county employees have spent taxpayer money.
WAKE COUNTY -- Wake County commissioners want to clear the air about the way tax funds are spent by county employees. They believe a sweeping audit of employee spending would do just that.
"We have no tolerance for this at all, so when it happens we deal with it, we need to prove to the public that it was an isolated incident,” said Wake County Manager David Cooke. He feels an expansive audit would stretch back more than two years and examine how county employees have spent taxpayer money.
"I think we owe that to the public,” he said. “They need to know that we are very careful with how we spend money that we derive from them."
Some of those tax dollars already paid for the county’s recycling program manager, Craig Wittig, to take trips to Disney World and Las Vegas, along with a cruise off the coast of Maine. He was fired June 3. A check of his employee procurement card found that he and some others in his department ran up a tab of over $160,000 on county-issued credit.
Wake County commissioners want to clear the air about the way tax funds are spent by county employees. They believe a sweeping audit of employee spending would do just that.
Wittig’s supervisor was demoted, and Cooke says other personnel actions are being considered.
Several county commissioners talked about the number of angry phone calls and e-mails they’ve received about this issue – not only from Wake County residents but from embarrassed Wake County employees. Commissioner Lindy Brown says she’s had an earful.
“Let me tell you, I have received 364 e-mails on my personal phone, which my husband is not pleased with. I have received 26 phone calls,” she said.
Other commissioners made it clear that they don’t want this one incident to reflect on all county employees. "I think the general reaction inside the organization was just like the reaction outside the organization,” said Cooke. “It made a lot of people mad."
The county manager plans to find a way to pay for the audit without using taxpayer funds. The expect cost is up to $150,000.
The audit proposal won unanimous approval from commissioners at Monday’s meeting. The county has already taken some action – all procurement cards for Wake County employees expire August 1. Only employees authorized by their department head will retain their cards.