Democrats protest Republican grilling of DOT employees over false letters<\/p>\n
\u00a0Published Wed, Jun 27, 2012 01:46 PM<\/p>\n
Modified Wed, Jun 27, 2012 02:34 PM<\/p>\n
Bruce Siceloff – bsiceloff@newsobserver.com<\/p>\n
By Bruce Siceloff The News and Observer<\/p>\n
Tags: Jim Trogdon | Vicky Stanley | Susan Coward | NCDOT | toll roads | Sen. Martin Nesbitt | Sen. Dan Blue | Sen. Tom Apodaca | Sen. Buck Newton<\/p>\n
\u00a0RALEIGH — After Republican senators grilled two Department of Transportation employees and a member of Gov. Bev Perdue\u2019s staff at a committee hearing this morning, Democrats protested that the DOT workers were being hounded unfairly for their involvement in a mistake.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Vicki Stanley, a DOT office manager, and Susan Coward, a DOT deputy secretary, were questioned for a combined 40 minutes about their actions on June 14, when they agreed to issue letters to two legislators over the signature of their boss, Jim Trogdon, DOT\u2019s chief operating officer.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cWe have a one-sided cross examination of civil servants, these two ladies who showed up here this morning, \u2026 who were just doing their job in this entire process,\u201d Sen. Dan Blue, a Wake County Democrat, said after the hearing.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The letters misrepresented Trogdon\u2019s position by asking legislators to include money for two toll-road projects in the 2013 budget. Trogdon had told legislative leaders a week earlier that the money was not needed. He quickly disavowed the June 14 letters and said they should not have been sent without his consent.<\/p>\n
Stanley tearfully apologized today for her role in putting Trogdon\u2019s electronic signature on the letters while Trogdon was out of town. She and Coward testified that they had not realized that changes in the letters, requested by Perdue aides, amounted to a reversal of Trogdon\u2019s previous recommendation to the legislature.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Kevin McLaughlin, Perdue\u2019s deputy chief of staff, said he was the author of a sentence inserted into a letter Trogdon had drafted the day before. He said he thought it was \u201cclarifying\u201d the DOT budget position, not reversing it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Trogdon said DOT would not be ready to spend $63 million in budgeted state funds for the Mid-Currituck Bridge on the Outer Banks and the Garden Parkway near Charlotte in 2013 because he expects both projects will be delayed by lawsuits. Perdue\u2019s staff wanted to add a sentence seeking to make the money available in 2013 in case the expected delays did not materialize after all.<\/p>\n
\u00a0That\u2019s the change that Coward approved on June 14 in letters that Stanley prepared, with a digital copy of Trogdon\u2019s signature. Trogdon asserted later that the money would not be needed.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The rules committee is expected to decide Thursday whether to refer the issue to outside agencies for investigation of possible ethical or criminal violations.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Blue called the committee\u2019s hearings a \u201cwitch hunt\u201d and said Republicans had abused Stanley and Coward.<\/p>\n
When such a hearing is held again, he said, the witnesses should have lawyers and other legal protections \u201cso that they aren\u2019t led down some kind of little alley to future criminal proceedings or other proceedings that adversely affect them in their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0Sen. Martin Nesbitt, a Buncombe County Democrat and the Senate minority leader, told Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Henderson County Republican who chairs the Senate Rules Committee, that he would never tolerate such treatment for his own office assistant.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s no different than you making a mistake and us calling Miss (Carolyn) Gooden down here and, putting her up there and grilling her for 45 minutes over a mistake that was made in your office. \u2026 It\u2019s just unconscionable to pounce on somebody\u2019s assistant who was just doing her job the best she could.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nesbitt said the false DOT letters were an outgrowth of the Republican-led Senate\u2019s quick budget process.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you run a budget, you don\u2019t have any subcommittees meet, you don\u2019t have any input and you rush it out here, you\u2019re going to have us, the governor\u2019s staff and everybody else running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to catch up with you,\u201d Nesbitt said. \u201cThat\u2019s what happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Apodaca has called Trogdon blameless in the incident, and other Republicans have spoken favorably about DOT employees generally. In questions of witnesses this morning and at previous hearings, the Republicans sought to discover whether aides to the Democratic governor had unfairly pressured DOT employees into putting Trogdon\u2019s signature on the letter.<\/p>\n
But in his reply to Blue and Nesbitt, Apodaca suggested that some of the blame lay with Trogdon\u2019s executive assistant, Stanley. Gesturing to his assistant, Gooden, seated at his side, Apodaca said:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Miss Gooden had done what that lady (Stanley) did, she wouldn\u2019t be working for me. So let\u2019s get that straight right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0When Nesbitt asked what Stanley had done, Apodaca replied:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty plain she signed a letter that wasn\u2019t authorized to be signed by the person\u2019s name she signed. I\u2019m not a lawyer, I\u2019m just a normal person, but that doesn\u2019t work in my world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0Siceloff: 919-829-4527 or blogs.newsobserver.com\/crosstown or twitter.com\/Road_Worrier\/<\/p>\n
Read more here: http:\/\/www.newsobserver.com\/2012\/06\/27\/2163465\/democrats-protest-republican-grilling.html#storylink=cpy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Democrats protest Republican grilling of DOT employees over false letters \u00a0Published Wed, Jun 27, 2012 01:46 PM Modified Wed, Jun 27, 2012 02:34 PM Bruce Siceloff – bsiceloff@newsobserver.com By Bruce Siceloff The News and Observer Tags: Jim Trogdon | Vicky Stanley | Susan Coward | NCDOT | toll roads | Sen. Martin Nesbitt | Sen. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomcb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomcb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomcb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomcb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomcb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomcb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":907,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomcb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomcb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomcb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomcb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}