Dana King can keep her job. For now.
The State Board of Elections placed the Lenoir County elections director on probation through Dec. 1, but in doing so denied the Lenoir County Board of Election’s petition to dismiss her.
“I’m very pleased by the decision, and glad that I can keep serving the residents of Lenoir County,” King said. “I love my job, I love my staff — we have a good working family, so I’m excited that I can stay here and continue on for the next five or six years, I hope, until I can retire.”
King said she wanted to thank those who said prayers and sent cards for her, and for the support of her staff during the process.
In his official ruling on the case, SBE Executive Director Gary Bartlett pulled no punches in going point-for-point remarking on each item discussed in the petition. Overall, he saw a poor ability to communicate from both sides of the conflict.
“Unfortunately, the documents I have received also reflect poorly upon all involved, and uncover some high-damaging ineptitude in how business has been handled within Lenoir County Board of Elections,” Bartlett wrote. “I see unchecked personality conflicts, vindictive distortions, and a lack of trust and harmonization by all. It was difficult to sift out the facts from the innuendo and invective contained in the materials.”
As part of the probation, King and the board are to implement a new “action plan” to improve the work of the board and its staff. The board is to develop a current job description for the director’s position, King must keep the board updated monthly on events and the budget, give the board all SBE materials, schedule all comp time for herself and the staff, and she and the board are to meet with county administrators to develop a memorandum of understanding regarding the budget and overtime.
King said she plans on doing the best she can for the current board and the new board that will be installed in July.
She added, “I think there was plenty of blame to go around.”
Bartlett wrote, regarding the $20,847 in overtime that caused the board to go over-budget, that it should be viewed in light of the $295,006 returned to the county in budget surpluses for the last five years. However, he cites a larger role in the problem of King not notifying the board about overtime costs until after the fact.
“The Board of Elections members are, as you can imagine, disappointed in Mr. Bartlett’s decision,” Board Chairwoman Sharon Kanter said. “The board did not enter this process lightly, or without what we felt was considerable effort to address the issues we had identified and went to the extent of filing a petition.
“It was, we thought, in the best interests of the voters of Lenoir County that we have new management of the Board of Elections.”
Bartlett wrote the complaints didn’t rise to a level appropriate for immediate termination, with part of the reason being there wasn’t a “serious harmful impact” on the county’s elections, and those elections went on “without a major incident.”
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wes.wolfe@kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.