By BOB MONTGOMERY

A member of the Northeastern Commission said Monday that the only way the troubled regional economic development agency can win back public trust is by making "some major changes" to its current operations.

David Twiddy, a member of the Northeastern N.C. Economic Development Commission told Pasquotank County commissioners that his board plans to make those changes when it meets in Edenton later this week.

"There's going to be some major changes – probably starting Wednesday," Twiddy said.

Twiddy didn't say what those changes will be, but several sources have indicated that they could include the resignation of the Commission's executive board and dissolution of the Northeast Partnership, a private, nonprofit agency the Commission created to handle economic development matters in the region.

The Pasquotank Board of Commissioners in fact called for both changes Monday night.

In a unanimous vote, the board approved a resolution demanding the abolishment of the Partnership and the resignation of executive committee members from the Commission's board of directors.

Commissioner Matt Wood made the motion to adopt the resolution, which will now be sent to the commission boards in four neighboring counties covered by the Northeastern Commission's activities. Representatives from Pasquotank and the other four counties are slated to meet May 4 to discuss the Commission's future.

Wood said by calling for the Partnership's abolition and the resignations, the Pasquotank board sought to "speak to those responsible" for the actions detailed in a recent state audit of the Commission and the Partnership.

A report of that audit, conducted by the State Auditor's Office, criticized the Partnership for allowing its then-CEO, Rick Watson to engage in a conflict of interest with an agency client; for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee bonuses without any documented reasons for the payments; for hiring contractors without any competitive bid criteria; and for giving employees and contractors overly generous terms of separation – in most cases paying them a full year's salary or retainer fee, even when there was good cause for their termination.

The report, compiled by State Auditor Leslie Merritt, also criticized the Commission, whose members are appointed by the governor, House speaker and Senate president, for failing to provide proper oversight of the Partnership's activities. Too often, the report stated, the Commission allowed its executive board to make most of the agency's major decisions.

Pasquotank Commissioners Marshall Stevenson and Hank Krebs both expressed criticism of the Commission's executive board.

"It really bothers me to have a public entity that's in a situation like this," Stevenson said. "If the same people involved are with the executive board, I don't see how it can improve."

Stevenson said he thought an executive board's function was to do the legwork to investigate contracts, then report their work to the full board for final action.

Twiddy, however, said that wasn't the way the Commission's executive board acted. Too often, it "executed" decisions on behalf of the full board, he said.

Krebs said he didn't see how the Commission's executive board could survive if the agency was promising changes for the better.

"The executive board overseeing that Partnership has got to go," he said.

Vann Rogerson, the Commission and Partnership's vice president and interim director, and Jimmie Dixon, a Commission member and former Pasquotank commissioner, also attended Monday's meeting of the Pasquotank commissioners. Rogerson said the agencies' boards of directors plan to hire an attorney from Raleigh to examine their structure and make recommendations.

Several commissioners urged Rogerson, Twiddy and Dixon to subdivide the Commission into three sub-regional groups. At least that way, one elected official from each county would be represented on the Northeast Partnership board, the commissioners said.

Wood, who proposed the idea of the sub-regional groups, said even if the Commission were required to share its financial statements with each county, then that would be a step in the right direction.

"Then the counties can take a role in the accountability issue," Wood said.

Whatever the Commission does, it needs to do soon, Pasquotank Commissioner Bill Trueblood said.

"If you're not able to get the trust of the people at the grass-roots level, it's going to go by the wayside," he said.

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