Associated Press
RALEIGH -- More than 60 people -- a majority of them Division of Motor Vehicles employees -- may have received meals and gifts provided by a telecommunications company that had a decade-old contract with the agency, the state DMV commissioner said Tuesday.
Commissioner Mike Robertson said Tuesday that Verizon Business, which has a $51.5 million computing contract with the division, provided a list four weeks ago with names of state workers and associates that benefited from company-paid expenses.
Thirty-five were DMV workers, while a few were Division of Air Quality workers, Robertson said. Most of the rest were spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends, he said. While most of the expenses over a nearly three-year period were meals, others included Carolina Hurricanes hockey tickets, beach chairs and tickets to this year's inaugural ball in Raleigh.
"We need to look more closer at our employees' relationship with the contractor and their personal interaction," Robertson said.
The State Bureau of Investigation has been asked to investigate whether laws were broken at DMV, particularly whether employees claimed expenses to which they were not entitled to receive. The SBI also is looking separately at what happened to hundreds of computers that weren't delivered as part of the Verizon contract.
The workers identified haven't been disciplined, according to Robertson. The expenses must be confirmed. Any punishment would come after the SBI's probes and an internal state agency investigation, he said.
But Robertson, who joined the division in March, said employees must follow the state ethics rules against receiving favorable treatment from vendors.
Gov. Beverly Perdue "demands the state's business be conducted in the right way and that it be transparent to the public and the media," Robertson said in prepared remarks. "I expect it of every DMV employee and every DMV contractor."
Verizon documents provided to and released by DMV show more than 200 expenses from August 2006 through April 2009. Robertson said most of the meals listed in the Verizon documents involved deli trays, doughnuts and other food brought into DMV headquarters in Raleigh that reflected "working lunches."
But many of them also indicate Verizon workers took state employees and their families to pricey Triangle-area restaurants. In one case, 20 people went to the Angus Barn restaurant in February 2007 at a cost of $781.
The original contract began in 1997 to help DMV create the automobile emission inspection program. It was amended over the years and in the middle of last year was changed again for Verizon in part to provide computers to safety inspection stations.
"The contract was in place well before this came to light," said Robertson, adding that there's been no evidence that the meals weren't a trade for expanding the Verizon contract last year. The employees weren't in decision-making positions for the contract, he said.
"That was quite a bit above the capability of some of these persons who were involved," Robertson said.
Verizon Business has cooperated with DMV by providing the list of state employees who appeared in expense reports filed by Verizon employees as having received meals and gifts.
"We did go to the state and make them aware of the expense items and have cooperated with them, including providing all of the expense reports that we have, and we will continue to work closely with the authorities," Verizon Business spokesman Jack Hoey told The News eigh.
Two DMV administrators responsible for overseeing the Verizon contract left their jobs May 1, according to the newspaper, which first reported the SBI probe into the undelivered computers.
Robertson said DMV is trying to account for all 3,000 computers it had purchased from the company. About 1,800 had been installed at safety inspection station, DMV said. Verizon's contract with DMV calls for it to store unused computers.
