An assistant supervisor for the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles' License and Theft Bureau who was fired after blowing the whistle has filed a lawsuit in federal court to get his job back and collect $800,000 or more in damages.

Ken Cassidy was fired in March 2008 after he was accused of violating an order not to talk to any DMV employees in the emissions program, Dan Kane reports.

Several months earlier, Cassidy had tipped The News & Observer to an improper hire within the program and to the fact that some emissions staff had so little work to do that they were finished with their tasks by lunch time.

Cassidy's information undid the improper hire, which also led to the resignation of the bureau's deputy director and the firing of another assistant supervisor. His information also caused DMV officials to give emissions staff additional duties.

Senior Administrative Law Judge Fred Morrison found the order that led to Cassidy's firing "excessive, punitive and unreasonable" and said he should be reinstated. But the State Personnel Commission rejected the opinion. Cassidy has appealed that decision to state Superior Court.

The federal lawsuit names the DMV, the state Department of Transportation and several former and current DMV and DOT officials as defendants, including former DMV Commissioner Bill Gore.

Gore issued the order after learning emissions staff alleged Cassidy had harassed co-workers. Two of those employees acknowledged in a hearing that they were upset that Cassidy had exposed the problems within the emissions program.

Gore and DMV officials said they had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

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With a payment of $55,000, the state of North Carolina has settled a lawsuit over why Wayne Hurder was fired last October as deputy commissioner of the Division of Motor Vehicles.

Top officials at DMV and the state Department of Transportation originally said Hurder had exerted improper influence in several DMV hirings, Bruce Siceloff reports.

DOT released documents suggesting that Hurder had shaped some personnel decisions to favor job candidates backed by a Greene County political patronage boss, Eddie Carroll Thomas.

Hurder contended in his lawsuit that he was fired for refusing to make improper personnel moves favored by his boss, Bill Gore, who was then the DMV commissioner. The Office of State Personnel later found there was no basis for Hurder's allegations against Gore.

Now Hurder has dropped his lawsuit after DMV agreed in late April to pay him $55,000 and to change his personnel files to indicate that he had resigned. He says the state paid him because it feared he would prevail when the case came before a state hearing officer.

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The Office of State Personnel found that there is no basis to allegations that former Division of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Bill Gore used favoritism in hiring.

The claims were made by Gore's former second-in-command, Wayne Hurder. Hurder was fired in November after an internal DMV investigation found that he had allowed a Greene County patronage boss, Eddie Carroll Thomas, to have longstanding and widespread influence over personnel matters within the Driver and Vehicle Services section.

Hurder claimed in a suit filed shortly after his termination that Gore had violated personnel procedures in seeking to help two people get DMV positions, reports Dan Kane. One is the son of a former neighbor of Gore's who won a summer internship; the other was a temporary DMV employee who sought a fulltime job.

An investigation by the state personnel office found that Hurder came up with the idea of the summer internship and set it in motion, and did not raise objections about it at the time. Another person who had no connection to Gore was selected for a second internship.

As for the temporary employee, the investigation found that Gore expressed an interest in hiring him fulltime because he had fixed some equipment that others responsible for the repair had failed to fix. But the investigation found that Gore did not get involved in the hiring process as the temporary employee applied for two jobs, one of which he won.

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