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.
More after the jump.
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"I think they saw I had a really good case, and they decided to cut their losses and put this behind them," Hurder said. "Everything gets taken out of my personnel file that was negative, and of course I won't go back to work there again."
Top officials who supervised Hurder at DMV and the state Department of Transportation have been replaced by new leadership under the administration of Gov. Beverly Perdue. Greer Beaty, a spokeswoman for DMV and DOT, said state officials settled because they wanted to resolve the dispute and move forward.
"The amount of time and energy required by a trial would have been counter-productive," Beaty said. "We felt it was in the best interests serving the citizens for us to move forward."
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