The facts about N.C. Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey’s hiring practices

Many of Causey’s moves involve sweeping changes to the department’s regional operations — moving offices from higher-populated areas to smaller communities and hiring people with personal connections and political clout.

The new offices are drawing little traffic from the public, and the department has provided little information to show the work activities of some of the people Causey hired to run them, The N&O found. Records and interviews showed Causey:

Hired several people as regional directors with personal and political ties. One was his 2016 campaign manager, Mendy Greenwood. The department could only produce six weekly activity reports, three weekly schedules, eight monthly mileage reports and two expense reports for the six years Greenwood was a regional manager.

Shifted regional districts’ boundaries often, including reconfiguring two so that those directors could work out of their homes on Oak Island. Johnston County has been in all or parts of five different districts.

Closed regional offices in Asheville, Charlotte and Wilmington and opened new ones in Archdale near his home, Whiteville and Gastonia. A fourth is expected to open in North Wilkesboro. Log books showed few visitors to the new offices. A reporter found the Archdale office locked to the public.

Causey has used positions designated as “exempt policy-making” under state law to hire regional directors. They are not subject to normal hiring and firing requirements. The jobs do not need to be posted and department heads can fire appointees at will.

The N&O found he used one exempt position to hire a political ally, John Woodard, who Causey later assigned a job producing property evaluations for state properties, and allowed him to work out of his Elizabeth City home.

Woodard had made roughly $295,000 in pay over five years, but spent much of that time doing little work as software issues plagued the project. He described his job as “make work.”

The department fired Woodard in July, after The N&O began inquiring about political hires in the regional operations.

Map by McClatchy visual data journalist Susan Merriam.

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