RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - David McCoy, a career state employee who rose through the ranks to help manage the North Carolina government’s finances through two recessions, is retiring at the end of the month.
McCoy, the state controller, told employees Monday morning of his decision to leave more than a year before the expiration of his seven-year appointment.
“During this time, we have faced some of the greatest fiscal challenges the state has ever had to confront,” McCoy wrote to staff, but added “none of us are immune from the passage of time and a number of health and family issues have arisen that I now need to focus on.” McCoy, 61, didn’t disclose details.
In 2008, then-Gov. Mike Easley chose McCoy, his state budget director for the previous seven years, to become controller. Charged with keeping the state’s books, monitoring cash flow and managing state payroll, the controller is considered an independent position at arm’s lengths from the state’s fiscal decision-makers.
A former public school teacher, attorney and longtime university instructor, McCoy began his state government career in the late 1980s when he became deputy director of the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs. McCoy is a Chippewa Indian.
He was legal counsel and later deputy secretary at the Department of Administration before joining then-Gov. Jim Hunt’s staff, where he took on projects such as gambling negotiations with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
Hunt picked him in 1999 to serve as transportation secretary, where he remained until Easley named him budget director.
McCoy managed the state budget through fiscal emergencies early in Easley’s first term and later helped keep state government paying its bills during a multibillion-dollar shortfall that forced Gov. Beverly Perdue to furlough state workers and teachers in 2009.
McCoy praised Controller’s Office workers for projects such as state government’s new payroll and human resources computer system and a unified computer system called CJ-LEADS that merges criminal offender information in one location for law enforcement.
“I will resign my office with satisfaction knowing that the appointment I accepted was well within my abilities,” McCoy wrote Gov. Pat McCrory in his retirement letter dated last Friday. “The successful achievement of many significant and noteworthy goals during my tenure has validated nearly all of my expectations.”
The governor is supposed to name a successor to McCoy, whose term was to expire June 30, 2015. The General Assembly must confirm the replacement.
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