Prince William County executive announces retirement

Craig Gerhart, the county executive for Prince William whose chief job is to oversee day-to-day operations and personnel, announced his retirement Wednesday to take a position with Amtrak.

He begins a full-time independent contractor position with the company as an organizational strategist for the policy and development department July 6 —  three days after his retirement with Prince William takes effect, according to the release.

Gerhart’s announcement comes a day after he held a press conference with Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert and police Chief Charlie Deane about felony indictments of four individuals on a bid-rigging scheme within the county’s Offices of Information Technology.

But to draw a parallel would be inaccurate, he said.

“There isn’t any connection,” Gerhart said, in a telephone interview, explaining that he was eligible for retirement from county employment in April, but held off due to fiscal 2010 budget planning.

“I wasn’t going to leave in the middle of the budget,” he said. “Also, the board in January had tasked me … to reorganize the structure of Fire and Rescue. That [reorganization plan] was due May 1 but we needed an extension to June.”

Then, the OIT scandal broke.

“I really wanted to get that to the point where I had taken all the action that could be taken with staff,” Gerhart said. “I didn’t want to leave that issue hanging.”

That moment came Tuesday with the indictments, and that it came around the same time as the opportunity from Amtrak was coincidental, he said.

“If I had waited another month [to retire], the people who want to make a connection [to the scandal] would make a connection anyway,” he said. “If I had left a month earlier, the people who want to make a connection would still make a connection.”

Supervisor Mike May, R-Occoquan, said Gerhart had been a boon for the county.

“It’s with reservation that we’ve accepted his retirement,” he said, adding that the process of selecting a new county executive would soon begin.

Supervisor Frank Principi, D-Woodbridge, said assistant county executives Susan Roltsch and Melissa Peacor were the next-in-line for the position, but it would be “premature to say who” would fill the shoes.

“Those are going to be quite large shoes to fill,” he continued, in praise of Gerhart’s performance.

The supervisors learned Tuesday of Gerhart’s intended retirement.

“We were informed last night in closed session on a personnel matter that he had asked to move on,” Principi said in a Wednesday telephone interview. “[Gerhart] has been a very dedicated employee. We will sorely, sorely miss him.”

One of Gerhart’s last public actions has been to set up an Internal Control Council, a group of finance and staff members who will work to lessen the chances of such scandals as the bid-rigging within OIT from occurring again. Despite Gerhart’s retirement, that council’s work will still go forth, he said.

“That’s something we’ve been working on for some time,” Gerhart said.

The alleged bid-rigging within OIT is believed to have gone on for five years and involved upwards of $8 million of taxpayer dollars.

The indictments charged four men with 153 felonies ranging from racketeering to forgery. Three of the charged lived in the county: Maneesh Gupta, 45, and brothers John Patrick and Vernon Andrew Roessler, 50 and 42, respectively. Gupta, the former OIT systems division chief and the second highest ranking employee in that department, had been fired weeks ago in connection with this investigation. The fourth charged was Richard Todd Billingsley, 41, from Springfield. All are being held without bond at the Prince William-Manassas Regional Jail.

Two other OIT employees, meanwhile, have been fired but not charged. They are John Lim, systems developer, and David Ampofo, systems development manager.

The leading official in OIT, chief information officer Massoud Nourbakhsh, is on the path to termination, said Principi, but has not been charged with any crime.

“He was served a pre-termination letter and a severance [Tuesday],” Principi said.

Principi has been a key county official in kicking off the investigation of OIT. In April, a county employee who worked in OIT but was targeted for a reduction-in-force approached the supervisor with concerns about suspected departmental illegalities, Principi said.

“She felt there was something going on, she lives in my district and she sought me out,” he said. “She was on the RIF list … but yes, she worked in OIT. She had first-hand knowledge.”

Principi said he met with the employee a couple of times and contacted Gerhart with the concerns.

“He and I talked and felt it was appropriate to turn it over to [Robin] Howard,” the county’s director of audit services, Principi said. “I gave him the information.

My role was to protect the confidentiality of the individual employee. I initiated the conference calls [to Howard] but it was [Howard] who called the police.”

Some on the board aren’t 100-percent happy with how the investigation has ensued —– though those criticisms are tempered with praise for Gerhart and gratitude for the services he has performed through the years.

Chairman Corey Stewart, R-at large, for example, expressed surprise and disappointment Tuesday afternoon that nobody involved with the press conference gave proper notification to the board so members could attend. And on Wednesday, Supervisor Maureen Caddigan, R-Dumfries, said board members should have been given periodic updates on the investigation — rather than gleaning their insights from the media — as well as been informed of the press conference with ample time to attend.

“I was kind of disappointed, to say the least,” she said. “We should have been apprised of things.”

Staff writer Cheryl Chumley can be reached at 703-670-1907.