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COLLEGE PARK, Md. For years, dating to at least the early 1990s, leaders in the tiny town of Broadway in Lee County wanted to widen lanes and add sidewalks to a half-mile stretch of their Main Street.
After a study in 1998, the state Department of Transportation said the project on the street, which is a state road, wasn't justified for the town of 1,100 people about 50 miles south of Raleigh.
Then, in 2004, a man who sat on a town road committee had an idea: If people gave campaign money to then-Gov. Mike Easley for his re-election bid, the project might get started.
Several wrote checks. And within months, the project was launched with taxpayer money controlled by G.R. Kindley of Rockingham, a longtime member of the state Board of Transportation and a three-time Easley appointee.
Kindley abruptly resigned his transportation position on Thursday, saying it was time to end his public service and spend time with his family. He said he knew nothing of the contributions.
“In 16 years and four months on the board, I can truthfully say I never started a road project because of a campaign contribution,” Kindley said.
Kindley was a major fundraiser for Easley and headed a campaign committee in Richmond County that raised more than $35,000 for the former governor, according to disclosure reports Kindley has filed.
He acknowledged that the timing of the events in Broadway could raise questions, but he said the first he heard of those donations was when The News & Observer asked him about them. He had talked with town leaders about the project several times, he and others said.
Kindley said his decision in fall 2004 to use discretionary “small construction” transportation money to widen the road was coincidental to anything other than that he felt it was time to get moving on the long-sought project.
“They had wanted that for a while,” he said.
A review of highway and other records, campaign documents as well as interviews, provides a window into one corner of an Easley campaign that is under scrutiny these days.
State elections officials, who could not be reached for comment, have opened a criminal investigation of the campaign.
There have been reports of free campaign flights by Easley, a Democrat who left office in January. The campaign recently acknowledged it had used a sport utility vehicle without paying for it.
The Easley campaign's lawyer has declined all comment.
Campaign laws do not specifically prohibit a contribution in exchange for a government action. State elections director Gary Bartlett said other laws might apply if there was evidence of a specific quid pro quo, something that Kindley denied ever took place.
There is no evidence in the records that the governor ever knew of the contributions that came from a town in the county that counts Easley's one-time rival, Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker, as a native son.
acurliss@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4840
