RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - A longtime lobbyist for North Carolina’s leading state employees’ group is its new executive director.
The State Employees Association of North Carolina announced on Wednesday that Ardis Watkins now leads the group’s day-to-day operations.
She succeeds Robert Broome, who resigned recently after about two years at the job with the 47,000-member association. SEANC had no information on reasons for Broome’s departure. He didn’t immediately return a phone messages seeking comment.
After learning of Broome’s resignation, the association’s board of governors decided at its most recent regular meeting to offer Watkins the job, said Amanda Martin, an attorney for SEANC.
Watkins joined SEANC in 2001 and has been its chief lobbyist at the Legislative Building. Now she’s the first female executive director in the group’s 73-year history.
“No one knows SEANC and our issues better than Ardis Watkins,” SEANC President Jimmy Davis said in a release.
The association is a Service Employees International Union local but lacks power other governmental unions may have. State law bars collective bargaining between state government and workers for salaries and benefits.
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