By Mark Wineka

mark.wineka@salisburypost.com

RALEIGH — Susan Kluttz’s four-year stint as secretary for the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources is almost over.

Kluttz and other state cabinet members — all political appointees of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory — received letters Wednesday from the transition team for Gov.-elect Roy Cooper, a Democrat, saying their service was appreciated but no longer needed.

“I understand it,” Kluttz said Thursday afternoon from her Raleigh office. “… It’s politics. I realized when Gov. McCrory lost that my job goes with the governor.”

When she was hired, Kluttz noted, she signed a letter saying she understood what the terms of her employment were and that she served the state as a gubernatorial appointee.

She expressed gratitude for McCrory’s giving her the opportunity and said Natural and Cultural Resources was the “best department in state government.”

“It’s been great,” she said. “I wouldn’t give anything for it.”

Kluttz, 67, has to vacate her office by midnight Sunday. She served as mayor of Salisbury from 1997-2011 and was McCrory’s choice for Secretary of Cultural Resources in 2012.

In September 2015, her duties expanded when the Department of Natural Resources was merged with Cultural Resources by adding the N.C. Zoological Park, the N.C. Aquariums, the N.C. State Parks, the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, the Clean Water Management Trust Fund and the Natural Heritage Program.

Look for more in the Friday edition of the Salisbury Post.

Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263.