Official gets boot for going country.

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: Rick Watson, chief executive officer of Northeastern North Carolina Regional Economic Development Commission

Country singer Randy Parton has plans to turn Roanoke Rapids into an entertainment hub next year. Dolly's brother is working on a project near Interstate 95 that includes a theater, stores, hotels, a convention center and aquarium in a town where the entertainment options don't get much glitzier than CJ's Bingo and Roanoke Cinema.

Already, Carolina Crossroads Music & Entertainment District has helped produce excitement in the form of a minidrama that prematurely ended the tenure of one of the men who helped lure it to Roanoke Rapids. Rick Watson was CEO of the Northeastern North Carolina Regional Economic Development Commission, a public body that promotes the 16-county region, and of North Carolina's Northeast Partnership Inc., a private nonprofit that does the commission's bidding.

Watson told the nonprofit's executive board in October that he planned to accept a position in early 2007 as an equity investor in a Parton company developing the Randy Parton Theater, the centerpiece of Carolina Crossroads. Until then, he would continue as CEO of the nonprofit and commission.

That didn't sit well with the region's county managers. They worried that Watson wouldn't act in the Northeast's best...