After a six-month hiatus, Durham has a probation director.

The state Department of Corrections announced this afternoon that Tony Taylor (right) has been promoted from assistant to the top manager for Judicial District 14, covering Durham, Orange and Chatham County.

In his new job, Taylor will oversee 122 probation officers and support personnel keeping up with more than 5,000 offenders on probation, parole or community supervision.

The position had been vacant since former manager Tommy Perry retired Oct. 1, 2010.

"Why'd it take so long?" said City Councilman Eugene Brown, a member of the Durham Crime Cabinet who has repeatedly expressed his frustration at the lack of someone in charge of Durham's probation system.

In January, state community corrections Director Tim Moose said the position was going unfilled due to budget constraints. Taylor and fellow assistant director Celeste Kelly of Pittsboro were jointly managing the district in the interim, Moose said.

Taylor's appointment leaves his former position open.

A Raleigh native and graduate of UNC Wilmington, Taylor became an assistant in District 14 after holding the same job in Wake County. He has specialized in electronic house arrest cases and been a chief probation officers and a member of an FBI task force on violent crime.
 

 A year after Gov. Beverly Perdue took office, the state's probation system still struggles to fill jobs.  There are more vacant probation officer positions now than when the News & Observer wrote a series describing the problems in North Carolina's probation system.  Vacant positions are a huge problem because other officers have to pick up offenders assigned to the vacant position, adding more work to already burdened officers.

There's been progress: a new computer program automatically informs probation officers when their probationers screw up, and morale seems better. After the story ran on  Sunday, the governor said she was concerned that the department couldn't fill the jobs. 

In my column last week I previewed our series, "Losing Track:  North Carolina's Crippled Probation System." I also said that despite financial problems, we would continue to do this type of investigative reporting. The column was titled, "We'll keep digging deep."

Readers were supportive. "Keep up the very good work and keep shining the light," said one. Another made a reference to our previous series on problems with the sate's mental health system. "I can't tell you how grateful we are to you, to Michael Biesecker, Pat Stith and Lynn Bonner," she said referring to the reporters on that series. "All the citizens of this state should be grateful for The N&O and how they've investigated the mental health debacle. I'm sure you are going to get to the bottom of this new project." I want to point out that both projects were edited by Steve Riley, our senior editor for investigations.

Another reader, who identified himself in a phone message as a Wake schools teacher, said we did a lot of good work but that I should stop talking about it. "Isn't this you guys' jobs?" he said. "What do you want -- the Big Cookie Award? Times are tough for everybody. That's like me telling my students and their parents: 'I don't get paid much but I'm going to continue to keep doing it.' I appreciate what you do but just keep doing it. No need to blow your own trumpet."

I had never heard of the Big Cookie Award. But I want it.

As for blowing my own trumpet: Fair enough. In tomorrow's column, I blow the trumpet for open government.  We know that since 2000, 580 probationers have been convicted of killing in North Carolina. But we don't know how well they were supervised by the state. That's because the state won't give us reports that would tell us how well those probationers were supervised.  Theodis Beck, state correction secretary, should release those reports. Read more Saturday.

Hundreds die while state officials ignore problems with the probation system in North Carolina. See video from the investigative series, Losing ... more

After the murders of two area college students earlier this year, we knew we wanted to dig into the state's probation system. The two young men charged with murdering the college students had been convicted of other crimes and put on probation. But they had little or no contact with their probation officers. We've spent much of the last year looking at how North Carolina's probation system works -- or doesn't work.

Starting Sunday, we will publish "Losing Track: North Carolina's Crippled Probation System." After reading the series, you will be angry -- and scared. There are solutions; each day of the three-part series (Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday) includes a story on possible solutions. For the last eight years, the probation system has been under the control of Gov. Mike Easley, a Democrat. We'll see if Gov.-elect Bev Perdue, a Democrat who takes office in January, has the will to fix this problem.  

This kind of reporting is expensive. It's threatened by the financial problems of the newspaper industry. Read more about our commitment to investigative reporting in my Saturday column.  

12/5 UPDATE: That headline did get changed during the course of the evening, from "Coming Sunday" to "Next Sunday." So some readers were correctly clued. TV 

Some readers were fooled by a front-page item Sunday that alerted readers to an upcoming series on the state's broken probation system for criminal offenders. The two suspects accused in the murder of UNC student Eve Carson had fallen through the cracks of the state system. The series follows up on the problems.

The promotional box said "Starting Sunday," followed by a headline that read "North Carolina losing track of probationers."

"I have read the Sunday paper thoroughly once, and scanned it again looking for, 'the start of our three-part series.' There is nothing like it anywhere in the paper," wrote Mark Hamblet. "Where is it? On-line (I looked there, too)? In a blog somewhere?"

The series starts next Sunday, Dec. 7. That headline could have been more precise.