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Guilford County Commissioner Kirk Perkins was not in favor of eliminating the deputy county manager job, which Ben Brown held, this newspaper reported a couple of weeks ago.

In December, Melvin “Skip” Alston told Brown that he had the votes to remove the position, which caused Brown to resign a day after former County Manager David McNeill retired with little notice.

Alston told McNeill he had the votes to fire him, which Scoop later confirmed.

Commissioners hire only five people: the county manager, clerk, attorney, finance director and tax director. The rest of the county personnel is off-limits. Commissioners can, however, cut a position.

Among 11 commissioners, five have said they supported removing the role of deputy county manager, and five said they weren’t involved or didn’t support cutting the job.

Leaving us with Perkins.

A day after the May 13 story, Alston said Perkins told him the newspaper misquoted Perkins’ position on Brown’s job. Alston said Perkins thought the newspaper was talking about Brown himself, and commissioners can’t target an employee.

“Perkins said that you misquoted him, and be that as it may, I don’t like the idea of anyone trying to insinuate that I did anything unethical or lied or misled, and I don’t like that at all,” Alston said.

Soon, Alston hung up the phone.

Scoop always wants things to be in the clear, so on Thursday we approached Perkins to ask him, once and for all, if he supported removing the position held by Brown.

“There’s a lot of ways to interpret that question,” Perkins said.

We restated the question.

“There’s not really an answer, because (Brown) resigned, so the conversation is really with (Alston),” Perkins said.

Then, Perkins reached into his pocket, said he had a phone call and walked away.

City attorney bill stalls

A bill that could put the Greensboro City Council in charge of the city attorney is stalled in the legislature for the second year in a row.

And local delegation members say it isn’t likely to pass, since the bill got mixed reviews from City Council members.

The bill would put Greensboro in line with most other municipalities in the state, where the attorney is hired and fired by the elected officials. The council voted 5-4 to put the issue on its legislative agenda and ask the local delegation to get it passed.

The bill passed the House and is now in a Senate committee.

Councilman Mike Barber said last week that one council member — presumably on the losing side of the vote — had called the legislative delegation to “derail” the bill.

Barber didn’t say which council member might have tried to influence delegation members. He said he thought it would ultimately be passed, but he didn’t like that kind of behavior.

Delegation members say while there is a controversy among City Council members, the measure is unlikely to move.

“We’ll let it sit,” said Sen. Katie Dorsett, a Greensboro Democrat. “There’s not agreement in the City Council — it was a 5-4 vote — and there’s not agreement in our delegation.”

Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat, said: “Some of us were reluctant to run it because of the 5-4 vote.”

The General Assembly has until summer 2010 to pass the measure. But other members of the Senate are unlikely to move a local bill over the objection of members from that area.

Coach K at Barnes & Noble

We at Scoop couldn’t miss catching Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski last week at Barnes & Noble inside Friendly Shopping Center.

And neither could anyone else. At least 600 people stood in line to get Krzyzewski and his daughter Jamie K. Spatola to sign “The Gold Standard: Building A World-Class Team,’’ their book about 2008 Olympic basketball team Krzyzewski coached.

It was like old home week for us at Scoop. Because there in line, was City Council member Mary Rakestraw and her husband Frank.

Rakestraw is a longtime UNC-Chapel Hill fan. She even told Krzyzewski that. But she says she’ll read his book. And that’s what got us thinking here at Scoop.

Maybe, because of the elbows-out, rough-and-tumble political world she lives in, Rakestraw can get some pointers about how to lead people, build cooperation and deal with strong egos.

Krzyzewski sure learned how to coach multi-millionaire athletes during the Olympics. But will Rakestraw learn how to handle people, pundits and local politicians who would rather hear themselves talk than hear others listen?

She’ll have to see.

“I think that’s why God gave me a great sense of humor,’’ she says. “I know I slayed my ego a long time ago. I’ve learned to be more respectful of people because there is always somebody out there who is smarter. You can learn from everybody.’’

Staff writers Gerald Witt, Amanda Lehmert, Jeri Rowe and Mark Binker contributed.