MOULTRIE — Colquitt County has found one of two missing pieces in top positions with the selection this week of a new finance director.

County Administrator Marion Hay announced Friday that he selected Wayne Putnal, a Tifton certified public accountant, to replace Miriam Faircloth, who resigned in August.

Putnal, a Tift County resident, will be paid $70,000 per year and his first day on the job will be Nov. 3.

He was the first of four candidates interviewed and the only one of the four who holds a CPA license, said Hay, who is working in an interim capacity himself. He will next turn his attention to identifying a pool of applicants from which his replacement will be found.

Because Putnal will soon be working under a new administrator, Hay said, he asked commissioners to be involved in the interview process.

“Under ordinary circumstances they wouldn’t have been involved,” he said. “They helped make the decision; I involved them in the decision-making process.

“Wayne was the one they had a consensus on. We had a fine set of applicants for this job.”

Putnal said during an interview that he sees his role as giving accurate information on the county’s finances to commissioners.

“My job is to come in here and do the books for the county and provide information so they can make the tough decisions that I don’t have to make,” he said.

Putnal, who currently is employed as director of accounting and controller at GS Development, LLC & Affiliates, said he was interested in working in a job in government after spending his career in the private sector for a “change of pace.”

He holds a bachelor of business administration degree in accounting from Valdosta State College and a bachelor of science in management from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

He said he did audit Colquitt County’s books one year and Tift Regional Medical Center for several years while working with the accounting firm of Bowen, Phillips & Carmichael, where he was employed from December 2002 to July 2005.

“My current employer is a real estate developer,” he said. “The current economy has me a little worried, plus I think this will be a good fit. I’ve had some experience in the government field.”

The biggest change Putnal anticipates is working within a government budget.

“It’s somewhat different because governments are constrained to tax revenue,” he said. “Working within a budget to provide the services needed is the most important thing.”