I attended Millsaps College for two years then transferred to the University of Southern Mississippi where I received BA and MA degrees. Terry and I married in 1970. We were both high school teachers while I attended graduate school. Then I taught political science at Hinds Community College. I started work for the Mississippi Legislature in 1973 doing program evaluation and investigative work for the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) until retiring in 1996.
I worked for the Florida Legislature as the first Director of the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) from 1996 until 2003. Then I operated a small consulting firm, Turcotte Public Administration Consulting and Training (TPACT, LLC) from 2003 until 2007. One of my clients, the North Carolina General Assembly, contracted with TPACT to manage a one-year project to review selected administrative functions of state agencies. Near the conclusion of the project, the General Assembly created the Program Evaluation Division, a branch of the Legislative Services Agency. They offered me the Director position, which was an opportunity to settle down with less travel. I took the position in June 2007, hired the first staff members and started producing reports. I want to thank Mrs. Dollarhide, Mittie Kay Smith, and Mrs. Gordon for teaching me how to diagram sentences and the basics of composition because I just edited and signed my 824th evaluation report.
Terry and I have two precious daughters who we tried to raise right. Our oldest, Leigh- Anne, is a graduate of MUW and the University of North Dakota. She served in the US Navy as an aerospace physiologist. She married Todd Boland, a Navy pilot in 2007. They are in Rhode Island where Todd is attending the Naval War College. Our youngest, Erin Sydney, graduated from FSU in 2005 with a degree in risk management, worked for two years with the Florida Association of Insurance Agents, and then became an insurance agent. She is a commercial producer specializing in condominium association policies with a firm in Fort Lauderdale.
