PROVIDENCE — Four months after he was suspended with pay amid inquiries into his role in securing a $9-million contract for a relative, Edmund T. Parker, the longtime chief engineer at the state Department of Transportation, has retired.

Reinstated on Thursday to his $147,456-a-year job, Parker retired a day later with a state pension worth an estimated $110,933 annually.

DOT Director Jerome Williams refused to answer questions but issued a statement that said Parker had “been asked to return to work,” but chose to retire.

In his statement, Williams said he asked Parker to return after state police advised the DOT that he was “not a target of any criminal wrongdoing.” Clarifying that statement, state police Maj. Steven O’Donnell said an investigation into DOT contracting practices continues, but based on information gathered so far, Parker is not “the target of a criminal investigation.”

Speaking out, through his lawyer, for the first time since his June suspension, Parker said the leave gave him “an opportunity to reflect upon his years of service and concluded that it was time to retire and move on to other challenges.” While he was “unwilling to effect that decision so long as he was under the cloud of investigation and involuntary leave,” the statement said: “Now that he had been reinstated, Mr. Parker is pleased to announce his retirement.” Parker had worked for the DOT since he was hired as an associate civil engineer in November 1971.

He was placed on leave June 14 amid a widening state and federal probe of the state road-building agency’s contracting practices. Williams, a former deputy director in the Department of Administration who took over the DOT’s reins in late December, said he placed Parker, 60, on an indefinite, paid leave because it seemed prudent to do so while there is a state police investigation into “areas where he is directly involved.”

Speaking at an impromptu news conference that same day, Governor Carcieri confirmed that he had asked both the state police and the state’s top federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente, to investigate “potential wrongdoing” at the DOT.

“Over the last few months and weeks, I have become increasingly alarmed about information being uncovered at the Rhode Island Department of Transportation,” the governor said. Citing issues raised in recent Providence Journal stories, Carcieri listed among his concerns:

•The “discovery”’ that Parker, the DOT’s longtime chief engineer, voted in August 2005 to recommend the Plexus Corp., a company co-owned by his “step-nephew,” David A. Giardino, for a $9-million contract to do the kind of work that neighboring states say they leave to their in-house staff: construction-schedule monitoring.

In this role, Plexus employees — and occasionally Giardino himself — periodically sat across a table discussing Route 195 construction issues with Cardi contract administrator Nicholas Giardino, who is his father, Parker’s brother-in-law and a 1966-1985 DOT employee with an $870-a-month state pension.

•The disclosure that another senior DOT employee, deputy chief engineer Frank Corrao, ordered subordinates to change the evaluation scores on competing bidders “to strengthen the case for hiring Plexus.”

Corrao initially said in an interview that he knew nothing about the rescoring of bidders for the $9-million construction-monitoring contract that went to Plexus. A member of the in-house evaluation committee later said Corrao himself urged the committee to make the spread wider.

•The extension in time, scope and money of relatively small contracts that morph into huge ones without ever being rebid, including the first of the Plexus contracts.

Awarded in 1997 as a $1-million, 30-month contract to help install a financial-management tracking system, the first Plexus contract grew over a decade into what Carcieri described as an $8.5-million source of business for the company without ever again going out to bid. New assignments included a new bridge-design policy manual.

“Given the gravity of these concerns, and in light of his involvement in these contracting decisions, I have also instructed DOT to put Ed Parker on administrative leave with pay until a more thorough review of his conduct can be performed,” Carcieri said at the time.

Asked yesterday whether Carcieri had been consulted and concurred with the decision to reinstate Parker, the governor’s spokesman, Jeff Neal, said: “Governor Carcieri has every confidence in actions being taken by Director Williams and in the review being conducted by the state police.”

Asked if the reinstatement signaled a clean bill of health for the DOT, Neal said: “The governor stands by the concerns he has repeatedly expressed about how the department was managed over the last 20 years, and he is awaiting the results of the ongoing review. … At the appropriate time, the governor expects that the state police will report back to him on their findings.”

There was some confusion yesterday whether state auditors were still involved in the probe. A Department of Administration spokeswoman said no; the governor’s office said yes. O’Donnell confirmed that auditors from the Department of Administration’s audit bureau and the Department of Business Regulation are “assisting” the state police.

Williams has named Kazem Farhoumand, the DOT’s deputy chief engineer, as acting chief engineer while posting and recruiting for the opening gets under way.

As to what has changed at the DOT, Neal said the department has adopted “stricter protocols relative to the disclosure of relationships between potential bidders and DOT employees.”

kgregg@projo.com