The State House community was abuzz last week after seeing the word “RESCIND” slashed in big black letters across one of the job postings by the Carcieri administration for two $110,549- to-$122,560-a-year executive directors to serve under the director of the Department of Administration, Beverly Najarian.

The RESCIND notice was quickly followed by a posting for a new $98,543- to-$110,549-a-year purchasing agent for the state.

With a Senate committee investigating the administration’s not-always-neatly-documented purchasing practices, it sure looked as if the governor had decided the state needed a full-time chief of state purchasing after all.

After the last full-time purchasing chief, Peter Corr, quit in January 2005 rather than accept a job reassignment that he viewed as a blatant move to force him out, Corr’s role as the head of state purchasing was subsumed by one of the three DOA “executive directors” — Brian Stern — who is now the governor’s chief of staff.

But all was not what it seemed on the posting front.

Both the “RESCIND” notice and the posting for a purchasing agent came down shortly after Najarian was asked about them.

In an e-mailed response to a Political Scene query, she wrote: “I am not planning to rescind that position at the present time. And, we are interviewing vigorously for both [executive director] positions but are not ready to make any offers. More interviews are being scheduled for this week and next.”

“I’m not sure where the confusion came in,” Najarian said, but “the rescission and purchasing agent posting are incorrect.”

Corr, a former commander of the Newport Navy base, was hired by the state in late 1988 and quickly named to oversee changes in the troubled purchasing office, then headed by former Pawtucket Mayor Dennis M. Lynch. Corr replaced Lynch as purchasing officer a little more than a year later, in January 1990.

At the time of his departure, Najarian said Corr, in his 15-year tenure, “did an outstanding job in bringing quality and control” to the department, which handles the purchasing of goods and services across state government, but “was probably a little more reluctant to change than I would have liked to have seen.”

Among their disagreements, Corr said, was Najarian’s desire to remove a requirement that the administrator of purchasing systems hold a professional certification in the field.

Corr’s parting words: “I said, ‘Well there’s the law and the regulations and all I do is make sure people follow the law and I keep you and other people out of trouble.’ ”