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Four Seasons Politics

No accord in sight ahead of HHS discussion

Flat Rock Four Seasons Politics

MossColumn: Village Council's vote made road safer

Maya Richardson did not get as much ink as other commenters on the North Highland Lake Road widening project.   Read Story »

Hendersonville Four Seasons Politics

Commissioners again decline to fund SROs at schools in city

The Henderson County Board of Commissioners ratified its earlier decision that rejected funding police officers covering four schools in the city of Hendersonville.   Read Story »

Saluda Four Seasons Politics

MossColumn: Why did McDonald lose?

The temptation on Tuesday night, May 8, was to describe the sheriff’s primary election as a stunning upset. We don’t expect an incumbent untainted by scandal to lose an election, especially not in a 58.5 to 41.5 percent landslide. That it happened begs the question: Why? In 42 years of covering politics, campaigns and elections, I’ve learned that political upsets, like wave elections, don’t happen because of one thing. They happen when a series of issues peels off the incumbent’s or controlling party’s support, one issue at a time, until the percentage adds up to 50 percent plus 1. That’s what I think was at play when voters fired Charlie McDonald and hired Lowell Griffin to replace him.Let’s start with the most obvious and most damaging one — McDonald’s law enforcement training center. Voters will tolerate big capital spending by government, as long as they’re convinced of a demonstrated need. Voters understand, for instance, that schools age out and need to be placed. For all the fuss over Hendersonville High School construction, little of the friction has focused on cost. Until the recent blowup over who knew the true cost when, the conflict was between new construction and keeping the old — not the cost.McDonald never effectively made the case for why he needed a training center. Voters could not get their head around paying $20 million — or $6 million — for live-action scenario training, tactical drills and 360-degree shooting practice. It was amazing to watch how quickly and decisively commissioners dropped plans for shooting ranges when their meeting room overflowed with angry homeowners. In August 2015, commissioners abandoned the Camp Flintlock site in Green River. They “folded like lawn chairs,” McDonald told me some months later. Next, the board dropped a site on Pinnacle Mountain before it even came to a public discussion. The proposed Blue Ridge Community College location, an idea intended to remove the Not in My Backyard dynamic, backfired bigtime. At $22 million, the indoor facility under an acre of roof inspired an even broader uprising based on fiscal conservatism and opponents’ belief that gunshots and explosions were incompatible with the classroom experience. A year after he had quietly told commissioners to pull the plug on the BRCC site, McDonald was in voters’ crosshairs again, going public with the Macedonia Road site in rural Saluda. If our elected commissioners and County Manager Steve Wyatt thought they were doing McDonald a favor by bringing up the training center days before the primary, they badly miscalculated. Hundreds of residents gathered at the Grove Street Courthouse to protest the shooting range on Saturday, April 14. A standing-room-only crowd filled a meeting room at Saluda fire station on Monday, April 16. One-stop voting started two days later.Read the spreadsheet to see what happened. McDonald got shellacked in the precincts in and around Macedonia Road. Griffin won 84 percent of the vote in Raven Rock and 73 percent in Green River. * * * * * While McDonald and the commissioners were busy shooting themselves in the foot on the training center, that wasn’t the only dynamic. McDonald won with 50.4 percent in the 2014 primary, which meant half the primary voters picked someone else — Michael Brown or Erik Summey. Brown is from a family of deputies who served in the Ab Jackson era, which ended when a young upstart named George Erwin ousted Sheriff Jackson in the 1994 primary. The Ridge has been trying to get the sheriff’s office back ever since and in Lowell Griffin those apple country voters had a deeply rooted native to support. It didn’t hurt that his brother, Robert, is the longtime chief of Edneyville Fire & Rescue. Firefighters stick together — and they talk and they vote. Brown won 30 percent of the vote four years ago. I’d say that was a reliable base number for Griffin. He needed 20 more points to close the deal.Griffin won the Edneyville box with an astounding 78 percent of the vote and took the Bat Cave, North Blue Ridge and Clear Creek precincts with at least 70 points. I suspect that the farm community bailed on McDonald. I say that because I was surprised to see the reaction to a relatively minor crackdown on undocumented immigrants by the 287G program under ICE weeks before the election.During their only debate, Griffin refused to commit to continuing a local partnership on ICE enforcement. Under President Obama, I’m guessing that apple and produce growers and greenhouse operators considered ICE enforcement a modest threat. Under President Trump, they may view immigration enforcement as an existential threat. Shift a few more points from the incumbent to the challenger.Speaking of Trump, McDonald scored the political optic of the year when he appeared at a White House roundtable on school safety with the Man of Hair. Or did he? Was McDonald’s close association with the right wing of his party — including Trump and Freedom Caucus leader and Tea Party favorite Mark Meadows — an asset or a liability? Plenty of spiritual Democrats are registered independents in our county; otherwise they cede their ability to influence local politics. Griffin also won the Mills River precincts, where community members have expressed anger over McDonald’s actions in the manhunt for Phillip Michael Stroupe, who is charged with the murder of Tommy Bryson. Add up the issues and the May 8 primary election outcome seems less mysterious.McDonald ran as a reformer and I would accept his campaign rhetoric that he had served as a reformer. It turned out it wasn’t enough to claim that he had fixed a broken culture. When voters feel like government action threatens their homestead — for most people, their biggest financial investment — they have long memories. * * * * * Reach editor Bill Moss at billmoss@hendersonvillelightning.com.         Read Story »

Henderson County Four Seasons Politics

Closed door budget-craft eliminates amendments

RALEIGH — Republican legislative leaders’ decision to hold secretive budget deliberations was bad politics, and could further motivate angry Democrats to flood the voting booth this fall, political observers say. GOP leaders counter that the budget they unveiled Monday night merely makes some minor adjustments in the two-year agreement enacted last year. In their view, Democrats used similar tactics when they had a lock on the General Assembly. And the spending plan for the upcoming year is fiscally sound, including higher pay for teachers and state employees, more tax cuts, and a boost in state rainy-day savings — a tough budget to reject in an election year, Republicans say. Even so, analysts say the choice to offer the budget as a conference committee report, allowing no amendments, gives Republicans, with supermajority margins in both legislative chambers, a tactical advantage. “I certainly think that they recognize there’s energy on the Democratic side," said Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer. Cutting the process short will deny Democrats a high-profile platform in budget debates to criticize GOP policies. “I think this could be the real test this November — how far a party can go in using absolute power to their advantage,” Bitzer said. “It’s hard to compare, but it feels like the Democratic side is having their 2010 kind of a year.” Then, Republicans gained control of the General Assembly after more than a century of Democratic rule. Rather than amend the 2018-19 budget, Republican legislative leaders chose to strip language out of an old insurance bill, and replace it into a conference report with the $23.9 billion General Fund budget proposal. The Senate Joint Appropriations/Base Budget Committee will meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday to review the report. Lawmakers can only vote up or down on the budget. Democrats condemned the tactic on Twitter last week and through the weekend. “The disregard for the spirit of the democratic process is breathtaking,” wrote Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue, D-Wake. “There is a real fear of civil discourse from #ncga leadership.” “Perhaps we can make it much more ‘efficient’ for #ncga leadership” to pass a budget, said House Minority Leader Darren Jackson, D-Wake. He sarcastically suggested Republican lawmakers “could just sign a proxy [and] let just a handful of people write it and then approve it.” “Transparency is a hallmark of a democratic republic, and when the process is done behind closed doors, and only presented for ratification where the votes are already there, it raises real questions about the civic process,” Bitzer said. Shelly Carver, a spokeswoman for Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, disagreed with the critics. “The purpose of the short session is to adjust the two-year state budget that was fully vetted, debated, and passed over a six-month period last year — not to write an entirely new plan,” Carver told Carolina Journal by email. “Lawmakers of both parties will have the opportunity to vote on the bill, and make their voices heard,” Carver said. “But we fully expect legislative Democrats and Gov. Cooper will attempt to use this to justify their opposition to a budget that will include a fifth consecutive teacher pay raise and substantial tax relief for millions of North Carolinians.” Joseph Kyzer, spokesman for House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, defended the budget process. “As appropriations leaders have emphasized, the legislature is only making adjustments to the biennium budget passed last year based on the state’s $356 million revenue surplus and record reserve fund,” Kyzer said. “This year’s state budget will continue to deliver strong investment growth in North Carolina’s priorities like education and public safety while maintaining tax relief for families and businesses,” Kyzer said. The process Republicans chose is legal, but unconventional, according to Gerry Cohen, former General Assembly special counsel. He told the News & Observer he researched budget bills dating to 1985. This is the first instance when amendments will be prohibited on the House and Senate floors. Over 34 years, only three times did one chamber adopt the other’s budget without amending it. But former House Majority Leader Paul “Skip” Stam recalls Democratic power plays. “We protested loudly” as a minority party in 2007, the Wake County Republican said. Republican senators urged their House counterparts to pass the Senate’s budget unamended. Minority House Republicans sought nine Democratic colleagues to join them, backing the Senate budget so it wouldn’t go to a conference committee. House Democratic leaders foiled the scheme. The ensuing conference report contained a half billion dollars of new spending neither the House nor Senate had approved separately. It also created land transfer taxes that failed in both chambers. “I won’t say there was no debate, because we debated it hard. But just like this one, there will be debate but no amendments, and no real part of the process,” Stam said. In 2004, Stam said, Democrats brought a budget conference report to the House floor for an immediate late-night vote. He objected, and then-House Speaker Jim Black allowed less than an hour to review 500 pages of budget documents before voting. N.C. State political science professor Andy Taylor said Republicans’ decision to budget by conference report is not surprising. Power has crystallized for many years among a small cadre of leaders who control budget decisions, the legislative process, committee appointments, and district maps. Some veteran lawmakers who weren’t part of the negotiations still don’t know what’ll be in the final package and have bristled at being excluded. Retiring state Rep. John Blust, R-Guilford, in late April spoke about that concentration of power. In a letter to House and Senate Republicans dated May 10 he strongly urged colleagues to reject a budget dropped into a conference report. He said Republicans have accelerated abusive practices Democrats started. “It is elementary that each citizen of this state is entitled to equal representation in the chambers that make the laws which those citizens are bound to follow,” Blust wrote in the May 10 letter. “This is fundamental constitutional law and fundamental to the very essence of a republic. It should never be abused or traded away for any reason short of a public emergency.” The conference process shuts out minority party members, Taylor said. But rank-and-file majority members also are affected because they can’t offer amendments. Taylor said there’s no question the budget will pass. But it’s unclear if it will get the 60-percent vote needed to override a gubernatorial veto. Some Republicans upset about being excluded from the process, and what’s put in the spending plan, may vote no. Rep. Jeff Collins, R-Nash, who’s also retiring at the end of the session, said the conference committee approach would be OK merely to tweak the budget. But the Republican caucus is split. If big policy issues or objectionable spending items were inserted, he might vote against it. UNC-Greensboro political science professor Thomas Little said legislative leaders may prefer a speedy process, but it doesn’t inspire faith in representative government. “It’s not a healthy process for democracy. If your argument is efficiency, democracy’s not efficient. That’s not one of its qualities. Never has been, never will be,” Little said. “The quality is representation and responsiveness, and you don’t get either with this.”   Read Story »

Henderson County Four Seasons Politics

Commissioners, School Board at impasse on HHS future

Two hours of talking by Henderson County commissioners and School Board members about Hendersonville High School construction produced contentious exchanges, threats to kill the $52 million project and close the high school, calls for starting over on design and renewed calls for renovating the existing classroom building.The joint meeting of the two boards failed to produce consensus between the two boards, and the Board of Commissioners itself could only muster a 3-2 vote to table the question for a couple of months and work toward a solution. The joint meeting limped to a close with nothing decided and left nothing in its wake but renewed ill will between the two boards on what has been an emotional and fraught debate for three years.At issue is a gap in the project that School Board members say they were promised when they voted for the all-new construction option in December 2016 and what commissioners say that project included. The School Board was told early last week that price had gone up by $11 million if the board wants a second gym and a 900-seat auditorium instead of a 400-seat auditorium that meets state standards.Commissioner Bill Lapsley’s motion to move ahead with the originally approved $52 million plan and add the second gym failed on a 4-1 vote. Then Chairman Michael Edney’s motion to add the auxiliary gym and larger auditorium — at a total cost of $66.8 million — failed on another 4-1 vote.Charlie Messer’s saved the project for now with a motion to delay decision until July or August. Commissioners Charlie Messer and Bill Lapsley supported the motion; Edney and Hawkins voted no.“It’ll give you guys a chance, I guess we’re saying start over.” Messer said to the School Board members. “Try to get something that will work for everybody. We’re kicking the can down the road." School Board members pointed to minutes of meetings, including a joint meeting with the Board of Commissioners in 2016, and sessions with architect Chad Roberson, showing that the $52.3 million pricetag did include an auxiliary gym and larger auditorium. But commissioners said those minutes could be erroneous and didn’t change the fact that the county would have to spend $11 million more for those facilities. The larger auditorium is the main sticking point between the two boards. Lapsley, Thompson and Hawkins all argued that the original Erle Stillwell-designed auditorium would work fine for the high school, especially with upgrades that the county has already tentatively agreed to make. School Board members said the walk from the new classroom building to the auditorium would be too far and would be unsafe, exposing students to potential harm from outsiders. “I can’t in good conscience support kids having to walk to the Stillwell building without some kind of cover,” said Lisa Edwards. “I don’t think anybody would support children having to walk from another building to the Stillwell building without some kind of cover.” “To me it would be very hard to explain the extension of the auditorium with the Stillwell building over there," Hawkins said. "If we say we need to spend $11 million so you don’t have to walk to the auditorium I think is a bit of a hard sell for us.” School Board member Blair Craven said after the meeting broke up that the two boards could reach a compromise. "I do think it's constructive," he said. "No matter how it happened we were misled at some point about what would be included in the $52.6 million price. That was in several minutes." The School Board and commissioners could use the weeks ahead to look at a more compressed campus and possibly revive the idea of renovating the historic classroom building.     Read Story »

Hendersonville Four Seasons Politics

$11 million cost overrun jeopardizes HHS construction

Henderson County School Board members reacted with dismay on Monday to a suddenly announced $11 million  cost overrun for the new Hendersonville High School, casting the project into uncertainty and reviving the intramural conflict that has marred the project for three years.   Read Story »

Henderson County Four Seasons Politics

Wyatt to board: Drop training center pursuit

Two days after Sheriff Charlie McDonald lost his re-election bid, County Manager Steve Wyatt has recommended to county commissioners that they drop work on a law enforcement training center, an idea that the sheriff-elect, Lowell Griffin, has opposed. Wyatt, after consulting with Chairman Michael Edney, noted that Griffin would "no doubt have new priorities" and said it's up the Board of Commissioners "within our resources" to work with him. The Board of Commissioners, which paid a deposit and made an offer to the owner of property on Macedonia Road that McDonald had identified as a potential training center site, has to act on the property purchase before the end of May. It's expected to take up the question in its May 16 meeting. If it takes Wyatt's recommendation, it will withdraw its purchase offer and drop the training center discussion for the foreseeable future. Here's the memo: "December will bring a new Sheriff’s Administration to Henderson County Government. As with the previous Sheriffs we have worked with, he will no doubt have new priorities and bring strategies perhaps different from his predecessors. It is our duty and responsibility to work with him, within our resources, to help him accomplish the mission of the Sheriff’s department to protect and serve our citizens."Given the long term design and implementation process of a Law Enforcement Training Center project, in consultation with Chairman Edney, it is my recommendation that further work on the project be suspended until the incoming Sheriff assesses and determines the overall needs of the department."You will need to make a decision prior to the property purchase deadline. Official action cannot be taken until your May 16th budget work session. Please consider how you want to proceed and be prepared to instruct staff accordingly."   Read Story »

Edneyville Four Seasons Politics

'Our ideas came out,' Griffin says of upset win

Lowell Griffin was in workout clothes, hoping to get to the gym on Wednesday, when a television news crew asked for an on-camera interview. The newly elected sheriff of Henderson County agreed to the sit-down — and scrambled to change into an orange plaid shirt.   Read Story »

Henderson County Four Seasons Politics

McDonald and his team 'left everything on the field'

 Asked for his reaction to his stunning re-election loss on Tuesday, Sheriff Charlie McDonald repeated an interviewer’s question.   Read Story »

Four Seasons Politics Archive