Source: Rhino Times Greensboro

Commissioners Tiring Of Sly Fox Routine

by Scott D. Yost

December 21, 2011

Some Guilford County commissioners say they’ve had it up to here and they’re not going to take it anymore.

More and more lately, commissioners have been getting fed up with Guilford County Manager Brenda Jones Fox and Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Skip Alston – for failing to keep them informed of important county business.

A series of events last week came at the end of a year in which the theme has been the failure of county staff to communicate with many of the commissioners on important matters. Several commissioners complained that Fox and Alston didn’t inform them that the two were filing a protest petition against the High Point City Council, and that the two failed to let commissioners know Guilford County was pressing forward with plans to open a NC Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) license tag office.

Over the last year, some commissioners said, Alston and Fox have increasingly attempted to run county government by themselves – and that Fox hasn’t kept them properly informed.

One recent example of a failure to communicate involves staff’s plans to open a county-run DMV license plate office that would compete with two other privately owned DMV offices in the county.

Commissioner Carolyn Coleman said one would think that, as a commissioner, she would have known about the county’s plans on something like that – but Coleman said she is frequently finding out things through the media that county staff clearly should have told her.

“I didn’t know about it until I read it in the paper today,” Coleman said on Thursday, Dec. 15, referring to an article in The Rhinoceros Times that had appeared that morning.

Commissioner Billy Yow said that, as far as what’s going on in Guilford County, you would think it would be the county staff or the chairman of the board who kept him informed. Yow said it’s alarming how frequently he hears about Guilford County’s plans from those outside the county.

“You’d be surprised how often I find out from someone in another county what’s going on in Guilford County government,” Yow said.

Yow said it was an acquaintance from another county who called him recently and said, “I hear Guilford County is getting in the DMV business.”

Yow said he was very surprised by the news, and he responded, “Really?” and then the caller went on to tell Yow all about it.

At the Thursday, Dec. 15 meeting, several commissioners expressed concerns that Fox and Alston had filed a petition earlier that week protesting a rezoning effort by some High Point city councilmembers. The county is attempting to sell property it owns in High Point for $3.1 million, but some in High Point oppose the purchaser’s intended use: a mental hospital that would treat the criminals and suspects.

On Tuesday, Dec. 13, Fox filed a protest petition against the rezoning effort, which would have blocked the sale of the property, and, on Wednesday, Dec. 14, Alston filed a similar petition on behalf of the Board of Commissioners.

Commissioner Paul Gibson had a major problem with the protest petition because the board had been given no input. He said the first he had heard about it was when he took his seat at the Dec. 15 meeting and saw the resolution. It was an addendum to the regular agenda. That petition states, “The Guilford County Board of Commissioners supports the County’s Protest Petition.” However, the board had yet to vote on it.

At the meeting, Gibson said he didn’t understand how Fox and Alston could act, supposedly on behalf of the board, without so much as informing the commissioners.

Gibson said he understood there was a deadline for filing that had to be met, and that deadline was before the Dec. 15 meeting, but, he said, that didn’t mean the commissioners shouldn’t be told what was going on.

It used to be that, when the chairman was forced to take immediate action on behalf of the county on an item that required board support, the chairman would call around to make sure there were at least six votes to support it.

At the Dec. 15 meeting, Gibson was noticeably perturbed when he was asked to support the petition that had already been filed by Fox and Alston without his knowledge. “I’m just a little bit confused – but that’s not unusual,” Gibson said.

“Did we vote to file a protest petition?” he asked Guilford County Attorney Mark Payne.

Payne said that, though the board hadn’t voted specifically to file a protest petition, the commissioners had voted to instruct the staff to take actions necessary to make the sale. Payne said the petition was filed in an effort to affect the sale of the property and that the deadline for filing was before the meeting.

Gibson said that, when he voted to sell the property, he certainly didn’t think he was voting for staff to file a protest petition with the City of High Point.

“My problem is with the wording,” Gibson said, noting that the petition expresses the will of the board. In the past, Gibson has been a frequent critic of what he says are Alston’s constant attempts to act on his own in the name of the board.

“I didn’t vote for a protest petition,” Gibson said, “and I have trouble with that wording.”

Gibson said at a later point in the meeting that he was willing to bet that not one of the commissioners had that in mind when they voted to sell the property.

After the meeting, Payne said his office had sent an email to all of the commissioners informing them of the protest petition. Payne said apparently some of the commissioners saw the email while others did not.

Gibson said that, more and more these days, mysterious items just show up as addendums to the agenda out of nowhere and he is therefore expected to make a decision based on little to no information and with no time to think things through. He said it is always highly unlikely he will support something presented to him at the last minute.

“If I come to the meeting and find something sitting there – I’m very hesitant to vote for it,” Gibson said.

Gibson and Bencini were the only two commissioners who voted against backing the petition, with each saying they were voting no because they weren’t informed about it.

The recent concerns over staff communication come at the end of a year in which Fox failed to inform the board of numerous key actions. For instance, Fox created a new county department by joining court services and child support services – and then created a director’s position for that department and advertised for it without informing the board.

Fox also took rent money out of the Sheriff’s Department budget meant for one of the department’s satellite offices, without bothering to tell either the sheriff or the commissioners. She also signed off on the county paying around $40,000 to XMG Online for a new website, even though XMG didn’t deliver a usable product. The Board of Commissioners only learned of the XMG fiasco in the press.

Fox also failed to inform the commissioners of serious concerns that county law enforcement and emergency workers had about a county fuel contract. If the commissioners had been given the information, the board almost certainly would have gone with Berico Oil – a trusted local provider – rather than an out-of-state fuel broker, which doesn’t actually deliver oil. The broker beat out Berico’s bid by about $900 on a half-million dollar fuel contract.

Those are just some of the examples from 2011. In 2010, other highly egregious failures to inform the commissioners occurred when Fox failed to tell the board that she had created a new high-paying administrative position that seemed custom-made for her friend, who was then vice chairman of the Board of Commissioners, Steve Arnold. And, also in 2010, Fox entered into a highly questionable real estate contract that was potentially worth millions in county money to the real estate broker – who happened to be one of Arnold’s friends and former employees. That secret deal called for the broker to perform duties Guilford County already had an entire department set up to handle.

Though Gibson and Yow have been the loudest to complain about not being kept informed about what’s going on in county government, they aren’t the only ones getting tired of the secrecy.

Commissioner Bill Bencini, who served on the High Point City Council for nearly a decade before becoming a county commissioner, said the difference between serving on the High Point City Council and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, when it came to being informed, was the difference between night and day – night, of course, being the Board of Commissioners and day being the High Point City Council.

When asked about his complaints concerning Guilford County staff, Bencini pointed to a copy of the Guilford County commissioners’ meeting agenda.

“There is no transparency in this document,” Bencini said.

Over the years, and especially in recent years, county staff has become famous for offering an agenda to commissioners that buries important items in the consent agenda – which is a list of items usually reserved for noncontroversial housekeeping-type matters. Staff also has a reputation for wording agenda items in a way that prevents the commissioners from understanding the full implications of their actions.

Bencini said that, when he served on the High Point City Council, staff took pains to completely inform city councilmembers, and staff always provided a detailed analysis that informed councilmembers of the implications of important decisions. Bencini said that keeping things from him and other commissioners leads to bad government. He said it’s crucial for an elected official to have good information from staff in order to make the right decisions.

“We often make bad decisions because we aren’t given all the information from staff,” Bencini said.

Bencini said he and other commissioners are often left completely out of the loop.

The most important thing commissioners do each year is adopt a county budget, and Bencini said the first he knew of a budget deal that Alston had put together this year was at the Thursday, June 2 meeting when he, Bencini, arrived at the meeting room and saw a copy of the budget on the dais.

Yow said one big problem with running a government in secret is that staff will often take something right up to the final point before board approval is required where it is virtually a done deal – and only then tell commissioners what they are up to.

“XMG is a perfect example,” Yow said.

The commissioners only found out about that after the damage was done and the online company had already been paid.

Yow said the DMV office effort and the failure to adequately notify the board that the petition against the High Point City Council was being filed were only the most recent examples of a lack of communication.

He said there’s no excuse for the commissioners being left out of the loop when it came to major decisions.

“We’ve got too much technology not to be told right away,” Yow said.

Yow said that these days everyone has cell phones, email and the ability to send text messages, and he said that allows him to stay instantly informed in his business and other matters. But, for some reason, Yow said, when it comes to county business, he often doesn’t find out about things until after the fact.

Yow said that when he first began as a commissioner the agenda was delivered by hand to commissioners by sheriff’s deputies to make certain that the commissioners were getting the information they needed. Yow said that was excessive and there was no sense in doing that – but he said it sure would be nice if staff made sure the commissioner knew what was going on in county government, especially in the communication age, when doing so is as easy as sending a text or an email.