Source: Rhino Times Greensboro

Fox Leaves With Long Trail Of Scandals

by Scott D. Yost

January 31, 2013

There’s such a thing as going out with a whimper, but this is ridiculous.

After being with Guilford County government for 41 years, and being county manager for the last four, Guilford County Manager Brenda Jones Fox exited with no fanfare – or even any public acknowledgment by anyone that she had worked for the county.

Usually, when a department head steps down – especially a county manager – there are a lot of public goodbyes at meetings, and there are plenty of complimentary words about a job well done from commissioners and coworkers.

But there was none of that for Fox’s retirement.

Each month, Guilford County has a meeting of department heads, and the January meeting would have been the one when Fox could have said her goodbyes to department directors – however, Fox mysteriously cancelled that meeting.

Then, on Thursday, Jan. 17, the commissioners held their last board meeting before Fox’s departure, and, at that meeting, not a single commissioner gave Fox a fond farewell or even so much as noted the fact that it was Fox’s final board meeting after working for Guilford County for over 40 years.

And, when it came time at the end of that meeting for comments from the manager, Fox told the commissioners she had nothing to say.

Also, every time a department head leaves, there’s a large going away party – often in the foyer of the second floor of the Old Guilford County Court House, usually with coffee, brunch and desserts.

However, in Fox’s case, nothing was planned.

When one long-time county employee was asked if it was unusual for a departing manager or director not to have a party, she said, “It’s strange; it’s weird; it’s bizarre.”

Two weeks ago, one administrative assistant did put together a small “surprise party” for Fox. It was held in the tiny manager’s conference room on second floor of the Old Court House.

When one employee was asked to describe the event, she said: “It was lovely. The Costco cake was delicious. Unfortunately, the punch was non-alcoholic.”

The departure of Fox is a key moment in what many hope will be an eventual return to sane, open and above-board county government.

If Fox had retired in the middle of 2010, she would have left Guilford County government after four decades as a highly respected county manager. She was widely regarded as an excellent finance director before she was named manager in 2009.

However, starting in September 2010, a continuous series of questionable, controversial, highly irresponsible – and perhaps even worse – moves came to be the dominant theme of Fox’s career.

The first clear public indication that something was terribly wrong in Fox’s administration came on Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010, when The Rhinoceros Times reported that Fox had secretly created a high-paying “construction czar” position, which by all indications she intended to fill with her long-time friend and political ally, former Commissioner Steve Arnold.

The strange, unpublicized job description seemed written specifically for Arnold, and Arnold said he was qualified for the job and was interested in taking it.

Arnold, who had served as a commissioner for two decades, was unemployed after the construction company he owned filed for bankruptcy. Arnold was denied the right to declare personal bankruptcy by a judge who found Arnold had been fraudulent in his dealings with the court.

When the heat from an outraged public got to be too much, Arnold announced he would not seek the construction czar job with the county. A couple of days after Arnold pulled out, Fox eliminated the newly created position.

That incident got the questions about Fox rolling. Why was Fox creating a high-paying administrative job at a time when the county was cutting jobs left and right? And why did she create a new very powerful position in Guilford County government without informing the Board of Commissioners?

If Arnold had gotten the job, he and Fox would have held sway over county real estate deals worth many millions.

Right on the heels of that scandal, Fox was at the center of an even bigger one, when, on Dec. 2, 2010, The Rhinoceros Times reported that Fox had, earlier that year, signed Guilford County into a secret contract that gave an unknown High Point real estate broker exclusive rights to locate property for purchase by the county. Guilford County has an entire department that handles property acquisition.

Fox’s story is that Dian Brigman, a High Point real estate agent who Fox had never met before and knew nothing about, walked in off the street on a cold call and got an exclusive contract that allowed Brigman, now deceased, a 5 percent commission on every building or piece of property the county bought, whether Brigman played any role in finding it or not.

Fox never informed David Grantham, the county’s property management director at the time, of the secret deal she signed with Brigman, nor did Fox tell the commissioners – many of whom only learned of the contract when they read about it in the Dec. 2, 2010 Rhino Times.

Brigman didn’t have any history or expertise in acquiring commercial real estate or in working with governments – but she did just happen to be Arnold’s friend and former employee.

Since the contract called for Brigman to get a 5 percent commission on all of the county’s real estate deals, and the county was embarking on a 10-year capital improvement plan worth roughly $1 billion in property purchases and renovations, this deal could have been worth tens of millions of dollars if it hadn’t been discovered and killed.

It was highly suspicious that a cold-calling real estate broker could get a meeting with Fox in the first place. Some high-ranking local government officials have been unable to get a return phone call from Fox, and the same goes for representatives of Moses Cone Health System, which is the largest private sector employer in Guilford County and the City of Greensboro. Three years ago, high-ranking Cone officials said they couldn’t get Fox to return their phone calls to negotiate a very important contract that covered health care for thousands of indigent county residents.

Yet, supposedly, a cold-calling unknown real estate agent walking in off the street got a meeting with Fox and convinced the manager to sign away all of the county’s real estate acquisition rights in a secret deal.

Brigman’s exclusive contract even stated that she could bring completed, “turnkey” buildings to the county – which meant Brigman could have also been paid a percentage on any curtains, furnishings, paint jobs or anything else the county spent on new county buildings.

In 2010, Fox pushed forward for the county to purchase one building for use by Emergency Services that Brigman had “found.”

County officials had actually found the location months before Brigman came on the scene, and Fox and other county officials had toured the building at that time.

However, the commissioners, facing an outraged community, refused to purchase the building and pay Brigman the roughly $250,000 in commission she stood to make on that one deal alone. The board also voted to nullify the real estate contract.

Several commissioners called the secret deal “a mistake” by Fox.

On Thursday, Dec. 24, 2010, The Rhinoceros Times revealed many disturbing details regarding actions by Fox and Arnold in the county’s purchase of a building at 325 E. Russell Ave. in High Point.

The commissioners had voted to construct a new Department of Social Services building on the governmental campus in downtown High Point, on land the county already owned.

However, Arnold objected loudly and repeatedly, even months after the board voted to construct the building, and after an architect had already begun work on the design.

Arnold offered to drive around High Point himself and look for a better location. Arnold convinced the board’s two High Point commissioners to consider buying the Russell Avenue building, and they did. The two commissioners went along with Arnold, which then meant the majority of the board went along with the wishes of the three High Point area commissioners on the High Point project.

The building belonged to Arnold’s friend and former business associate Wayne McDonald and the real estate agent who showed commissioners the property was Brigman, who was working for McDonald at that time.

The county bought the giant vacant building and it’s the only known Guilford County purchase of a building in modern history in which no appraisal of the property was conducted before the purchase.

Grantham told The Rhinoceros Times that Fox and Arnold instructed him not to negotiate a lower cost, as he always had in the past whenever the county purchased property.

Instead, Grantham said, Fox and Arnold told him that McDonald’s asking price was fair.

McDonald also got a lucrative contract to renovate the building. That contract was never put out for bids – unlike almost every other major renovation contract Guilford County has entered into. Grantham also said that Fox and Arnold instructed him to pay McDonald even though the project had not been finished as promised.

Social services staff now complain constantly that the building purchased from McDonald is inappropriate for their needs. They also complain that the roof leaks, and that noise travels so easily through the building that employees in the building are told not to wear high heels because of the loud clicking sound when they walk. The building has also had problems with ants, rats and other pests.

In May 2011, The Rhinoceros Times reported on something Fox had done while she was finance director for the county in late 2007 and early 2008. After conducting a competitive bid process for a $5 million loan for the county to purchase the BB&T building in downtown Greensboro, Fox secretly allowed Wachovia Bank to raise its bid after the bid process was closed and Wachovia’s low bid had won. That inexplicable move cost the county about $200,000 in additional interest on the loan.

As more and more scandalous information about Fox came out, Fox sent all county department heads a memo called a “Code of Conduct” – which Commissioner Bill Bencini said should instead be referred to as a “Code of Silence.” The memo stated that county employees and department heads with any concerns should address them only to the manager’s office and not to county commissioners.

Last year, it became known that Fox’s actions were the focus of an investigation of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service.

In more recent scandals, Fox stopped paying rent on one of the Sheriff’s Department’s satellite offices because, she said, the owner of the building owed back taxes to the county. Fox isn’t the tax director and she does not have a legal right to stop the county from paying its bills. Sheriff BJ Barnes, whose department has the duty of evicting those who don’t pay rent, began get notices that his department’s rent was past due.

Fox, with the help of Arnold and former Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Skip Alston, also alienated City of Greensboro leaders and brought about the end of water and sewer contracts, parking agreements and other city-county deals that had been in place for decades.

Fox also went behind the commissioners’ backs in a strange attempt to have Guilford County open and run a NC Division of Motor Vehicles license tag agency. The commissioners unanimously voted down the idea after the plan was revealed in The Rhinoceros Times. However, that was only after countless man-hours had gone into the effort, and it meant county citizens had to wait months longer before a new much-needed DMV tag office opened in the county.

On her way out of Guilford County government, Fox implemented a $61,000 retirement bonus for herself along with big bonuses for other longtime employees. The language that granted the bonuses was buried in the items the commissioners approved without realizing it and, when the board found out they had approved the bonuses, they voted to rescind them. Fox then threatened to sue the county.

It should also be kept in mind that those lists are only the things that citizens are aware of. It has been Fox’s policy to run the county with as much secrecy as possible, so there are no doubt other things that would have been major controversies if they had been discovered.

Hopefully, the new Board of Commissioners will hold the next manager accountable, unlike the previous board, which kept Fox as manager no matter what she did. With the exception of a few commissioners who were in the minority, the Guilford County commissioners simply made excuses for Fox and looked the other way through one scandal after another. They provided no oversight of Fox, in direct violation of the oath they swore to uphold when they became commissioners.