Forsyth County Government Needs a Good Dose of DOGE

More Ethics Questions Involving County Commission Resident "Artful Dodger," Alfred John, Possibly Others

Local Government “Pick-Pockets” at Work

If anyone out there has Elon’s cell, please PM me. Forsyth County needs DOGE in a big way. What you are about to read is what naturally occurs when local taxpayers allow their board of commissioners more tax dollars than they really need to operate county government. Given a considerable sack of “extra” cash, those in charge of your local government will naturally look for and identify various, perhaps even enjoyable ways to spend it. And as we have recently learned, some of their expenditures may go for things they do not want anyone to know about, which they will therefore try to conceal, not only from the public, but even from their fellow commissioners.

Think of these politicians, perhaps, as modern day “artful dodgers,” a term given life describing a petty thief, or “pick pocket” in Charles Dickens’ classic novel, Oliver Twist. Similar to pick-pockets practicing their craft on a crowded London street, certain of our local politicians apparently practice scanning for opportunities to effectively pick the pockets of county tax payers, and use that public pocket change to pay for county-sponsored activities more apt to please an artful dodger’s personal sensibilities, than serve the public. A vital purpose for the dodger politician, therefore, is to carry out that kind of personal purpose, using public tax dollars, but doing so in secret, so that neither others among their same elected rank, nor the public, will ever find out. That is the art of it all, the challenge of it all, and who knows, maybe even the thrill of it all.

Dicken’s Artful Dodger, and His Philosophy. If He Doesn’t Take Your Stuff, Someone Else Will.

Apparently, it is a feeling not unlike the “thrill of the heist” that gets the artful dodger politician’s juices flowing. It’s like that mischievous adolescent or teenager who liberates a doughnut or two from a local bakery case, and then, casually enough to avoid suspicion, exits the scene of his indiscretion, scurrying gleefully down a nearby alleyway, partaking as he goes a few bites of his recent misappropriations, while tossing their remnants to the wind. You see, it’s not that so-called “artful dodgers” are necessarily hungry. If they were hungry and forthright about it, any baker would give them food. Apparently, it is more the thrill of the heist that quenches their appetites.

But to achieve that thrill, an elected artful dodger on the Forsyth County Commission, must concoct a scheme, devise a plan. That plan must incorporate various attention diversions such that neither fellow commissioners, nor local taxpayers, might discover what is really going on.

And it doesn’t have to be a huge score to satisfy the urges of these petty scamsters. It could be a scheme as minuscule as printing up a few special government parking permits, entitling the bearer the use of certain reserved spaces at Halcyon, that tittles the dodger’s senses. That little sticker on the bumper of a politician’s car makes a local artful dodger feel special, above the crowd. And as he exits his vehicle, he will glance, almost reflexively, to ensure that his bumper badge remains satisfactorily affixed, a habit developed over time which injects one last little jolt of mind-goody before he proceeds with his purposes.

Apparently, what I’m describing is the kind of perquisite these political personalities NEED in order to fulfill the very urges that compel them to seek public office in the first place. Whether the scam or scheme be large or small, it matters not. It simply matters that these little jolts of excitement occur regularly enough to keep their slowly leaking personality balloons properly inflated. However large or small their latest titillation, these political personalities apparently possess an insatiable appetite for knowing they pulled something over on the people, knowing that they got away with something they personally orchestrated, personally executed, and that the public never found out. The very challenge that such a scheme remain hidden, understanding the risk that their secret may actually become discovered, is apparently the thrill of it all. Perhaps it is the reverse of all that which drives me to spend the time it takes to expose all this nonsense.

And it is amazing to me, that no sooner than I am done exposing one craziness these people are into, such as the fact that our board of commissioners are using our tax dollars to build a $134 million administration complex at a location they cannot lawfully convene a meeting, that I am confronted with yet another scheme planned and orchestrated by the same regime running your Forsyth County Government.

The “Hidden Ball” Trick

And that brings me to my subject of today, a veritable “hidden ball trick” planned and executed within the workings of your Forsyth County Commission. Perhaps you heard about the recent 3-day county government retreat at a luxurious mountain resort near Cloudland Canyon, which occurred a couple of weeks ago. That event was held for the enjoyment of your Forsyth County Commissioners and top level staff at the McLemore Resort. Diverting local tax dollars away from serving the public, and spending them on a luxury resort retreat for the county commission and top brass is bad enough public imagery. But the fact that they tried to hide knowledge of this event from fellow commissioners who would likely not approve, and furthermore, hide it from the public, is far worse. Apparently, the last thing your artful dodging commission members wanted was for fellow board members who would naturally object to an expenditure of $25-$30,000 on such a retreat, to know what they were doing. For if they did know, those dissenting commissioners would likely insist on a public discussion, shining light on the event, before it might be approved.

Noting that the planning for this event began at least three months in advance of the retreat, and that someone in control apparently orchestrated steps to hide that information even from fellow board members, had these people simply operated in the open about the event, allowing everyone to have their say before making even a crappy decision, I would probably let this one slide. However, having done what they did, and having attempted to hide it, even on this relatively small, say, a $25,000 taxpayer pocket picking, I believe those taxpayers paying the bill, deserve to know what happened.

The Plan

Planning for this resort event went back to late Summer of 2024. We know that because the contract with the McLemore Resort is dated September 25th of that year.

By the time you do the math, you know that the bare minimum cost of the event would be in the neighborhood of $25,000, every dollar picked from the pockets of Forsyth County taxpayers.

And we know who signed the contract on October 10, 2024, and that would be County Manager David McKee:

Notice the contract called for an “Authorized Signer for Forsyth County Government.” County Manager David McKee signed it. But we can question whether the county manager was truly authorized to sign that contract because, as of October 10, 2024, the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners had neither approved the resort event, nor any expenditure associated with it. And as you will see below, the resort contract contained a provision requiring the signer to warrant that he was “authorized to sign and enter the Agreement on behalf of the party for which they sign,” that party being Forsyth County Government. The resort administrator highlighted that provision to make sure the person signing the contract knew that he could be held personally responsible for a default of the agreement’s terms.

Highlighted Lines of the Resort Rental Contract

That begs the question, from whence did Mr. McKee derive the authority to sign that contract? Apparently, he had no authority. I say that because the commissioners had not met to deliberate on this event, and therefore could not have authorized the expenditure, nor authorized Mr. McKee to sign the contract with the resort, as he apparently did on October 10th.

Now, the point I am making may seem somewhat technical. But it really isn’t because, apparently, the moment the county manager signed that contract, taxpayer funds were committed to this event, without official approval from the board. I do not consider that an acceptable practice of local government.

As you can see above, according to the cancellation provisions in the contract, the moment he signed that agreement, the county manager committed a minimum of $13,168 of non-refundable taxpayer funds toward this event, all apparently without approval from the board. That raises the question, why had the board not yet approved that expenditure? Well, for one thing I suspect, two commissioners were running for reelection. Knowledge of such an extravagant expenditure, paid for by voters, publicized a few weeks prior to the November election, could have been used against them in the lead-up to the vote. But that does not completely answer the question because even after election day, those behind the creation of this event still remained silent, and as you will discover, WOULD NEVER RAISE THE ISSUE PUBLICLY DURING A WORK SESSION OR A REGULAR MEETING OF THE COMMISSIONERS even to this very moment. Instead, they relied on what many would call trickery and deception to gain what appeared to be board approval, but in the end, apparently was not. Even today, apparently, the contract with the host resort, for a retreat that has already occurred, has never been officially approved by the Forsyth County Commission.

Regarding the actions of the county manager, I personally expect that someone with authority over his dealings, such as the chairman of the board of commissioners, secretly instructed Mr. McKee to secure the resort venue. That makes sense because the venue had to be contracted well in advance of the event. That means discussions planning for the resort retreat had to be held among a certain group of top level county decision-makers that far in advance as well. In other words, County Manager McKee likely did not originate the idea for the resort event himself and subsequently endeavor to convince the board to go along. No, that would not make sense. More likely is that Mr. McKee was delegated the task of securing the venue, by someone with at least “apparent” authority to do so, such as Chairman Alfred John. The fact remains, however, that the contract committing taxpayer funds for this event was signed by the county manager, apparently prior to receiving any real board approval.

Time Passes, and Still No Board Approval

Now, even as late as December 10, 2024, there existed no board authority for the impending resort retreat scheduled to occur on January 29th through the 31st. Two and a half months had passed since the contract for the event had been signed, and still no board approval. The event remained unknown by the public. In fact, not all commissioners even knew about it. Time was growing short. Sooner or later, to follow the law this special resort meeting would have to be publicized. That means the full board of commissioners would have to vote on it in open session. Doing so would require the issue to be placed on the agenda of either a work session, or a regularly scheduled open session of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners.

A potentially embarrassing item such as I describe would not be an easy sell to at least two of the commissioners. Placing it on an agenda would not only raise natural objections to the event happening at all, but doing so at that late date would also shine light on the fact that a contract to secure the facility was already executed, and that the funds to carry out the meeting, at a minimum being $25,000, had already been spent, apparently without board approval. At that point, the only practical way to obtain board approval of the resort retreat and its associated expenditures, while keeping it a secret, would be to essentially “sneak” it through the approval process, while literally hiding knowledge of the event from anyone outside of a small group of county insiders, and even from the knowledge of certain fellow commissioners.

So, how did they do that?

Good question. As it happens, each year during the first commission meeting, the initial item is always to approve the rules under which the board will operate for the next twelve months. In those rules you will find one pertaining to the term, “consent agenda.” The idea of a consent agenda is to minimize the time it takes to fully deliberate over various non-controversial items coming before the board during regularly-scheduled, open session meetings. Several days before such a meeting, the commissioners come together in a “work session.” That work session is also open to the public, but is in a small room and very few members of the public generally attend.

During a work session, the commissioners will deliberate on numerous items soon coming before the board, but, with a few exceptions, such as perhaps time-sensitivity, no final approvals of agenda items can occur. All formal board approvals of most agenda items must occur in “open session,” during regularly-scheduled meetings out in the large commissioners’ meeting room before the public.

That said, agenda items coming before the board, about which there is little or no controversy, are commonly voted on by the commissioners during the work session to be placed on the upcoming “consent agenda.” To go on to the consent agenda, with few exceptions, an item must be approved unanimously by five commissioners. Once it is placed on the consent agenda, it will go before the board for final approval at the next open session commission meeting. At that meeting, all items placed on a consent agenda will be voted as a package, taking up very little time to do so, after which the commissioners proceed to each next agenda item scheduled for deliberation.

But, curiously, in the case of the special Cloudland Canyon resort retreat, to include an estimate of costs for all related expenditures, THAT ITEM WAS NEVER PLACED ON A WORK SESSION AGENDA, NOR DISCUSSED BY THE COMMISSIONERS DURING THE DECEMBER 10 WORK SESSION. You may read through the minutes of the December 10, 2024 work session here. You will find no item of that description.

Yet, should you peruse the consent agenda for the following December 19, 2024 open session meeting, you will find #3 below having been slipped on the list WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE, AND WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF ALL COMMISSIONERS.

As it turns out, there is a rule in place allowing certain items to be slipped onto the consent agenda, to be approved “en gros” along with all other unanimously-approved consent agenda items, avoiding the otherwise required item-by-item board approval process, and even WITHOUT INFORMING THE COMMISSIONERS. (See rule underlined in red below.)

A unanimous vote by all duly-elected commissioners is an extraordinarily high bar for any item to pass in order to be placed on the consent agenda…um…well…that is, unless some UNELECTED “STAFF” member, “in the ordinary course” of doing whatever he or she does, decides to sneak an item or two onto the consent agenda, WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF ANY ELECTED BOARD MEMBER, AND POSSIBLY WITHOUT ANY BOARD MEMBER’S KNOWLEDGE OR APPROVAL. You are hearing me right. All that must occur is for some “staff” member, likely the county manager, to instruct the clerk to do so, which is very likely what occurred in the case of the resort meeting last month. Take a look at the following “Consent Agenda Request” made the day immediately following the December 10 work session:

Using the aforedescribed “hidden ball trick,” during the December 19th meeting in open session, it took Chairman Alfred John all of eight seconds to gain approval of the resort retreat public announcement and to supposedly RATIFY the agreement County Manager McKee signed on October 10, 2-1/2 months earlier. Watch how easy it was for Chairman Alfred John to gain unanimous approval on an extremely controversial item when at least two commissioners had no idea what they are voting for, and were not aware that an item they did not previously approve was slipped onto the consent agenda for their unknowing consent.

Now, I would like to call your attention to the notion of a contract “ratification” being included as part of consent agenda item #3. Ratification means, “approval after the fact.” However, according to Rule 1.07.01 above, an item “in need of ratification in open session may be placed on the consent agenda [only] if there is unanimity by the Board for such placement.” In other words, according to the rules, “staff” may be able to sneak the proposed approval for advertising the resort retreat on the consent agenda, even if certain commissioners might not know about it, however, according to rule 1.07.01 “staff” CANNOT sneak RATIFICATION of a contract including a commitment to expend taxpayer funds on a consent agenda the same way. Placing that kind of item on the consent agenda would take a unanimous vote from five commissioners, which never happened.

Apparently, however, placing that item on the consent agenda, executing a sort of “hidden ball trick” in baseball is what “staff” did. “Staff” slipped ratification of the contract e-signed by County Manager David McKee on October 10th onto the December 19th consent agenda, at which time Chairman Alfred John ever-so-casually, as if strolling inconspicuously toward the bakery door with a handful of misappropriated doughnuts, called a vote for its approval, the approval he sought, born out of apparent deception, culminating approximately eight seconds later. Thus, apparently, the contract with the Cloudland Canyon Resort, e-signed by County Manager McKee, McKee warranting that he was duly-authorized to sign, has still not been approved by the Board of Commissioners. That item has never been duly placed upon any agenda before the full county commission, openly discussed and voted upon, as required under 1.07.01.

This is what artful dodgers do. This is what pick-pockets do. What I describe was not a huge heist. It was a relatively small one, a veritable pick-pocket’s share of the public wealth. Yet, the apparent dishonesty and purposeful deception driving all that I describe should alarm every county taxpayer.

Thus, once again, just as we recently learned of Chairman Alfred John apparently withholding critical information from the board before the final vote to build the $134 million Freedom Parkway Administration facility, here we see that same practice emerging as an apparent pattern of personal behavior. By attempting to withhold knowledge of a county resort retreat from his fellow commissioners, County Commission Chairman Alfred John has apparently, once again, broken county ethics code 2-87, “knowingly withholding information that would impair the proper decision making of the board of commissioners.”

Now, the chairman will likely claim he did not withhold any information in the case before us. He will claim that proper information came to all commissioners in the following website notice:

Thus, if you go to that page and click on the agenda button like the one you see above, you will find the items on the December 19, 2024 consent agenda, including the item that is our subject today. But when the chairman makes that claim, he will also be admitting that he is not trustworthy enough to only place items duly authorized by a unanimous board vote on the consent agenda. He will be advising county taxpayers that because of his untrustworthiness, in the future all commissioners should double check each consent agenda item they presumably already unanimously approved, to make sure the chairman, or someone acting under his direction, did not taint it with items commissioners have never seen before. And he will also be advising each other commissioner that the chairman is so untrustworthy that they would be wise to forego the consent agenda process entirely and require all work session items to go to open session for a full public discussion and vote. All it would take for that to happen would be for one dissenting vote on each agenda item during a work session.

So, it will be interesting to see what the chairman does with this one. Apparently, the October 10, 2024 contract with the resort at Cloudland Canyon is still not ratified by the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, at least not according to the requirements of Rule 1.07.01. By signing the contract, County Manager McKee also personally WARRANTED he was authorized by the county to do so, when apparently he was not. Thus, unless there is a public ratification of that contract by the board, in my way of thinking taxpayers would be justified in demanding Mr. McKee pay back whatever public funds were spent on the retreat. That would only be right.

Lastly, although we discovered the apparent misuse of the Rule 1.07.01 this time, I cannot help but wonder how many times unscrupulous public officials may have used that rule for similar “pick-pocket” or “hidden ball” operations in the past. If anyone knows of such instances, I would be glad to look at them. But by saying that, who knows, I may be heightening the thrill motivating this kind of behavior by an increased risk of exposure.