Closed-Door Bombshell
Locked behind closed doors Tuesday night with tensions and tempers mounting, Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones had just finished explaining why he had pulled and released Commissioners Vice Chairman Jim Pendergraph’s personnel records from when the former sheriff retired in 2007, offering that Commissioner George Dunlap had requested the information last Thursday.
The explanation drew a simple question: Then why, Pendergraph asked, was a printout of the information time-stamped last Wednesday?
Followed by dead and uncomfortable silence. Jones eventually offered that he must have been mistaken, one commissioner said, when he wrote in an email that Dunlap had made the request last Thursday.
“Things got fairly confusing and heated after that,” a commissioner said.
At one point, Commissioner Bill James said that the sequence of events made it appear like Jones and Dunlap had conspired to plot against Pendergraph, in retaliation for his sharp questioning and criticism of the resignation settlement the county manager had approved for former mental health director Grayce Crockett.
At which point the room erupted with shouts of counter accusations and recriminations. When the dust had finally settled, Jones had offered Pendergraph an apology that was accepted and commissioners ultimately went on to issue a tepid statement about the Crockett debacle and Jones’ missteps.
That’s a close approximation of how events unfolded during one particularly tense exchange behind closed doors last Tuesday night, according to multiple sources that were in the room. The events and new revelations demand additional explanation and the county should immediately make available the relevant transcripts of the closed session. There’s no reason why that tailored part of the discussion should be considered protected as a personnel issue. It simply relates to how, why and when the county manager decided it appropriate to release years-old information from Pendergraph’s personnel file.
The public deserves an answer. The public, instead, is left with a sappy video that Jones released this afternoon to county workers. The takeaway from Jones: “I have not and will not consider resigning, and have no plans to retire in the immediate future.”
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