Dunlap Dives Into Deep End Of Delusion
Mecklenburg Commissioner George Dunlap had the perfect opportunity at Tuesday night’s board meeting to clear up pressing questions about why and when he requested the county manager to release protected personnel information of former sheriff and current commissioners vice chairman Jim Pendergraph.
Dunlap instead spent nearly a half-hour ranting and braying about what he called biased and negative coverage from the media. Along the way, Dunlap also managed to make some unfounded allegations and inflammatory remarks about his board colleagues, while threatening to wage political war against some of the same.
Dunlap was particularly critical of the Charlotte Observer and its editorial board for what he called their unfair and negative coverage of recent events surrounding a resignation settlement that County Manager Harry Jones had approved for former mental health director Grayce Crockett, as well as the paper’s coverage of the Giving Tree scandal at the Department of Social Services.
“What you will find out is, throughout all that investigation there was one common figure in everything that was said and done,” Dunlap said, “and throughout everything that I will say tonight you will find that there is at least one common figure. That one common figure is [Commissioner] Bill James.”
Dunlap apparently concluded that James was the source for most of the uptown paper’s efforts because James was mentioned in 229 articles that Dunlap had dug up, far more often than other commissioners.
“I’m not suggesting that the Observer loves Bill James. In fact, I think it’s a marriage of convenience,” Dunlap said. “The problem is, Bill James is pimping the Observer. Because nobody else will talk to the Observer, he puts his spin on it and gives it to the Observer writers. And because nobody else will talk to them, they write what he says.”
Dunlap criticized the paper and its editorial board for trying to dictate county policy by calling for Jones’ ouster and opining that commissioners had stumbled in their duties.
“I don’t believe that this board [of commissioners] or the Observer has been fair to the county manager,” Dunlap said. “And the fact is, it’s not really about fairness to the county manager; it’s about fairness in the process.”
Dunlap, a Democrat, accused Pendergraph and James, both Republicans, of leaking closed-session information to the media, most recently from a closed-door meeting where commissioners discussed Crockett’s settlement and Jones’ release of Pendergraph’s protected personnel information.
“It was no longer than we shut the door than people were in the media saying something different than what they had voted on,” Dunlap groused. “As always, information discussed in that meeting was in the paper. The same common thread: Bill James.”
Only problem is that in at least one of the articles Dunlap referenced – one from PunditHouse, where Dunlap said that, “information shared in this story clearly violated the rules established by the board of county commission” – Bill James was never named as a source.
Dunlap made a similar blunder when he referenced years-old articles that WBT talk show host Tara Servatius had written about legal settlements the county had made with inmates at the county jail when Pendergraph was sheriff. Dunlap pegged James as the source for information reported about a vote taken in closed session, even though the article never named a source.
Dunlap said legal settlements and payouts made to inmates, who had accused jail staff of beatings and brutality during Pendergraph’s tenure as sheriff, showed that Pendergraph had a double standard when it came to accountability. The county had settled some of the lawsuits, officials said at that time, because it would have been cheaper than risking legal exposure and expense if they had been taken to court.
“Seems recently we heard that,” Dunlap said, apparently referencing Jones’ rationale for approving a resignation settlement with Crockett.
In what Dunlap called the spirit of transparency and accountability, he asked the county manager “to provide for me and this board every dollar spent to fight or to defend or to pay people who were sued at the Sheriff’s Office and for every lawsuit that we might have had to pay money as result of information that was improperly leaked by members of this county commission.”
Dunlap referenced a story by FOX Charlotte to take another jab at Pendergraph, this time for vacation and sick pay he had received when he retired as sheriff in 2007. That information was included in a protected personnel file that Dunlap had asked Jones to release.
In the FOX story Pendergraph says he didn’t realize that the amount he received was in excess of county policy, and wondered why Jones made an exception in authorizing the payment.
“This is my response to that,” Dunlap opined Tuesday night. “If an honorable man does not ask for pay, don’t (sic) know why he received it, and it’s the taxpayers’ money, then an honorable man would give it back.”
Never mind that commissioners collectively, Dunlap included, issued a statement that the “additional amounts of accrued vacation paid to Commissioner Pendergraph at the time of his retirement were for benefits he earned during his service as Mecklenburg County Sheriff.”
Regarding the county board’s response to Jones’ self-acknowledged missteps in the Crocket settlement debacle and the release of Pendergraph’s personnel information, Dunlap said Tuesday night he thought that commissioners had all agreed the issue was settled.
“But that’s not clear to me yet. And if it doesn’t become clear soon,” Dunlap said, “there is a whole lot more to share.”
“You can’t throw dirt on somebody else unless some dirt gets on you,” Dunlap warned. “So I’m just asking my fellow commissioners to quit throwing dirt. Because if they don’t, we’re going to show how the dirt sticks on you.”
Wrapping up his threats, accusations and innuendos, Dunlap offered to hear any responses from other commissioners. Following a brief and uncomfortable silence, Commissioners Chairman Jennifer Roberts, a Democrat, managed to stumble through an awkward reply.
“I just want to remind folks at the dais that we are, under our code of ethics, bound to treat other county officials and the public with respect and honor the opinions of others even if we disagree,” Roberts said. “I just want us to keep that in mind and remember that we are doing the people’s business here in Mecklenburg County and that we are working together as a board, that it takes five members of this board to vote to act on behalf of the county. And I would hope that my fellow commissioners would try to work toward that respect. And that’s all I have to say.”
At which point the matter seemed closed, until Commissioner Vilma Leake, a Democrat, couldn’t resist offering her own take. It proved one of the more confusing and disjointed of the night.
“I don’t appreciate the kind of language, and I haven’t had the chance to say this, that many times Bill James has made about me and people,” Leake said. “And many of you sit here and condone what he has said by saying nothing. And I’m only going to say that.
“I never thought that this day would come when I would be sitting on the same dais to be able to say this and I needed to say that,” Leake rambled. “Some times you say things to become free. The statement is free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last, because I was able to make that statement. I’ve never ever done anything to the gentlemen, about the gentlemen, but I needed to say that, Madame Chair, and I don’t apologize for it.”
“Thank you, Commissioner Leake,” Roberts said. “I think we’re ready to move on to consent items.”
UPDATE: While James didn’t offer any comment in response to Dunlap’s speech Tuesday night, he didn’t waste any time firing off an email today:
… the strangest moments came when Commissioner Dunlap was recognized for agenda item 8; a rambling screed about ‘current events’ accusing the Observer of whoring itself out to me, calling Commissioner Pendergraph ‘not honorable’, and basically saying I was the evil conservative puppet-Master wreaking havoc on the Democrats plans for world domination locally.
OK – so the last part was a tad dramatic – no more so than the speech Commissioner Dunlap gave.
For some 20 to 30 minutes George piled unsubstantiated accusation on top of rumor and innuendo without any interruption from the Chair or notation that denigrating other Commissioners from the dais was against our own rules. To borrow a phrase from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, it was a ‘high-tech lynching’ (not of me but of the Observer, other members of the media and Commissioner Pendergraph). Basically George used the dais and the TV cameras to issue a press release in prime time.
It was entertaining theatre (like watching a train wreck, a bad accident or a white Ford Bronco drive down a LA freeway with OJ in the back). George weaved together a series of unrelated events to create this vast right-wing tapestry with me as the evil conservative puppet-master behind it all. The one thing he didn’t mention about ‘current’ events was his role in the whole ‘file-gate’ question (when did Harry access Commissioner Pendergraph’s file and when did George ask for the info – if he ever did). You would think that with all of George’s comments he could have slipped in a few facts with his hubris.
George started off claiming that County Manager Harry Jones was being treated like Shirley Sherrod. If you don’t know who that is – go look it up. The implication was that since Harry was black (as was Shirley) that certain members of the Board (he cited Jim Pendergraph in particular) were out to get Harry basically because of his race, taking his comments out of context for nefarious purposes. Cue up Kojo for our next meeting.
George then went on to blast the head of the Observer editorial page head, Taylor Batten and his wife basically accusing Mr. Batten of secretly writing editorials and commentary blasting the county and Harry Jones over the library cuts and open door scandal because of some mistreatment or issue regarding his wife.
As he weaved this fiction he cited the number of times I was in various news articles as ‘evidence’ that I was secretly collaborating with the Observer or other media reporters (as though there was something wrong with talking to reporters). Who knew? I thought it was part of my job. Perhaps the reason that I have the most media references (just a thought) is because:
1. I have been in office the longest (14 plus years), and
2. I am the most direct and blunt of the GOP on the current board and tend to talk in ‘sound bites’ the media prefers.
But in George’s world, my 200 plus media citations are ‘evidence’ of a vast right-wing conspiracy with me as the evil genus pulling the strings in Charlotte to ‘get’ the Democrats. He claims I am using the Observer, Creative Loafing, WBTV, WCNC, Fox Charlotte and a host of other reporters to embarrass the Democrats and their agenda … He thinks I am ‘pimping out the Observer’ and by reference making me the mac-daddy of Charlotte’s conservatives. Oh, boy.
I suppose that would have been humorous enough but the debate turned serious when he made what I believe are unsubstantiated charges that Commissioner Pendergraph was ‘not honorable’ and then asked for all of the legal settlement information about his time as Sheriff and the accumulated legal costs associated with that.
The Observer’s Taylor Batten and his wife were not the only ones mentioned for ridicule, George also brought Creative Loafing and WBT host Tara Servatius into the mix for some special dais treatment.
Anyone in politics knows that passions run high and every politician will, at one time or another, say something they regret. I know I have. This is the first time I can remember a sitting Commissioner actually spending 20 to 30 minutes outlining his views against his colleagues from the dais in a planned and calculated manner.
In my case-I came out of this smelling like a rose because I got ‘credit’ (if that is the word) for being the evil mastermind – the ‘Auric Goldfinger’ of Charlotte politics.
These issues however were not a laughing matter because in the process of all of that drama a number of innocents were slammed and maligned for no particular reason except the unsubstantiated commentary of a loon with a live TV feed.
So, I will end with a Shakespeare quote from Macbeth (act V, Scene 5) “it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The ball on whether the screed was allowable under our rules is up to the Chair to determine. George is a Democrat and she is the Chair. They will have to clean their own house. In the meantime, I have worlds to dominate and evil plans to implement.
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