The Vance County Board of Commissioners will receive a recommendation at its meeting July 11 to endorse the Henderson-Vance Economic Partnership and appoint three members, but the board is not expected to vote on the partnership’s bylaws.
The commissioners’ General Government Committee lined up 2-1 behind the planned partnership after a midday meeting June 22. Although the committee took no formal vote, Commissioners Eddie Wright and Danny Wright said they support the pro-partnership recommendation, and board Chairman Tim Pegram said he is opposed.
The three-man committee, County Manager Jerry Ayscue and County Attorney Stubbs Hight met with partnership representatives Bob Fleming, Lynn Harper and Sam Watkins to discuss Pegram’s concerns about the planned nonprofit group, on which the commissioners postponed a decision June 6. Watkins is the longtime chairman of the county Economic Development Commission and is seen as the driving force behind the partnership’s creation. The steering committee forming the group has tapped Fleming to be the chairman of the board and Harper to be vice chairwoman, although their formal election must wait until the first official meeting of the partnership.
The partnership will be a 501(c)(3) organization, meaning it will be able to solicit and accept tax-deductible donations. It will consist of a 27-member board and a paid professional staff.
Eighteen of the board members will be representatives of existing organizations in Vance County: three commissioners, two Henderson City Council members plus the mayor, two representatives of the Henderson-Vance Downtown Development Commission, two from the Henderson-Vance Chamber of Commerce, two from the Vance County Economic Development Commission, two from the Tourism Development Authority, the president of Vance-Granville Community College, the superintendent of Vance County Schools, the president of Maria Parham Medical Center and a representative of the Henderson Investment Development Corp.
The other nine members will be at-large community representatives selected by the 18 ex officio board members. The board will hire an executive director/chief executive officer and other unspecified staff; a proposed budget for the organization several months ago included a secretary, an office manager and a grant writer.
The meeting June 22 focused on the makeup of the 27-member board and the organization’s proposed bylaws, which do not address whether partnership meetings will be open to the public.
The membership and the potential for secrecy were Eddie Wright’s concerns, which he said reflected the calls he received from constituents. “The concept is great. There’s no question about that,” he said. “We need jobs. We need jobs like yesterday. So there’s no problem with the concept.”
On the composition of the board, Wright said he wants to see more blacks involved (Commissioner Terry Garrison and City Council member Bernard Alston are the only nonwhites who participated with the partnership’s steering committee, even though Vance County is less than 50 percent non-Hispanic white). The Vance County chapter of the NAACP and the Gateway Community Development Corp. are among the black-led groups that were not brought into the partnership discussions.
“Other blacks have good ideas,” Wright said.
He also suggested the inclusion of some clergy, regardless of race.
Fleming said the partnership is being set up to maximize diversity. That’s largely the reason for the nine at-large representatives on the board, and Fleming said he hopes the constituent organizations will opt for diversity when selecting their board members. “We want all people represented at the table.”
As for secrecy, Wright said he was bothered that the partnership’s steering committee did its preliminary work out of the public eye for the past year.
“A group of people had to get together to decide how to start,” Harper said. “The intent of the organization going forward is to be open, with the exception of things dealing with a specific industry coming to town or with incentives for industry to come to town.”
She said the group has to work in public view “because we are doing the public’s business.”
“Openness has been the one thing on the front burner,” Watkins said. “We’re trying to bring team players to the table.”
The openness of the partnership was an issue when the City Council gave the group and its bylaws an endorsement June 6. Council member Elissa Yount voted against the endorsement, despite supporting the partnership in principle, because the bylaws presented to the council do not promise open meetings or public notice of meetings.
“Having heard the comments both from the City Council and in the media about that issue, we will recommend to our board, and I’m sure they’ll go along with this, that we put in the bylaws that the meetings will be open to the public except for the exceptions where we have to go into confidential arrangements,” Fleming told the commissioners June 22. He said the partnership will publish notices of its meetings so the press and the public can attend.
“We’ll only be benefited by openness, not harmed by it,” he said.
Fleming and Harper’s reassurances satisfied Wright, but he also expressed concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Developers, property managers and other landlords dominate the partnership’s steering committee. Among them are Watkins, Garrison, Commissioner Tommy Hester, Eddie Ferguson, City Council member John Wester and Dennis Tharrington. Harper and her husband own land awaiting development, and Fleming is a lawyer for Barnett Properties.
“A lot of people in the community see this as pretty much the same people, some of whom are businesspeople who could profit from this,” Wright said. “You can understand why. These people aren’t going to build on top of a roof. They’re going to need land.”
Watkins said that’s not a new situation. Developers have always been a part of the Economic Development Commission, and what benefits the whole community sometimes benefits some of the them.
Fleming said the proposed bylaws include conflict-of-interest provisions, and those could be strengthened if people think it’s necessary.
Wright said greed can overcome anything on paper, but he didn’t have any other suggestion.
“I’m going to vote for it, but I wanted to first give my opinion,” he said.
“The key there, though, is that we do have people who’ll speak their mind. … I suppose that’s why they asked me to do this,” Harper said, drawing laughter. “We need strong people who will speak their minds, which as you know are generally in short supply.”
Pegram spoke his mind June 22, and he made it clear that nothing the partnership could say would change his mind: He will not vote to endorse or send permanent members to the group.
The chairman of the Board of Commissioners said he supports any effort to bring jobs to Vance County, and he’s happy to meet with the partnership or any other private group whenever it has ideas or projects to enhance economic development. But Pegram opposes handing the public’s business to a private organization.
“I would have hoped that you would have put this together and made it independent of government,” he said. “I assume you’re going to go ahead anyway.”
He said he feels strongly that a corporation should not act as an arm of government. “People won’t have access to what’s going on, with the exception of going through the governing body’s people,” Pegram said. “I don’t want to see the government of Vance County get away from its people.”
Fleming said the partnership will serve as a forum to allow the various groups involved in economic and community development to come together and make sure their efforts are complementary. But the power to make decisions and enact policies will remain with the governing bodies, not the partnership.
“The community needs to be comfortable with this organization, and you need to be comfortable with it. …
We need all the community involved,” Fleming said.
Pegram said he didn’t want to harm the partnership, so he preferred not to air specific concerns. “I think the more you talk about the thing, the more opposition you’ll have to it.”
Danny Wright said the partnership will give the county government a strong voice in economic development by having three commissioners at the table, as well as members of the commissioner-appointed Tourism Development Authority and Economic Development Commission.
By contrast, Wright said, Wake County pays the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce to handle economic development, but no county commissioners serve on the Chamber’s board.
Wright asked Pegram whether he could support appointing three commissioners to the partnership’s board, as the steering committee requested. Pegram said he could not.
With the support of both Wrights, however, the commissioners will get a recommendation to make those appointments and endorse the concept of the partnership. Assuming the three commissioners involved with the steering committee stand behind the partnership, Eddie Wright’s vote ensures that the full board will accept the General Government Committee’s recommendation.
Ayscue backs that recommendation. “The people in Vance County who are diligently striving to improve our economic lives, it would be easy to fold your cards and go home,” he said “There’s a lot of encouragement here of people working together.”
The county manager said he appreciated something Harper said at the meeting about the partnership’s mission. “To assist, to advise, to encourage the existing groups, that’s very impressive,” he said.
He also said it’s important for the commissioners to endorse the concept of the partnership to avoid an awkward situation for the tourism and economic development boards, which operate under the commissioners’ mandate and are participating in the partnership.
The committee’s recommendation to the commissioners will not include an endorsement of the proposed bylaws, which were the original stumbling block when the board was asked to act on the partnership’s request June 6. At that meeting, Hight criticized the effort to get the commissioners to endorse the bylaws, a complicated legal document, without enough time for study.
At the June 22 meeting, Pegram said he feared the consequences of endorsing the partnership’s bylaws, given that the partnership could change them at any time. The county attorney said the bylaws would not expose Vance County to any legal liability, but all parties seemed to accept that the commissioners should leave the bylaws to the partnership and not act on them.
“We don’t care about endorsing the bylaws, per se,” Fleming said. “We want the concept endorsed and members appointed.”
That should happen next Monday, when the commissioners meet at 6 p.m. at the old courthouse.
“We have the strongest team on the field we’ve ever had,” Watkins said. “I can’t imagine we’d want to do anything else.”