Another suspicious consulting contract at CMS comes to light | Hour 3

So in the final segment of the last hour, I mentioned this report from WCNC TV about yet another consulting contract that may be part of the multiple investigations going on by the FBI, the SBI, the auditor, the state board of education, right? We know about, so just to kind of set the table here, you've got Racky McGregor, who's married to Kim McGregor. Kim has a firm called Sid Kimmel. Racky has a firm called Connect. And they both have been getting paid or were getting paid by CMS and the county for various roles. Racky McGregor was brought in as what they call an executive in residence. put into the superintendent's cabinet. And the deal is like, oh, he's on loan from the business world, from Novant or something. So he's on loan. He's going to help the board. He's going to help the school district or something, an executive in residence program that was created. And after the contract with him for that role was not renewed, He then ended up getting a contract through a law firm, Pointer Spruill. They've got offices all over the state, but I think they're based out of like Raleigh area, I want to say maybe. But that contract basically subbed out some work to Racky McGregor. And the contract did not make that clear if any board members even saw it. So that raised a lot of questions. This was all part of what Crystal Hill, the superintendent, put in her memo and sent out, I'm assuming to law enforcement as well as the board, outlining all of these financial irregularities, all the contracts that she said she was not aware of, her leadership team was not aware of, there were no purchase orders, right? It didn't go through the normal channels. it apparently just was done by the school board chair, Stephanie Sneed. Okay. That's the stuff that we've been aware of because that's what was outlined. There's another contract though. This one was pitched by school board member, Shamae Haynes. This one was for almost $ 200, 000 to hire a consulting firm called Leadership Plus. She was shopping this to her fellow board members with the idea that the board needs to strengthen board support through CMS's Office of Board Governance, Constituent Services, and Operations. Okay? This was from July. This is recent. I believe this was while Superintendent Hill was suspended with pay, right? I think she was suspended in June and then was brought back in August. She was out for two months. So yeah, this was while she was suspended. So here you have Shemay Haynes, new to the board, like a year or so, and She's sending this around to her board colleagues to try to build support to do this contract. Now, according to the North Carolina Secretary of State records, Dr. Charles Faust founded and runs this consulting firm, Leadership Plus. He is also listed as a consultant on Sid Kimmel's website. Sid Kimmel, the firm owned by Kimberly McGregor, Racky's wife. Now, remember also, Racky McGregor was engaging in political activity during the primaries for the school board races. This raised a lot of red flags that you've got, you know, district personnel that are engaged in political activity. School board member Monty Witherspoon told WCNC Charlotte TV, yes, she and Faust, so in other words, Shamae Haynes, Oh, hang on a second. No. Kim McGregor. So the previous line says, Kim McGregor founded and runs Sid Kimmel, here it is, and appeared alongside Dr. Faust during an initial presentation before some board members to hire his company. Why is Kim McGregor there? This is his company. Why would she be part of this presentation? She runs a different company. He does consulting work with her company, but Does she do consulting work for his? Are they both getting a cut of that action? Witherspoon confirms that Kim McGregor and Faust were both on the call during that initial presentation. He says, quote, I was asked if I would be willing to hear a presentation regarding support for the board. It was not until I joined the call that I learned who would be making the presentation. He said he expressed concerns to board leadership after the initial presentation and said he did not support moving forward and that those concerns remained unchanged. Now remember, back in July, who was board leadership? Stephanie Sneed, an ally of the McGregors. Witherspoon appears to be a member of the Quad, which is the four-member... voting block that's the minority on the board. They're the ones that oppose the firing of the superintendent. And you've got this five-member block, the fivers, although some people, like Russ, wants me to call them the quints, the quints and the quads. But that seems to be the split here. WCNC Charlotte first reported last month A human resources complaint accused former school board chair Stephanie Sneed of pushing a contract with a law firm that, unbeknownst to board members, ultimately benefited Racky McGregor. That same HR complaint said two board members also raised concerns about the push to hire Dr. Faust. The HR complaint says CMS school board member Anna London... also raised questions about this proposal. Quote, this is from the complaint, Ms. London asked whether a contract related to Dr. Faust's consulting services appeared on the June 9th board agenda. When I informed her that no such contract appeared on the agenda, she stated that she was surprised because board members had already been directed to schedule meetings involving Dr. Faust. Ms. London then asked for guidance regarding how board members could obtain complete information regarding board expenditures, invoices, and payments. In response to additional questions from WCNC, Anna London said that Haynes and Sneed were the ones who directed board members to schedule meetings with Dr. Faust. So they're telling the board members, their colleagues, schedule these meetings, but none of this was on the board's agenda. In an email, Haynes said, I would caution against allowing unrelated interpersonal or historical disagreements involving individuals associated with a proposal to become a substitute for evaluating the proposal itself. Doing so risks conflating personal concerns with the board's obligation to make objective governance decisions. Finally, I would respectfully note that board members do not individually negotiate. Professional service contracts. Really? It is common for a proposal to evolve through discussion, refinement of scope, legal review, and negotiation before a final agreement is presented for board consideration. That's precisely where we are in this process. My goal is not simply to retain a consultant. Which is weird. She said her goal is not simply to retain a consultant. Yet, according to Superintendent Hill, that's precisely what Shamae Haynes' top priority was. According to Shamae Haynes, who said that to Superintendent Hill, she told Hill that her goal, her main purpose as a school board member was to make sure, quote, black businesses like Sid Kimmel get contracts. The holidays will be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. There, they'll turn those memories into the story of your lives, memories from past family events captured forever to pass down to future generations. 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If the entire school board were to resign or somehow be fired tomorrow, voters would replace them all with Democrats. Uh, yes, probably. Um, uh, Regarding Vilma Leak from the last hour, Vilma Leak saw the three-minute clock, knew what it meant, but if the rules that apply to everybody else haven't applied to you for like 40 years, why would you change now? That's fair. JD says, I know it's highly unpopular, but someone should point out commonalities between these agency leaders in Charlotte. Sheriff, school board, superintendent, DA, mayor. Maybe that has something to do with all of the leadership chaos. Uh, I feel like I've been pointing it out. Um, I don't see how with all the time it must've taken to cook up all these scams that any of these folks had our children and their education in mind says Chris. Um, Bill. Okay. Talking about Tom Tillis and book. Uh, yeah. Okay. Um, Brett says, why does it seem like half the people ever caught in corruption or major controversy always have very odd names? It's almost like a prerequisite. Yeah, I don't know. Oh, I have some. Oh, my gosh. I have some from earlier. Rodney says, I hope someone keeps an eye on the $ 300 million that NCDOT is going to give Charlotte Mecklenburg politicians. Yeah, that's a good point. In order to get the I-77 toll lane thing done, they threw in the $ 300 million bribe. I mean, sweetener. And so, yeah, I wonder how much is going to get grafted off of that. Bill says, I met Mike Bryant, the county manager. We had a long conversation about county government. He seems like a good guy. At least that was my impression. I think legitimately we have good faith that he will do a good job. He didn't come up through Mecklenburg County. He's been around different places, working his way up through the government system around the state with local entities. Well, I mean, yeah, he seemed like a pretty straight shooter, but you know, if the, you know, if the board is, you know, wanting, if the board chair, they're like, look, we don't want to get involved, but we have to discuss it. Let's just get some information, whatever. Like he, he knows which way the board is going to go. And he probably agrees. Like, Let's let the investigation play out. Look, I could, like, I could, I said this about the county commissioner's decision last night. They split four, four on whether to simply ask CMS for the financials to see if any County money got diverted, you know, to these consulting contracts and where it was diverted from. And, you know, the four that said no to even asking, they said, we're just going to wait until the auditors report. And like, that's a defensible position. I think it's also a defensible position to ask for that. So Jim from Pineville says it's time for Vilma leak to say it's been real and ride that Democrat mule into the sunset. Yeah. Well, she'll be gone in about two months. The Hellion says, who does Racky have leverage over or who owes him? Find it hard to believe someone just did him a favor. No, I mean, that's how, That's how this stuff works. Political allies, you give them the contracts. They support your campaign. They give you money for fundraising. They host fundraising events for you, that sort of thing. Jeff says, can I sue the county and CMS for having to listen to the Democrat corruption every time I listen to WBT? I'm sick of all this, and I don't even live in the county. No, Jeff, you would have to sue us. You would have to sue me. Todd says, do you think the dispute may have started with Hill and the board chair fighting over money? I do. Hill wanted more money. To hire more $ 200, 000 a year friends and the board chair wanted more money for deals with Racky. Well, remember Crystal Hill in her proposed budget had put four and a half million dollars into the budget for teacher pay. And the chair did not want that money going to teacher pay, but she didn't want to say that. And we found that out when Hill published her memo or sent her memo to the board. Right. And then it was published in the media. So yes, it was about money. I don't think it's Hill. That is the reason why we have the administrative bloat that's been building for the last 20 years in CMS. Yes. But here's something else. I got a message the other day on the text line, and I have only confirmed it today. This appears to be confirmation. I've pulled the voter record and the bio chronology for Crystal Hill. And it appears that while registered as an unaffiliated voter, she has been voting in Republican primaries going back to 2008. Could that have something to do with it? Was she not a member in good standing of the Democrat Party? All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real. It's in your name. And 10 Minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. Let me get to. Some more text messages because I fell woefully behind. And I know I said woefully now twice within the last 15 minutes, which is unusual. The Hellion notes that when I revealed... Crystal Hills voting record, it needed the done, done, done effect. True. It was a missed opportunity indeed. Yeah. From what it appears in the voter file and her, her timeline of, you know, where she lived and worked and all that, I kind of did a cross reference on it all. And while registered unaffiliated, it appears that, she's been voting in Republican primaries and does that have something to do with the, the friction between the board and her? I don't know, but you know, it's, it's politics, man. Uh, Kimberly says, Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Indeed. Uh, John from New Jersey says, wasn't there a Faust who sold his soul to the devil? I believe so. Yes. I think there was something about that somewhere. Um, Jeff says, great show, Pete. I can't wait to see the corruption flow chart that the FBI brings to their media briefing. When the investigation leads to indictments. It's going to look like a diagram of La Cosa Nostra, the five families from The Godfather. Dick and Nancy love your show, they say. I guess they're both texting. It would be interesting if you could find out the actual job titles of the 20 friends of crystal hill who were given vehicles as part of their compensation packages. Uh, I don't, that's the first I've heard of it. I didn't realize what 20 people got cars, CMS vehicles. Um, and Sandy says thief has a new euphemism consultant. I like it. Um, Awesome Andy says, a woefully tangled web. I'll allow it. It's three times. Now. All right, so I mentioned Shamae Haynes, and she pitched another contract, one that I wasn't aware of with all of the corruption swirl going on. Shamae Haynes, I mentioned her, though, the other day because she got into that whole Facebook fight with a state lawmaker. over all of this when they fired superintendent Hill and the state lawmaker, uh, Jordan Lopez, he was like, Oh my gosh, this is, you know, like what a poop show basically. And she's, and so she started criticizing him. You don't get anything done in the legislature. You stink and all of this. Well, now she has deleted her Facebook page altogether. That's according to, uh, Tony Messiah at the Charlotte ledger in a Facebook post Tuesday. So yesterday, uh, School board member Shamae Haynes apologized for another Facebook post that she did where she called a critic a perv and wondered whether parents knew that he hates blacks. This is what she said to somebody on a Facebook group. She said, I want to take this time to apologize for my recent Facebook behavior. I want to personally apologize to the person and I will remove the post referring to him in any other way other than his name. My friends and family are contacting me to make sure I'm okay. And I'm just going to decide to stop the negativity that you're doing. I'm making a choice and an effort to move on. She's doing the work, people. She's doing the work. She's going to work on herself. Because on Monday, this person had quoted the WCNC story about Haynes trying to get that consulting contract, right? And so this online person posted in her Facebook group, her page, what's up, Shemay Haynes? Like, what up? And in reply, she said Monday night that this guy drops his money and charity as if you don't know a perv when you see one. She also wrote that he likes sleepovers with poor kids and surely regrets washing some other man's underpants while he was getting high. I don't even know what this means. I'm at a loss. And then she said, referring to the children served by this nonprofit, do their parents know you hate blacks? She offered no evidence or explanation to support any of this. And then she deleted the post. And then posted the apology. And then by last night, she deleted her entire Facebook account. So things going very well for Shemay Haynes at the Board of Ed. Now, Michelle Crouch, also at the Charlotte Ledger. She's a freelancer, formerly of the Charlotte Observer. And I worked with her. She was a beat reporter for City Council. She's very good. She's got a big story at the Ledger. In the year before state officials announced investigations... into CMS, many of the people and offices designed to catch questionable conduct in the district were eliminated or reassigned. Well, they were like fired. They weren't taken out. They weren't eliminated. Interviews with current and former board members and board documents show that over the past year, this is. What the school board did. Eliminated the chief compliance officer position, dismantled the independent compliance office, which was created in part to investigate allegations of misconduct. So they got rid of that and those people. They paid their general counsel, the lawyer, $ 289, 000 to leave two years before her contract was up. So they got rid of the lawyer, got rid of the compliance people, and then cut the job of a general counsel's office employee. Who oversaw, guess what? Board and legal operations. A lot of smoke. The Charlotte Ledger report from Michelle Crouch going through the guardrails that were. Disappearing, they were being dismantled. And if you wanted to commit this kind of fraud, this kind of embezzlement, this kind of corruption, like these are the steps that one would theoretically take to You remove the departments and the people in those departments that provide the oversight. You get rid of the chief compliance officer position, get rid of the lawyer, get rid of a person in the lawyer's office who oversees the board operations and the legal operations so you can put your people in there. And when they moved one of those lawyers, that actually prompted that person to file a grievance alleging age discrimination and that the then chair, Stephanie Sneed, had overstepped her authority to eliminate the job. Well, yes, why is the board chair eliminating positions? I don't think that the board chair can do that, can they? The board's clerk, also switched to a new role within the district. And she filed a, well, which makes sense too, because if you're the clerk, that means that you're taking the minutes, right? You're posting the public information. And so if you want one of your allies in that position, then you can make sure that stuff maybe is worded in a way that is not transparent to the public or your fellow board members, right? Like, I don't know if that's what this was intended to do. I'm just pointing out that if I wanted to try to orchestrate contracts to be funneled to political allies, then I would have to strip away some of the guardrails, as it's called here in the piece. I'd have to strip away some of that oversight. Right. Right. So when the board clerk switched to a new role within the district, she filed a complaint accusing Sneed of harassment, creating a hostile work environment, and potential illegal activity regarding contracting. Lot of smoke. Paired with the board's decision to fire Superintendent Crystal Hill on September 22nd, those changes switched out every person who directly reported to the board. Five former school board members told the Charlotte Ledger that each move took them by surprise. The changes happened one at a time over several months, and there was an explanation for each one of them. whether it was to improve efficiency or it was a personnel decision. But if you look at them together, you take them all together, these former board members say, it adds up to less oversight and less accountability as the board's relationship with the superintendent started to deteriorate and questions arose about the district's decision-making and contracting practices. According to the board's chief communications officer, Sherry Costa, she emailed a response saying the changes were, quote, related to organizational and administrative restructuring. Well, yes, that, yeah, we all agree, organizational and administrative restructuring, right? That's the, the question is the intent of the restructuring. She says, that wasn't the elimination of safeguards or independent oversight. And the board continues to have established policies, legal requirements, financial controls, and governance processes that provide appropriate checks and accountability that also allow us to hide politically motivated consulting contracts. All right, I added that last part. CMS created this independent office of compliance and ethics seven years ago in 2019. after then-Superintendent Clayton Wilcox resigned amid questions about contracting. The new chief compliance officer, Scott McCulley, reported directly to the school board. The department was modeled after similar offices that handle internal oversight at large organizations like banks and hospitals. According to former board member Sean Strain, quote, I'm not aware of many $ 2 billion a year organizations that don't have compliance officers and compliance functions. In January this year, the school board eliminated the position of chief compliance officer, reassigning McCulley to another job in the district, and then in March, it eliminated the department altogether. And the board's legal department then took on compliance duties. But remember, they kicked the general counsel and they reassigned one of the lawyers out of the legal. Again, don't know if it's related, but it sure does seem like it. And John points out the first person to flip always gets the best deal. Wonder what school board member is going to rat out the others first. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete calendar show.com. Again, Thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.