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North Carolina
OFFICIAL RECORD KEEPING M.O. OF MADISON COUNTY
By Ann Ryder
Marshall is the county seat of mountainous Madison County. It is a small town with a population of less than 1,000, approximately 20 miles NW of Asheville. The mighty French Broad River runs through the center of town. It is one of those rare rivers that flow south to north. It also overflows reliably so, every few years.
In Marshall, in the middle of the river, is an island. On the island is a school, built probably in the 1930s by the WPA. You get to the school via a bridge. Over the years, the students have enjoyed many days off due to their school's being awash with floodwaters. Finally, 3 years ago, a new school was built on land that was high and dry. The county then decided to use the old school building as a courthouse annex and moved county records and some of the offices there. Many of us smelled a rat as that's the last place where you'd want to put your important documents. Keep in mind that Larry Leake (first cousin to Wayne McDevitt, Gov. Hunt's right hand man) has been running the county for the past 25 years. Prior to that, it was his father who was pulling the strings.
Last summer's hurricanes brought multiple floodings to the island. After the flooding, the county moved the annex elsewhere, transferring most of the records. A few weeks later, two professional property title searchers working together couldn't find what they needed and decided to check the now abandoned old school building on the island just in case. Sure enough, thousands of old tax records were there, dumped in a heap. There is no doubt that permanent loss of these important records would have affected real estate buyers and sellers for decades to come. To those of us living in the county, this is just an example of Boss Leake's MO. Over the years, two or three of his former secretaries, as well as other individuals, have told me that he likes sloppy record-keeping. I have seen several county audits that can't reach a conclusion of accuracy due to missing records, incomplete files, etc. Perhaps we can determine the reason for this.
Back in the mid-to-late1980s, federal authorities had come to Madison County. There was a whole lot of sweating and scrambling being done. One concerned citizen found and collected the sacks of records that had been thrown out behind the Housing Authority, and delivered them to either the sheriff or the feds I don't remember which. The Housing Authority had been scandal-ridden for years, with Boss Leake protecting the top man. In a report to the commissioners he states, Rather than finding fault with Sam Parker, the Executive Director of the Housing Authority, or the Housing Authority itself, I would instead have to extend to them my congratulations for a well-run program. The Housing Authority was bringing in megabucks via grants allegedly for the purpose of rehabing houses for poor folks. The funds were quickly siphoned off by putting cronies on the payroll, allegedly to do the carpentry, etc cronies who couldn't do anything but scratch and spit, but were owed a favor or could be counted on for votes and campaign contributions. One relative bought building material from a supplier across the state line in Tennessee and had it delivered to the job site. He, of course, then billed it out at a considerable markup. Grass seed (enough for a golf course, according to HUD), meant to be sown at a new low-rent housing project, was diverted to a store owned by a friend of a friend for re-sale. This same merchant also handled the meat that was stolen from the school lunchroom. You could buy anything at his place. The store is now being run by the grandson, a convicted cocaine dealer who was paroled through the efforts of Boss Leake.
I was getting calls about all this from local folks who knew and trusted me. I tried to get the authorities interested, but they wanted proof. I don't remember how it came about, but I went looking for a particular cancelled check the county had used to transfer funds from one account to another in order to cover missing money. I ended up in the primitive cellar of the courthouse in Marshall where I found piles of cancelled checks lying on the floor, some in several inches of water. God was surely with me, because I found the check and it was still in good shape. I can tell you that it was a hairy experience. The courthouse was swarming with good ol boys, but I got out of there and down to Asheville with my trophy. I went in to the feds with an I-told-you-so attitude and was stunned when they didn't exhibit any concern about the grant theft just the manner in which I had obtained the check! I said that it was public property and I was entitled to it, and that it had been thrown away. They told me to put it back. I naturally made several copies of the check and then went into the water-logged cellar again and put the darned thing back.
The HUD inspector from Greensboro got here, and his investigation resulted in a letter stating among other things: We are extremely concerned about the poor operation of this PHA [Public Housing Authority]. Therefore, we are hereby notifying the PHA that unless the necessary corrections are made, this office will consider reducing or withholding the administrative fee, deobligating units, or transferring the units to another agency. Any actions taken by the PHA to make the corrections needed must be documented and may be reviewed. Among the MANY problems found: investigators pulled eight Section 8 files, at random, to inspect. They went out to the houses and found that five of the eight did not even come close to meeting qualifications. The houses were simply unfit to live in. The entire Section 8 program had to be re-hauled. The feds attempted to reconcile the books, but too many of the records were missing.
The feds remained a close presence and Parker resigned. He kept a low profile for a couple of years and then was given a state job as probation/parole officer. Still is. "For some reason unknown to me, Parker was at the Board of Elections this past Election Day helping to count the ballots. His P/P boss Roger Haney was also there. Goodness knows why. A few years ago, Haney bought a piece of land on a major intersection in the county and immediately gave half of it to Leake. As far as I know, they're still partners in this enterprise."
Not too long after that, the county hired a new school superintendent. He suspended a teacher, with pay, while he conducted an investigation. The superintendent should have known better; that teacher belonged to a group of good ol boy untouchables. For years, the parents had complained that this teacher would push and shove their children. When things got hot for him at one school, he would be transferred to another. What finally did him in was an outrageous act of intimidation and insubordination against his principal. However, when the superintendent attempted to dig into the matter, he found that there was no documentation in the teacher's file. He had to re-instate the bully. During the meetings, the teacher was represented by Boss Leake. Then the new superintendent went after a grade-school principal who had a reputation for messing with the boys, yep. The superintendent was fired. He sued, and the school board was represented by Leake. The county recently hired a teacher as our County Manager even though there were several qualified applicants. While teaching, he married two or three of the pupils. Then he, of course, was named the girls basketball coach! The new county manager is Leake's first cousin, Wayne McDevitt's brother. Folks, it really ceases to be funny.
A couple in my neighborhood asked me to accompany them to the courthouse to retrieve some of their documents that the Clerk of Court had asked to see. Even though I had warned them most emphatically NOT to give the Clerk original papers make copies, I said they turned over their one and only set of records. I was with them when they asked for the return of their papers. The woman behind the counter actually laughed and said the papers had been lost⬠¦must have blown out the window, she said. I showed my neighbors that the windows had been painted shut and hadn't been opened in decades. They gave up and left the county shortly after that.
Currently we have the on-going case of John Lovins. He and his family have owned property in the county and paid taxes on it for several generations. He worked out-of-state for a while and then came back to settle here again. He found a new house on his land; a house built by a Madison County Politically Correct Person. He considered them to be squatters and raised hell. He was thrown in jail where he was denied his diabetes medication. He had to be rushed to the hospital twice. Every time he tried to use the court to straighten out the matter of his property, court was postponed or some other dirty trick was used. The situation is still in limbo.
When I first came to Madison County in 1981, I bought several parcels of adjoining land as a buffer zone for the home place. One parcel was 12 acres. The surveyor laid out 12 acres. I paid the owner for 12 acres. My deed says 12 acres. For 23 years, I have paid taxes on 12 acres. By now, you shouldn⬠"!t be surprised to learn that when the timberman I had called to upgrade my timberstand showed me the plat that he had obtained from the county indicated that the12-acre parcel is now 5.7 acres according to county records (except for tax purposes!). They had lopped off more than half of it and moved the boundary on paper accordingly.
Now you have some idea why Madison County does away with official records. And the ripping-off of grants is still the order of the day.
Boss Leake is the chairman of the state board of elections. In a recent Associated Press article, David Dill, Stanford professor and the founder of Verified Voting, was quoted as saying, North Carolina has the worst election problem in the country right now.
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