On Reorganizing the EDC | Eastern North Carolina Now

   Publisher's note: This article previously appeared in the Beaufort observer.

Editor's note: The following is an editorial submitted by Warren Smith. It is published in its entirety here. The discussion it refers to of the May County Commission meeting can be watched in the video contained in this previously posted article.

    On May 7, 2012 the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners began to clean up the mess which local economic development had become during the last decade of unsupervised cronyism.

    For ten years, the Economic Development Commission ("EDC") has drifted further away from oversight by elected officials and deeper into the personal whims and unfulfilled promises of its executive director as he spent the taxpayer's money on a circle of close associates, political supporters and pet projects.

   The EDC claims grants made to only six local businesses since 2002. Several of EDC's projects involved companies represented by members or governors of the Committee of 100, a non-profit organization that pays the Director of Economic Development a tax-subsidized salary and whose board is appointed by the Director himself (source: EDC, March 2012; C100, IRS 990, 2010). Embarrassingly, one grant has recently raised a question as to whether or not One NC funds were used to purchase real estate from a member of the NC House (source: Lawson; May 2012). Further grants have been recommended that will enable a foreign firm, acquiring a local company, to reduce unwanted employees by laying-off older workers (source: EDC, March 2012).

    In two of the above-mentioned grants, there is concern that public money has been used to create windfall profits for favored sellers who otherwise would have needed to reduce the prices of their real estate or make expensive improvements to attract unsubsidized private bidders.
    Despite approving the spending of over $6,000,000 on two failing industrial parks, millions in salaries for just two EDC employees and millions more for matching grants and loans, as well as, enduring persistent disappointment over prospects for ethanol, plastics, woodchips and buyers for EDC's leaking Quick Start II building; neither the EDC's board nor the county commissioners ever required a single annual report which amounted to anymore than a public relations presentation by the Executive Director. Never was there a report asked for or given which used validated data that documented or consistently reported EDC's claims of jobs created as demanded by the North Carolina statutes and EDC's own by-laws.

    The county's number one developer and lead salesman for our community never even moved his own residence to Beaufort County.

    The time was long passed to ask whether the EDC's vision had not become focused on the single purpose of prolonging the executive director's career, when he suddenly resigned this April after two promised prospective buyers of QS II both bowed out.

    At their first meeting since the resignation, the county's Board of Commissioners unanimously agreed that enough was enough. The County Manager will hire a new employee as director of economic development. As a member of the County Manager's staff, he will consult with but maintain independence from the existing Economic Development Commission as well as the Committee of 100. The old EDC board will continue in a strictly advisory role. Finally, the new economic development officer will report solely to the County Manager and needs to maintain his residence within Beaufort County.

    Every year Beaufort County residents send millions of tax dollars to Raleigh. These funds need to be repatriated to our community through grants and loans from Raleigh or they will be lost to projects in Asheville, Greensboro and Wilmington. However, if local economic development is to be properly managed and overseen, then the lazy and familiar relationships of the past need to be removed. The commissioners have taken the right steps and are moving in the right direction.