North Carolina Treasury Secretary Dale Folwell Visits Eastern NC NOW | Eastern North Carolina Now

    North Carolina Treasury Secretary Dale Folwell, and currently, challenging for the Republican nomination to seek the seat of North Carolina's governor, visits with Eastern North Carolina NOW's publisher, Stan Deatherage, to discuss the multiple jobs of the Secretary, his commitment to performance, and that lurking elected position to propel the executive leader of the Old North State far from the vestiges of the Authoritarianism that North Carolinians knew only too well under the Cover of Covid.

    For those readers that do not know NC Secretary of Treasury Dale Folwell as one of those public servants who represent your voice in our self-governed society, Dale Folwell has served in some capacity on the Council of State since 2013: first as the appointed Assistant Secretary of Commerce; then elected to the burdensome responibility of managing the public's purse as North Carolina's Secretary of the Treasury. One of the associative positions as chief executive of the Local Government Commission is charged with oversight of the governance of local governments that have taxing authority.

    Before his management positions, elected and appointed, within North Carolina's executive branch, Secretary Folwell served 4 terms as a Representative in the NC General Assembly, and before that he served as a Forsyth County school board member. In all positions served by Public Servant Folwell, Mr. Folwell employed his keen eye toward the inflexible summations of mathematics as a public accountant; consequently, as a man of numbers, Secretary Folwell minds the store of our treasury, and additionally, keeps a keen concern regarding the general funds /fund balances of all of North Carolina's local governments, and how they got into their conditions of good or bad management.

    In Eastern NC NOW's interview with Secretary Folwe ll, we were afforded a full sampling of man representing, in all accurate measure, the basis of how he manages the governance of arguably the most important deparment of North Carolina's Council of State - the Department of Treasury as State Treasurer.

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    Stan Deatherage:  Thank-you for visiting with our readers and listeners here Downeast Secretary Folwell. What is your focus this morning?


    Treasury Secretary  Dale Folwell:  The focus is to make sure that your listeners understand that there is at least one statewide elected official who doesn't think that the the state line ends in Raleigh, or ends in Charlotte.

    The other night on the campaign after 11 o'clock, I drove 412 miles and had five stops east of Raleigh. So there's a whole lot of our state east of Raleigh. There's a whole lot of needs for our state east of Raleigh. As the keeper of the public purse, and the state treasurer, we remain in the check delivery business. And even during COVID, that was our job. And fortunately, most of the checks that we deliver are blessings.


    But I attended the funeral service yesterday of Sergeant Dale Nix, the Greensboro police officer, who was murdered at the Sheetz (convenient stores) near Greensboro Airport. And, so, sometimes being in the check delivery business is not quite a blessing at all. But at the end of the day, our job is to watch the pennies and the paper-clips, and get money right out to the rightful owners.

    Understanding what governor, former Governor Jim Martin always told us, 'doing right is rarely wrong.'

    But also, there's a level of humbleness that comes with managing the largest pools of public money in the world. And that is that we do not mind being wrong for the right reasons. And I think that's what we need more in our government - more humanity and more humility. There are mistakes that are going to happen. And it's important to the public that when those mistakes happen at the local or state level, that we disclose them and not wait for people to discover them.

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    Stan Deatherage:  I agree, and I thank-you. Being insightful in that regard gives me a load of confidence.

    Do you feel that same way about the mundane part of revenue collection within your job description as the Secretary of Treasury, and what are the responsibilities for some of your other duties in this leadership position?


    Treasury Secretary    Dale Folwell:  Former State Treasurer Harlan Bowles, who some of your listeners will remember; considered by many to be the best state treasurer of the 20th century in the United States ... Not just North Carolina ... He wrote in his book, 'The Keeper of the Public Purse,' on page 143 ... And oh, by the way, it doesn't matter how old Richard Petty is, anytime I mentioned the number 1 and 43 in the same sentence, He understands he's the king (of stock car racing).

    But on page 143, it says: 'The state treasurer in North Carolina has more constitutional statutory responsibilities and duties than any other elected official, including the governor, except when the governor has control of the National Guard.'

    So, my point of telling you that is that the state budget is 30 billion. We manage 240 billion, eight times larger than the state budget. And that's made up of me being the sole fiduciary of one of the largest pension plans in the world. That's 118 billion, one of the largest 401ks in the United States, that's 15 billion.

    Also, I chair the state health plan board, I chair the local government commission board, which helps local governments, water and sewer districts, counties and cities have the competence, the governance, the transparency, and to remove the conflicts of interest that is so prevalent in local politics. I chair the Banking Commission, which regulates all the state chartered banks, some small ones you may have heard of a BB&T Truist and First Citizens and First Bank, those are just five of the 18 responsibilities that I have as the state treasurer. We take all that very seriously.

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    Stan Deatherage:  Dale, I'm gonna segue into something you mentioned earlier - the campaign. Do you believe that managing all these different entities that are so integral in - the taxing of the folks and keeping their treasure, as you are the treasury head as secretary: Is that conducive to you becoming the future governor of North Carolina? Will this extensive management now help you be a better governor when elected?


    Treasury Secretary  Dale Folwell:  I think so. But most importantly, what will help me is the culture that we have built at the treasurer's office and at the division of employment security that I took over when it was bankrupt, and owed the federal government $2.7 billion. That culture is the culture of conservatism and the root word of conservative is to conserve, courtesy, common sense, and the three that I need to make sure that I get across: humanity, humility, and ethics ... And ethics is what you do when no one's watching, but more importantly, at my level, at any level, ethics is what you do when the powerful forces like Larry Fink and ESG and Woke philosophies and the big health-care cartels; the big drug company cartels; the big insurance cartels; when they ask people like me to look the other way a nd I don't and I will not. That's what ethics are.