Alamance County spent close to $52,000 on lawyers

Oct. 26--GRAHAM -- Fighting lawsuits from former employees over nearly three years in federal court cost Alamance County $51,718 on top of the $108,504 in county funds paid to settle the cases, and $250,000 paid by the county's insurance company.

According to a response from County Attorney Clyde Albright to a Times-News public-records request, as of Oct. 15, Alamance County had spent $28,524 defending a wrongful-termination suit from former Sheriff's Deputy Jeffrey Randleman, and $23,194 defending a wrongful-termination suit from former county finance officer and county commissioner Tom Manning.

Randleman

Randleman cost the county $106,028 in legal bills and settlement, plus an insurance payout.

He agreed to settle his suit against Sheriff Terry Johnson in late August with a $327,504 settlement, $250,000 of which came from a county insurance policy. He also will be treated as a 30-year retiree with benefits including insurance and an ongoing separation allowance -- basically a pension.

Randleman alleged that he lost his job of more than 20 years with the Sheriff's Office because he "testified honestly" in the 2013 U.S. Justice Department trial against Johnson over allegations that the office had unlawfully targeted Latinos.

Johnson countered that he had every right to choose which deputies to keep on or "re-swear" when he was re-elected in 2014. He also said he had good reasons to let Randleman go after -- including allegations that Randleman had been starting trouble with a state trooper in a domestic incident, and that there were gaps in his on-duty activity showing him to be inattentive to his work.

The parties filed notification of the settlement in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina on Aug. 22, according to uscourts.gov. Randleman signed the settlement Sept. 26, and the suit was dismissed Oct. 16.

Manning

Manning cost the county at least $54,194 in settlement and legal fees.

The county maintains that he was asked to resign because of inappropriate comments made to women he worked with. Manning says he was fired for raising questions about two no-bid contracts the Sheriff's Office entered. Then board Chair David Smith seemed to confirm that Manning had been fired in an interview he later gave to the Times-News.

The county hired Manning, a banker, as county finance manager after 15 years in public service as an elected official, first on the Alamance-Burlington Board of Education and then as a county commissioner and chair of the commissioners.

Manning was a commissioner when his fellow board members offered him the $85,000-per-year job of county finance officer in 2014, with fellow commissioners saying they were not satisfied with other applicants. He was also headed into a possibly difficult re-election after a marital infidelity scandal.

Manning and a county purchasing agent raised questions about contracts the Sheriff's Office entered into without going through bidding, including a contract to buy 12 vehicles from Nichols Dodge for more than $280,000.

While the county now acknowledges, after an audit, that was not proper procedure, at the time Smith instructed Manning to write the check, which he eventually did.

Manning was fired, or quit, nine days after the last memo from Smith instructing him to sign off on the vehicle purchase, nearly two months after his purported improper statements.

Manning, according to depositions, admitted to making remarks about edible panties as a part of a conversation of "a group of more than one people" who were all talking and laughing, and he said he didn't think much of it afterward.

At its meeting Nov. 6, 2014, Smith, then board chair, announced that the board had accepted Manning's resignation, which Manning denied when he sued over breach of contract and wrongful termination. But Smith told the Times-News the next April that he must have "misspoke" at the meeting, and that Manning was "absolutely" and "involuntarily terminated."

Information requested

Federal court records show William L. Hill of Frazier and James Demarest Secor III represented the county in these lawsuits. The Times-News requested copies of their invoices, but received only the totals spent on "outside legal fees."

So far the county has not responded to the Times-News' Sept. 12 request for documented work hours for Albright and another lawyer in the county's legal department also recorded as representing the county in these suits, to determine how much the county spent on in-house legal representation. Nor has the county responded to requests for redacted closed-session minutes related to these cases.

Reporter Isaac Groves can be reached at [email protected] or 336-506-3045. Follow him on Twitter at @tnigroves.

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