During a public hearing in Brunswick County on Monday, the county commission and board of elections reached a compromise on hiring more elections officials this next year.
Lavere gave a presentation during the commission's budget workshop on March 6, when constituents and county employees could give feedback on the budget proposal. She asked the county commission to fund two more full-time employees — the first they'd have hired in eight years.
"We have not had a full-time position added since 2016," she told WHQR. "And that's pretty significant. Because in that time, we have grown significantly."
There are 132,000 registered voters in Brunswick County. That number has increased by 45% since 2016. Currently, the board has six full-time employees. There are some part-time employees, but Lavere said they don't quite close the gap in work.
"Part-time staff can only work up to 1,000 hours a year without approval from the county manager for them to exceed that," she said. "We really are having trouble getting by with that limited amount of hours."
2024 is only going to get busier for the board: there's North Carolina's second primary, which concludes on May 14th, as well as the general election in November.
"We've gotten to a point where election season is not really election season," Lavere said. "We seem to be in season all the time now."
Lavere asked for about $350,000 in total. That funding would go towards, among other things, hiring a voter outreach coordinator, who'd oversee media inquiries, public records requests, and voter engagement, and a candidate coordinator, who'd help candidates stay on top of deadlines and campaign finance reports.
This year's proposed property tax rate for Brunswick County is 34 cents per $100 of property valuation — the same as last year's. The commissioners have made it clear that they're not interested in raising that rate. So on Monday, they offered a compromise: $200,000 in funding. That would cover the cost of the second primary election, the state voter I.D. law change, and one full-time position.
Not everyone is happy with the outcome. Brunswick County Democratic Party Chair Shelley Allen spoke out against the compromise after the meeting.
"The same people who are crying about election integrity and [who are] concerned about whether our elections are full of fraud or not, are the same people that will not fully fund our board of elections," she told WHQR.
Allen said her frustration goes back to last year's resolution on the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence. In March 2023, the commission asked the board of elections to terminate their membership with the network, citing concerns over private funding. The commission, which is all Republican, pointed to the alliance's ties to Mark Zuckerberg as evidence of liberal partisanship.
Prior to the resolution, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence provided a $67,000 grant to Brunswick County to cover Covid-related election costs.
"And then last year, [the county commission] said, 'We don't trust this private money. We want you to disconnect from the Alliance for Election Excellence. And we can take care of whatever funding needs you have,'" Allen told WHQR. "But they won't."
Ultimately, Lavere is still grateful for the funding that the county commission has offered.
"I know how this stuff goes. And I know that I likely was not the only department that was told that I could not get something that I wanted," she told WHQR. "And I also recognize that if [the commissioners] concede and give me something, that might mean that they'd have to tell another department, they can't have something."
The Brunswick County Commission plans to approve its budget on June 20. To learn more, go to brunswickcountync.gov.
