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Bond or Bust?
As my colleague Rachel Keith reported earlier this week, New Hanover County commissioners and school board members met and agreed on a $320.5 million bond package to update and add new public school facilities. The bond covers a lot, but not all, of the district’s needs; many years of deferred maintenance have left over a half-billion dollars in unmet needs. For just one example, the bond includes only the first of several phases of long-overdue rehab and expansion projects at New Hanover High School, leaving roughly $170 million to be funded down the line ... somehow ... (pause while elected officials gaze with frustrated longing in the general direction of The Endowment).
Hammering all this out was no small feat, balancing the most serious maintenance needs with a realpolitik acknowledgement that a bond will have to appeal to a broad range of voters around the county. The school board should get credit for this work, and I specifically give kudos to Pat Bradford, who headed up the bond committee. Commissioners also deserve credit for not trying to value engineer the school board’s work, trusting them to ask for what they think the district needs.
That doesn’t mean that voters will agree, though. I don’t expect any hassle with Local Government Commission approval in the spring, but who knows what the economic climate will be a year from now – and how voters will feel about a tax increase (about $100 a year for the median $580,000 property for the first decade of repayment, dropping off in the latter half of a 20-year bond).
Woody White, who has long been both an influence on and a bellwether for local conservative thought, made it very clear in a Facebook post that he would not be voting for the “extreme amount of money” the district is asking for. I won’t recapitulate White’s whole argument here (there will be time for that if it’s still a relevant sentiment closer to November 2026), but suffice to say, he has doubts about the bond, given the county’s debt level, flat or flagging school enrollment, and the potential disruptions of AI on the education sector. White also tacked on his concerns about the number of “children from illegal households” and some choice words for the Chamber of Commerce, which is likely to be tasked with advocating for the bond.
To the surprise of some, Republican Commissioner Dane Scalise (currently planning a run for House District 20 as Rep. Ted Davis, Jr. retires), politely pushed back on White.
“I respect Woody and his opinions. But I disagree with his analysis here. Many of our public schools need major renovations that past boards have refused to address. I won't be that Commissioner. You can vote for or against these improvements next year, but my job is to give you the choice,” Scalise wrote as he reposted White’s comments.
It’s not quite a schism in the conservasphere, but the exchange shows there are likely to be a range of conservative reactions to the bond ask. It is a lot of money, adding to the county’s not insignificant debt (which will be pretty much maxed out if the bond passes). But it’s also narrowly earmarked, and voters – especially those with kids in the public school system – can see clearly where their money is going (which is, to put it mildly, not always the case with tax money).
Democratic school board candidates for next year so far include Brittnei LaRue and Nelson Beaulieu, returning for another bite at the apple after serving from 2018 to 2022, and more are expected to file. They’ll likely support the bond, though they’ll have to win over a few economically weary unaffiliated centrists.
But Republicans will need to own the bond, since they control the boards of education and county commissioners that greenlit it. I’ve heard the four Republican candidates who swept in 2022 – Bradford, Melissa Mason, Josie Barnhardt, and Pete Wildeboer – are all likely to run again (Bradford’s already announced, the rest I’ve heard are likely to follow suit soon). It will be, to say the least, a very different tone than they took four years ago. Then, they were critical – sometimes scathingly, even slanderously – of the school district. Now they’ll have to help convince voters that not only is the district working, but that it deserves a significant investment.
Bias in the DA’s office?
For the last two weeks, folks (including some shadowy anonymous Proton email accounts) have been sending me documents from a lawsuit filed against the New Hanover County Schools District. I haven’t reported on it because, in my editorial opinion, it’s hard to tell the full story right now – but I get that not everyone would agree. Many of the key players are prohibited from discussing the case due to personnel confidentiality laws, and many of the most important legal filings have now been sealed by the court (although, obviously, not before I and many others downloaded copies).
WECT’s Connor Smith filed a report on Thursday about this, which you can read here. I think, given the limitations of what those involved can say on the record, he did a nice job. Now that the cat is at least partially out of the bag, I wanted to say a few things about the story.
Here’s the short version: a male high school student was accused of assaulting an ex-girlfriend. The case, which I've heard on background was fairly messy, started in juvenile court but didn’t get resolved there; the prosecutor indicted the student, moving the case to Superior Court. This August, the student accepted a complicated form of plea agreement, signing an Alford plea and getting a conditional discharge. That means, essentially, the student agreed a court would find him guilty if the case went to trial but did not admit guilt. It also means that, for 18 months, the student was in a kind of limbo. If he obeyed the conditions of the plea, when that year and a half was up, the case would be dismissed and expunged, as if it never happened. If he broke the rules, he’d face the consequences of his plea. Call it Schrödinger’s felony.
The student was an outstanding football player, and this put NHCS in a tough spot, particularly given some disgraceful past incidents of protecting student athletes over young women who had made assault allegations.
Ultimately, NHCS kept the student off the field and, in early October, the school board turned away the family’s appeal. The family retained Gary Shimpman, managing partner of Shipman Wright & Moore, LLP, to file a lawsuit contending this was a violation of their rights. The student missed the football season, but the family hopes he can play lacrosse in the spring.
That part of the lawsuit is ongoing, and there will likely be more to say about how the district handled things and whether they made the right choice. To protect student privacy, district officials can't discuss much about the case. But again, I think you could understand why NHCS and the board might err on the side of protecting the victim, based on the information they had.
But many people who have reached out about this case aren’t particularly interested in NHCS. Instead, they were interested in allegations against the prosecutor contained in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that prosecutor Ashton Herring admitted to having a racial bias against Asians – relevant, the plaintiffs argue, because the student is of Asian descent. The argument is that Herring both went too hard in prosecuting the case (moving it out of juvenile court, for example) and gave the school district false information, telling them the student was a “convicted felon” instead of detailing the more complicated limbo status of a conditional discharge.
Prosecutors who spoke with me on background contested some of this, and the impact it would have had on the school’s decision. But, obviously, there’s another and arguably more serious issue: the allegation of a biased prosecutor in the District Attorney’s office.
The suit includes an affidavit, now sealed, from Rosetta Royster, who worked as a prosecutor in the office from 2018 until October 2024. Royster claims Herring twice acknowledged a bias against Asians after interviewing an Asian job candidate. “She's a no for me because I have an implicit bias against Asian people,” Herring allegedly said – repeating that she had an “implicit bias against Asian people,” when Royster and another prosecutor in the room expressed incredulity (as in, 'what did you just say?').
Royster also claims she’d been told that Herring had been accused by a defense attorney of treating an Asian defendant unfairly. The affidavit also implies that Herring was investigated and cleared to continue working by former Democratic District Attorney Ben David and then reinvestigated by current Republican District Attorney Jason Smith.
And here is where things get even messier, for a host of reasons. For one, because this is a personnel issue, David and Smith are both probably gagged. (There may also be State Bar restrictions, as well.) If they feel Herring’s reputation is being torched unfairly, they can’t say so. And if it’s not completely cut and dry – and it rarely is – they can’t fill in the gaps left by Royster’s sparse 281-word affidavit, but the public imagination certainly can.
This means that we’re unlikely to know, at least for now, what the nature and severity of Herring’s alleged bias were. We also don’t know what actions David and Smith took outside of suspending, demoting, or firing (which would show up as public records). Did she get counseling or bias training? I’ve heard that, at least under David’s administration, prosecutors were encouraged to self-report and work on their biases – some in law enforcement celebrated this as a long overdue ‘cultural shift’ in the office, others decried it as ‘wokeness in the DA’s office,’ but either way, it might explain the somewhat stilted way Herring allegedly announced her bias.
That’s not to downplay the question of bias, to be absolutely clear. Bias, even a moderate bias, is a significant problem for someone who wields as much power as a prosecutor. And if a prosecutor holds one bias, even a mild one, they may hold more. For those reasons, I’m still following the story.
My hope is that David or Smith, or both, find some way to address the allegations and bring some clarity to the situation – or that further filings in the case provide additional insight. I’m sure there are more than a few attorneys, from both sides of the courtroom, who feel the same way.
A final wrinkle in this case is that Shipman's firm hired Rebecca Zimmer Donaldson not long after she ran as a Democratic candidate against Smith last year in a race that turned notably unpleasant. Zimmer Donaldson also served, albeit briefly, as interim district attorney, appointed by then-Democratic Governor Roy Cooper (against the recommendation of David, who wanted someone with no political ambitions to serve as interim). After Smith won, Zimmer Donaldson left the office. All around, I think it's safe to say there was no love lost.
It could be a coincidence, though David, Smith, and others in the office whose ethics are being publicly questioned by the lawsuit might find it conspicuous.
On Saturday, I texted Zimmer Donaldson to ask what, if anything, people should make of the fact that the firm she worked for had fired a shot across the bow of the District Attorney’s office. She told me she no longer works at Shipman’s firm and “had nothing to do with the case” when she did.
If all that has left you feeling like this story is as clear as mud, I hear you. We'll do our best to stick with it and try to get to the bottom of things, messy work though that may be.
For whom the toll tolls ...
A final note here: we missed this week's meeting of the WMPO, our regional transportation board, but you may have seen coverage of the latest in the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement and tolling conversation, including Brenna Flanagan’s thorough rundown of the issue in Port City Daily.
TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) version: even with a sizeable federal grant, we still don’t have enough money for the bridge replacement (now estimated to cost at least $1.1 billion). Local officials have been forced to essentially ‘play along’ with plans to toll the bridge so that it remains a viable project. That will keep it from getting scuttled and in the running for additional funding. One promising option: a tri-county transportation tax that could fund not just a new bridge but a host of other much-needed projects around Brunswick, New Hanover, and Pender counties. The idea has bipartisan support, but would require approval from the general assembly and voters. It was inspired by a similar proposal for the Charlotte area, which passed on the ballot earlier this month.
The hope is that, with some patience and a little luck, enough money materializes to fund the bridge in cash without a toll.
It’s a bit of brinksmanship, but likely worth it given how universally unpopular the idea of a toll has been. This week, the WMPO heard presentations on two versions of the toll – a state-run option and a public-private partnership. Both would probably charge somewhere around $2 for passenger vehicles (trucks and larger vehicles would pay more). I'm not sure which would be better (or the lesser of two evils), but I have to imagine that, for some, the idea of a private company making money by tolling drivers would be an additional turn of the screw.
