'Promises were broken': School funding driving Wake commissioner primaries

All five commissioners who voted for the county's $1.26 billion annual budget last year face opposition in the May 8 primary. Chairwoman Jessica Holmes and Commissioner Greg Ford, who said the budget didn't provide enough money for schools and voted against it, don't have a primary.

Women Awake PAC also has endorsed Holmes, who faces no opposition at all this year in her re-election.

Commissioners Sig Hutchinson and James West also face primary opposition, but their challengers are men. Jeremiah Pierce is running against Hutchison in District 1, while Robert Finch is running in District 6 against West.

Paula Wolf, the PAC's director, said the founders wanted to create a local equivalent to Emily's List, which backs a progressive agenda and works to elect women at the national level, and Lillian's List, which does similar work at the state level. The group decided to focus on Wake County to start, where Holmes is the only woman on the Board of Commissioners, Wolf said.

"If more women are sitting at the table, it's better off for families," Wolf said.

But Wolf, Campbell and PAC board member Karen Garr also made clear that funding for the Wake County Public School System played a key role in the PAC's creation and endorsements.

"Multiple men on the Wake County Commissioners – men who ran for office on a progressive platform including a pledge to strongly support public education and undo years of inadequate funding – have failed to fully fund the well-documented needs of WCPSS," Campbell, who chairs the PAC's board, said in an email to WRAL News.

"Our per-pupil expenditure is less than that of Durham and Orange [counties], and there’s no reason for that," Garr said.

Wake County spent $2,316 per student in 2015-16, according to a recent report by the Public School Forum of North Carolina, while the two districts in Orange County averaged $4,852 per student and Durham Public Schools spent $3,147 per student.

Campbell and Wolf also cited a failure to fund more school counselors, provide extra-duty pay to teachers who also handle sports and other extracurriculars and ensure school bus drivers and cafeteria workers earn a living wage.

"The incumbents we oppose claim that Wake County can’t afford to do more. We disagree. Wake County is one of the wealthiest counties in the state, and it has a lower property tax rate than most other metropolitan areas," Campbell said in her email.

Wake County's current tax rate is 61.5 cents per $100 valuation, according to the state Department of Revenue. By comparison, Durham County's is 76.79 cents per $100, Orange County's is 83.77 cents per $100, Mecklenburg County's is 81.57 cents per $100 and Guilford County's is 73.05 cents per $100.

Portman said the commissioners have increased county spending on public schools by more than $93 million a year over the last four years, which he called "record increases" in a short span, and increased local supplements to teachers over three years to bring pay levels to the national average. Schools now account for more than a third of the county's $1.26 billion annual budget.

The added spending has resulted in the county property tax rate going up by 10.1 cents per $100 valuation since 2014, adding $202 to the annual bill for a $200,000 home.

"We would love to fund everything that everyone wants, but the needs are always greater than the money, and our job is to decide what we can or can’t do," he said, noting Wake County also has affordable housing, mental health and public safety needs.

"They found unbudgeted funding for less urgent projects such as turning a failed private golf course into an unplanned park that was not recommended by county staff because it wasn’t needed based on previous land purchases for parks," Campbell said in her email.

"I felt like there was something that just didn’t seem quite right about that particular project getting moved to the forefront, ahead of all the things that were in their parks master plan," Evans said.

Wake County hasn't opened a county park in a decade, Portman said, and the Crooked Creek property offered an opportunity to lock up 140 acres containing a lot of hardwood trees in a fast-growing part of the county.

"We have to use judgment in terms of what makes sense. We think that this was a good project," he said. "The two are only related because we were not able to give the school board everything they asked for. If we had, I don’t think you’d be hearing anything about a park."

Still, Holmes, Ford and West, the three commissioners who voted against the Crooked Creek purchase, recently took their colleagues to task for a planned campaign fundraiser this Sunday at the former golf course clubhouse, calling the event "pay-to-play politics."

"I think that’s really ironic, particularly when this entire primary is being funded by two wealthy donors trying to replace the board for a particular, one vote where we were not able to give the school board everything they asked for," Portman said.

Campbell and Dean Debnam were major donors in the last election cycle to all of the commissioners Women Awake PAC is now trying to unseat. This time around, each of them and their spouses have given $5,200, the maximum contribution in an election cycle, to Evans, accounting for about two-thirds of her fundraising to date, according to campaign finance filings.

Neither Brown nor Adamson has filed a campaign finance report since early February detailing their contributions. Likewise, the PAC hasn't yet filed a report listing its expenditures.

"At that point, we trusted their promises to step up and fix the inadequate funding of WCPSS. Like many people in the community, we have been disappointed in their failure to live up to their promises," Campbell said in her email. "Much of the funding increases they like to tout were simply helping us to avoid sliding backward."

"Public school support ... was their primary issue when we all worked so hard four years go to get them elected, and there have been some broken promises," Garr said.

Women Awake PAC didn't recruit any of the candidates, Campbell and Garr said, but when Brown, a former commissioner, Evans, a former school board member, and Adamson, a longtime PTA official and school volunteer, expressed interest in running, they gladly backed them.

Evans said she wants to use her experience on the school board and as a former CPA to bridge the knowledge gap between the two county boards. Still, she said she cannot guarantee the school funding increases the PAC seeks.

"I’m well aware from my previous negotiations and so forth that there’s still areas of which the commissioners don’t fully understand the school systems finances and budget, so I think I can be helpful in being a liaison between the two boards," Evans said. "I understand there’ll be competing needs for the county budget, and you can’t ever say you’ll give the school district anything they ask for."