SBI passes Meadows investigation findings onto AG’s office

SBI passes Meadows voter fraud investigation findings onto AG’s office

BY KYLE PERROTTI NEWS EDITOR

Mark Meadows may soon know whether he’ll face voter fraud charges in North Carolina.

The announcement came via a press release from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation Tuesday.

“The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation’s (SBI) case file concerning Mark Meadows and allegations of voter fraud has been submitted to the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office for review,” the release reads. “Final case file documentation was submitted in early November. Prosecutors with the AG’s Office will determine whether criminal charges are appropriate, not the SBI. Because the case is now pending a decision by the AG’s Office, no additional information is available.”

Meadows’ potentially felonious voting activity came to light in a March 6 story by Charles Bethea in The New Yorker.

“On September 19th, about three weeks before North Carolina’s voter-registration deadline for the general election, Meadows filed his paperwork,” that story reads. “On a line that asked for his residential address — ‘where you physically live,’ the form instructs — Meadows wrote down the address of a fourteen-by-sixty-two-foot mobile home in Scaly Mountain. He listed his move-in date for this address as the following day, September 20th.”

A few weeks later, The Smoky Mountain News reported that District Attorney Ashley Welch, whose jurisdiction the case would typically fall under, recused herself.

“After careful consideration and review of the North Carolina State Bar Rules, I feel that my office has a conflict of interest pursuant to North Carolina State Bar rule 1.7 resulting in the recusal of my office,” she said in a March 14 letter to Leslie Dismukes, a prosecutor with the North Carolina Department of Justice.

Welch, also a Republican, said in the letter that she was requesting Attorney General Josh Stein to “handle both the advisement of law enforcement agencies as to any criminal investigation as well as any potential prosecution of Mark Meadows,” noting that the basis for her recusal is that thenCongressman Meadows gave her a campaign contribution in 2014 and also appeared in ads supporting that candidacy.

“The allegations in this case involve potential crimes committed by a government official,” Welch wrote. “Historically I have requested the attorney general’s office to handle prosecutions involving alleged misconduct of government officials. It is in the best interest of justice and the best interest of the people of North Carolina that the attorney general’s office handles the prosecution of this case.”

Raleigh television station WRAL was first to report that Attorney General Josh Stein said through a spokesperson that his office had asked the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation to look into the matter of Mark Meadows’s registration.

In March, Meadows’ voting history shows he cast his March 3, 2020, Republican Primary Election ballot in Transylvania County, but voted absentee by mail in the Nov. 3 General Election using the McConnell Road address.

County Schools is $34.6 million. This money will pay for all state-funded teachers in Macon County, totaling $21.6 million. It also pays $4.8 million for all state-funded exceptional children’s teachers and teacher assistants, $2.1 million for the bulk of principal and assistant principals, and $1.5 million for guidance counselors and media center personnel. Most custodial salaries also come out of this pot of money at about $2.8 million.

Federal funding accounts for about 19% of the MCS budget.

The total Federal Grants Fund for the 2022-23 fiscal year is $13.2 million. This pays for federally funded classroom teachers, EC teachers and Title One teachers, as well as operational services.

The school nutrition program has a budget of $3.2 million. Of that, a little more than $40,000 comes from state funds, $2.7 million comes from federal funds and $486,050 comes from local revenues. All that money goes toward labor and supplies.

The capital outlay budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year is about $6.5 million. Almost all that funding comes from county appropriations, while a little over $200,000 comes from state and federal funds. Of the capital outlay budget, $2.7 million will go toward the Macon Middle locker room and track projects, and $1.1 million is appropriated for Franklin High School.

Macon County Schools is looking to build a new high school facility in the next couple of years, a needed improvement that will cost the county upwards of $100 million.

“What we need to focus on is that this budget proposal is requiring an allocation of $500,000 from our current fund balance. We can only stand that once or twice,” said Breedlove. “As we have retirements and other things taking place, and positions come in, in terms of making decisions about whether those positions will be filled, it’s time to start looking at those very hard because we’re going to have to attrit. My estimation, there is going to have to be some attrition done. In 2024, we no longer have that stop gap ESSER funding and we can’t continue to appropriate money from our fund balance, just can’t do it.”

Cook noted the likelihood of even more salary and retirement increases in the future.

“We’re into a very tough time, guys,” said Breedlove. “We’ve been through this before. As we enter into this new year, we’ve got to take hard looks at positions and some harder looks at other things, in terms of trying to bring things into line. I hate to say it, but I also think I’m being very realistic.”

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