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Welcome again to the most widely watched and the longest-running dialogue around business policy and public affairs, seen every week across North and South Carolina in just a moment on this special CBR, we weigh into issues that are key with four county managers from some of the largest and some of the fastest-growing regions right here in the South and in the Carolinas, and we start right now.

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On this edition of "Carolina Business Review," Dena R. Diorio, Mecklenburg County Manager, David Ellis, Wake County Manager, Andrew Fulghum, Jasper County Administrator, and Leonardo Brown, Richland County Administrator.

(exciting music) - Hello and welcome again to our program.

Lady, gentlemen, thank you for joining us.

Thanks for traveling in from Jasper County.

I don't know that I'd leave the beach that easily.

Leonardo, thank you for being here.

David, thanks for coming in from Raleigh, and Dena, I know it's not too far, but still thanks for making the time.

Ms. Diorio, I'm gonna start with you.

So here we are, thankfully, it's not a personal opinion, but thankfully past election day.

The battleground state that North Carolina and South Carolina of course is an important state as well, but now that we're finally past this and we can all breathe a little bit easier, what emerges now as maybe job one or job two for your job as a county manager?

- Well, I think the biggest thing that we'll be dealing with is transitioning new elected officials from running for office to now really understanding how to govern because it's incredibly different.

So we know we're gonna have one new board member for sure.

We don't know exactly yet who else may be returning, but I think really trying to transition them from running for office to sort of actually governing and understanding what their role is as policy makers will be really important for us.

- Yeah, David, what do you think?

- Similar to Dena, we have three competitive races in Wake County for Board of Commissioner seats.

And so the day after the election, we will be reaching out to whomever wins and setting up a time for orientation and preparing them to be successful in their role.

- Yeah, Leonardo, and then Andrew, what's job one?

- Yeah, I think they've hit the nail on the head.

We actually have two new officials that'll be coming in, but I think having a strategic plan will allow those members to kind of come in and as they're transitioning from running to governing, they can get in and kind of get right on board with what the county is already really pushing forward through.

So I think many of us have something like that, and I think that's kind of day one after the folks get on board.

- Andrew?

- Three new council members potentially coming in.

Orientation is paramount.

And for me, trying to learn their communication skills as soon as I can so I know how to communicate with them.

And then I'd also have to add, we have a referendum question, transportation sales tax, which is getting a lot of attention.

And so I'll be able to act on that one way or the other.

- So are these, and David, let me come back to you because the way you said it, are these good disruptions when you get, and I don't mean an election is a bad thing, but when you got someone that's either never held a seat, or was a surprise, or just is brand new to the system, and it's a different dynamic.

Do you know, 'cause you've been doing this now for a while, do you know that it's gonna take x amount of time to get this person either up to speed or the body all working in the same direction as much as possible?

- Well, I think it's a combination.

So it is going to take time to get the elected official up to speed and they're coming in and then we're right into developing a budget.

So they're jumping right into their job during budget season.

- But that's a whole different set of skills, isn't it?

- It is, it is a different set of skills, but they need to be knowledgeable of what's in the budget, what's in the strategic plan, and how it relates to the budget.

And so once they actually get started, we tend to, we will orient them, we'll talk about the strategic plan and the second part is getting them to work as a body, right?

Not as seven individual commissioners, but how do you work together as a board?

So in January, we'll have a retreat where they have an opportunity to come together, talk about issues, talk about priorities, and get an update on where the strategic plan is.

- Dena, is there a codex that you have as a manager that, you know, I don't wanna say it this way, but knows how to get people to work together on a body of elected officials, being the manager, having them as bosses, but still being kind of the ringleader to move things forward?

- Well, I think it's really important to have a good relationship with whoever your board chair is.

And we know in Mecklenburg County we will be having a new board chair.

So that's also something that we need to work with the board chair to help them figure out how do they work together as a body.

But I do think managers have a responsibility, at least I do, in making sure the board understands what their role is, because sometimes they wanna get more into operational issues and really pushing them to stay in the policy realm is really what I try to do to help them understand, here's where you need to work together, here's where you need to build consensus to be able to move the county forward.

- You've announced, and it's not secret, you've announced that you're gonna retire in the summer of next year.

Does that add a different dynamic to already a fairly new, some new members of a board that now they have to learn what a new county manager is going to be and what he or she brings to the table?

- I think it will.

I mean, I think, you know, I've been in the role 11 years and so they haven't had a new county manager in a very long time.

So I think it's gonna be new not just for the board, but also for the employees because they know me, they know what to expect from me and it will be different with a new county manager.

- Leonardo and Andrew, please, the idea that you get past new members of the board and you're moving ahead, again, what's job one?

Is it economic development?

Is it housing, is it education?

I mean, for you in Richland County, what bubbles to the top for you?

- Yeah, interesting enough, it is actually our number one priority, which is good governance.

And when we talked about moving from the running for election to governing, getting the public to understand that our main focus is actually governing, and that would actually will be job one because once that's established, as we talked about, strategic focuses of the organizations, then members would then be able to better understand how to connect both with the community and how to connect now with their staff through the county manager or county administrator in effectuating whatever the policies are.

So I think you hit it right on the head, understanding the role of the elected official, which is the governance role rather than the operational role is really going to be job one and it's foundational to a successful, cohesive organization.

And I think my colleagues would probably kind of echo some of those sentiments.

- Andrew?

- Same thing.

I think it is really important to show them exactly what you do and what your staff does because they come in with misconceptions about maybe how you do your work.

So maybe not overwhelming them, but showing them all the projects that we're working on is very important and show how those projects link to the goals that the council has already established helps a lot because there's some hot button issues right now, specifically related to growth in our county that we need to tackle right away.

- Is Jasper County, I'm sorry, is Jasper County the fastest-growing county in South Carolina?

- It is.

It grew by 11% this past year.

- And that in itself it's a good problem to have, but it's still an issue you have to manage through?

- It's a lot.

We have a small staff, scrappy staff, professional staff, and so it's hard to keep up, but we all pitch in, and the council's very much a part of that.

But as Leonardo said, they have to understand their role because we're all a team, we're all there for a reason, and once we get past that, we can move forward.

- You know, it's probably fair to say that there's a lot of partisan fatigue and election fatigue, I think we all probably got ready to get past some of the election cycle, and Dena, come back to you, and I'd like you all to comment on this.

So there's been a long-term decline in the trust of public officials.

That's not surprising, but you work with public officials, so how do you balance that confidence, the lack of confidence that the general public has in general, what you see and how you manage through implementing policy and managing leadership and all of these things.

So this decline that people have in leadership, does that create a problem or is that just noise that you can get past?

- Well, I think in Mecklenburg County, I think we're really, really lucky and fortunate that we don't really see a lot of people being negative about our elected officials.

But one of the things that we're really proud of and what we do all the time is we're really proud of our transparency and our accountability.

And I think when people lose trust in public officials, a lot of it stems from the fact that they're not transparent and they're not accountable.

So the more we can do to support that and be transparent and accountable to the public really helps our public officials maintain that level of trust.

- Wake County's probably like Mecklenburg County in that way.

- Very similar.

Some of the things that we do to help with that transparency and accountability, we have a social media manager.

So during board meetings she is tweeting out what the board has passed, what some of the discussion has been.

She monitors various social media sites, so if there's something incorrect, she has the opportunity to go in and reach out to someone and correct it.

And we think by telling our story, sometimes local governments really don't, we don't tell our story well, and that's one of the things that we're really focused on is telling our story about what are the things that we're doing in Wake County.

- The other thing I'll just add to that is that we find here in Mecklenburg County is that the media is not always interested in what the county is doing, but very interested in what the City of Charlotte is doing.

And so to your point about not telling our story, really trying to make sure that our story is getting out to the public continues to be a challenge.

- Do you find that, as county managers, that it's not always, that it's not just the county, that it's the city?

- Well, we do here for sure.

- Similar in Wake County, it's Raleigh.

- I think that's important because- - Well, and you have too, you have Richland and Lexington.

- True.

And when you think about being in the capital county, but people think more about the capital city.

So they think about Columbia, they don't really think about Richland County.

But I think having an issue where you've had a drop in public trust, for us it's been the focus of how do we communicate that we are professionals at what we do?

So we have the policy makers that come in who may have background in running organizations.

They may not, they may just be citizens who wanted to make a difference in the community, but the organization of county government is run by professionals, certified, educated.

And a lot of times people, they're not aware of that.

They may see the elected member and think, I know he or she doesn't have a professional background in running an organization of 2,000 or more plus individuals.

So how can they be effective?

But their staff does.

And I think what we've tried to do is we've tried to be very strategic.

And so that's why we really put a focus out to our community, letting them understand that our organization is a professional organization, even though it is a governmental organization, it is run by a group of professionally trained, certified individuals.

- Do you have that same issue in Jasper and Hardeeville and Bridgeway?

Is that even in a smaller county?

- Yeah, absolutely.

And City of Hardeeville is our growth center and it's attracting a lot of retirees.

And so there are a lot of people moving in from different areas and they're sort of clashing and learning the local culture, so it's a fascinating thing to see, but we're smaller and perhaps a little bit more parochial.

We have a problem with a lot of misinformation, disinformation purposely.

And so how we will react to that is council's allowed me to get some professional staff to do some more PR work, as you've mentioned, but also we need to just take it down a notch on these divisive issues and have more workshops and make sure that everyone gets the good information and make sure that everyone has a chance to be heard.

- And especially in Charlotte, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, it's called Charlotte-Mecklenburg for a reason over and over again for so many times, and I know you know this, is when you approach the critical mass as a triangle, but certainly as Charlotte-Mecklenburg, not only do you have a city that is growing into the county, but you have a city that's growing into another state.

Is there a different way that larger organizations like Charlotte-Mecklenburg need to think about cross-pollinating between city and county government?

- We do, and I think we have a few ways that we do that.

One, we have the Centralina Council of Governments, which represents nine counties in the region, which a couple of them do cross over into South Carolina.

So we try to do regional collaboration that way.

We also have an Economic Development Advisory Council, which represents 15 counties, and we try to do sort of economic development across those counties to the extent that we work with other cities, if they're part of that process, that's great.

But we really try to focus on collaboration across counties within the region.

- Does it work?

Can you collaborate more?

- I think so.

I think we do.

- Would you like it to collaborate more?

- I think everybody would.

I think as professionals, as Leonardo mentioned, we're all professional staff and we all can work together really well, but we have to be mindful of what our specific boards may want us to focus on.

And so we try to manage that as we work on these collaborative processes.

- That's not unique to Wake, Orange, and Durham Counties.

How do you collaborate in a place that's always, or a lot called the triangle?

- The triangle.

Well, when you think of the triangle, I mean, in Wake County we have 13 municipalities within the county.

And so we are constantly having conversations myself with the town and city managers about how are we growing, what are things that we need to do, how can we work more collaboratively together?

And we have that same relationship with Durham, with Orange County and others, just constantly talking about issues.

I believe one of the secret sauce to the triangle is the ability to collaborate not just with local governments, but with Wake Tech, with some of the folks in the private sector, that allows us to really move the triangle forward and not become stagnant.

- Some issues, specifically, so counties normally, and I'm not gonna get this completely right, so forgive me, the counties normally sponsor things like parks and rec, school systems, behavioral health and mental health.

Of those things, what becomes now, Leonardo, we'll start with you, in Richland County, what becomes the focus in fiscal 2025 for you?

Is it mental health?

Is it the school systems?

And again, back to the idea that you got Richland one, Richland three, Lexington one, you've got all these different school systems and you've got county and city folks doing everything.

So how do you saliently get through this and lead as I know you want to?

- Yeah, so the interesting thing is, the first thing we do is we kinda let our customer base, which are our citizens, understand the different dynamics of all the boards that are running those individual organizations.

- Do they take time and understand that?

That's a challenge.

- Well, sometimes they don't, but that's kind of part of what we do, is we have to constantly communicate with citizens.

For example, when we look at what the school district wants to do, they have a independent board of the county, the parks and recreation has an independent board from the county, but they're all, it's Richland County Schools, it's Richland County Recreation, but it's not Richland County Government Schools or Richland County Government Recreations.

So it's getting the citizens to understand we're all gonna try to work together, but when you're speaking to the county administrator about what's going on in the school or what's going on at the parks, I may not be able to actually effectively make a change, I can influence it maybe, but we don't have jurisdiction.

So for us, it's the continued focus of learning what the different bodies and boards represent so that citizens can know who to properly engage with.

- [Chris] Does that ring different for you?

- Same.

And especially in South Carolina, there's a misnomer I think that we run the state health department building in our communities, and we don't, we're a landlord to a lot of different state functions and buildings, but we don't have anything to do with the operation.

So facilitation is key.

That's what we have to do, continue to educate and facilitate and bring people together to try to make these decisions.

- In the larger counties, we not just have a constituent employee base that are using services like childcare, like behavioral health, but you also have some influence over those same services.

How do you, so David, talk a little bit about the, is it 4,000, 4,500 employees in the county?

- About 5,000.

- 5,000.

So 5,000 employees in Wake County use services like childcare, use services like mental health and behavioral health.

What is the general consensus of that now as you see it and talk about the service themself?

Do you feel confident that in 2025, these will, like mental health, will mental health, will behavioral health be more accessible as you think it needs to be?

- So in Wake County, and we work through Alliance Behavioral Health, which is LME/MCO.

And so we partner with them, we provide funding to them.

And so what they do is really try to address the behavioral health needs in the county, including the school system.

And so that has been a focus of Wake County, at least for the past 10 or 12 years, making sure that we are getting behavioral health services out to folks who need them.

We've opened up kind of a behavioral health emergency center where folks can go in on the weekends and be seen.

And so we're constantly looking at creative ways to address it.

- Same thing in Mecklenburg, I would guess, right?

7,000 employees or so.

- We have about 6,500 employees and we also work through Alliance Health similar to Wake County, but we also are trying to find ways to provide additional services that the community needs.

We're opening up a facility-based crisis center.

We're trying to work with an organization to open up a psychiatric facility for children, which is a huge need in not just Mecklenburg County, but in the state.

- Is that the first, would that be the first one in the state?

- It would be the first one in Mecklenburg County for sure.

But I think the problem that we have statewide is that we don't have enough providers, we don't have enough professionals who want to be in this business.

So whatever we do locally only pales in comparison to what we need statewide.

We also need the state of North Carolina to put additional dollars into mental health.

I mean, they are supposed to be the largest funder and provider of mental, not maybe provider, but funder of mental health services in the state of North Carolina.

But local governments have had to step in because the state of North Carolina has not funded those services at the level they need to be funded.

And that is also true with K-12 education.

We are the largest funder of K-12 education in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, but that is primarily a responsibility of state government.

So those are the things that we try to balance every single day.

And it becomes a strain, I think, financially for our county as we continue to try to fulfill those needs.

- One thing I neglected to mention, and I think it gets to how it's really a community issue, it's not a county issue, but WakeMed has just done a marvelous job.

They're building a behavioral health hospital with a number of bids out in the town of Garner.

And the county is contributing to that because we just don't have enough beds in Wake County for the number of folks who need to be seen.

- Is this, is Leonardo, is this a lack of a champion for mental health?

Is that and the funding from the State House or the general assembly in North Carolina, is it about money or is it it's just about a champion in the political arena that will take the banner and run with it?

- I think it's a combination.

I think it's really about the resources.

The resources as Dena just mentioned, number one, the providers that are able to do the work, and then it is the commitment to see mental health as enough of a focus that it affects so much of our communities where something has to be done beyond what dollars the county can put into it.

Many of us are well aware that our states have the fiscal responsibility for it.

However, as a county government, we have the community responsibility, we have policy officials, we have county officials who want to see people well.

And so how do you operate your organization when your community is suffering from these areas of focus that are not getting the appropriate attention?

So I think it's a combination, but it certainly would help if there were a champion on the policy side, on the elective side, at the state level, who would ring that bell for services and resources to help mental health.

- And Andrew, you've been in public service for a couple of decades.

How would you describe that gap between the need for, and let's stay with mental health or behavioral health, why is there that gap of funding that comes from the State House versus what is actually needed on the ground?

- Well, unfunded mandates, we all know about 'em, they're plentiful.

But in this particular case, our biggest impact is with our jail.

And we see a lot of people in and out, frequent flyers, if you will, coming into our jail that have mental issues and we cannot provide the resources for them.

And so it's not only the wrong thing, but it's also terribly costly.

- Isn't that closely tied to mental health?

- It is.

It is.

And we're hopeful that the state will step up.

- We have about two and a half minutes left and let's try to, let me try to end on an up note.

We've got a new year coming up.

We're gonna be past the election, we're gonna have some new leadership in place.

Are you worried about the economy?

- We're not terribly worried about the economy right now.

We don't see any major slowdown.

We see a little bit of softness, particularly in sales tax, that's one of the revenues that we watch very, very carefully because it does really match what happens in the economy.

So we're really focused on that.

But the county is really well positioned to be able to manage any kind of slow down.

We have really significant reserves that will help us manage any kind of slowdown if it does happen.

- In the sales tax specifically, is it a slowdown in growth or is it dropping sales tax?

- No, it's a slowdown in growth.

We saw significant growth through the pandemic, I mean double-digit growth during the pandemic.

And we're just not seeing that level of growth as we had before.

- David, what do you think?

- Totally agree with Dena.

I mean, I can recall during the pandemic, we thought we would actually see a decline in sales tax and it just kept going up every month.

And so we're in a similar position as Mecklenburg.

We have strong reserves, we have a forecasting algorithm that we utilize because budgeting now has become a year-round exercise.

And so we're constantly adjusting the variables to make sure we don't get too far in front of our skis.

- Is there anything that you think is not a problem area, but maybe a yellow light that you're looking at?

- You know, I think, so for us, the yellow light would be ensuring that various, especially some of our high-tech industry, we've had some layoffs in the high tech and we've been watching that, but many of those folks are transitioning into other positions, especially with telework available.

- Yeah.

Okay.

We have about 45 seconds.

What do you think, Andrew?

Good for next year or?

- I think so.

And I think we've all learned from 2008 to keep an eye on those elastic revenues as warnings.

And so it's a great teaching tool to talk to the county council about what to look for and also to keep your general obligation, bond authority, keep your powder dry if you will, so that you can borrow if you need to.

- 15 seconds, what do you think?

- Yeah, so we're looking good and we're just trying to continue to diversify our economy, so, but we're solid.

- Yeah, it's interesting that all the problems that we talk about here are pretty high-class problems, but still nonetheless, some challenges.

Andrew, thanks for driving up from Jasper County.

Nice to see you.

- You bet.

It was great.

- And from Columbia?

- Yes, sir.

- Leonardo, come back.

David, nice to see you, thank you.

Always nice to see you, Dena.

- Thank you, Chris.

- Best of luck to you- - Thanks for having us.

- On whatever the next chapter is and we're all gonna be watching.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Until next week, I'm Chris William, hope your weekend is good.

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