NC Auditor suggests Cooper administration tried to sway Bald Head Island deal

The state auditor suggested this week that Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration replaced three appointments to a government commission that approves multimillion-dollar financing deals – specifically to advance the long-lingering sale of the Bald Head Island ferry system to the state.

The ferry is the only route to the island from the North Carolina mainland, and its long-time private owners are looking to sell, but there are competing bids for the commission to sort through. Negotiations with the state have been underway for years.

Wood and Folwell have questioned the governor’s November decision to replace three commission members whose terms expired while the ferry issue simmered.

State faces internal squabbling, competing bid in Bald Head Island ferry sale

During a commission meeting this week, after newly appointed Commissioner John Burns asked about adding the ferry issue to next month’s agenda, Wood openly voiced suspicions that Cooper’s appointments tied directly to the Bald Heald Island deal.

“I knew that’s what this whole reappointment was about,” Wood said angrily during the meeting. “Getting somebody on here that would—”

“Nobody asked me to bring this up, and nobody asked me to vote on this issue in any way,” Burns said in the meeting. “I would like to know why a very consequential matter is not on the agenda. That’s the only question I asked.”

On Friday Wood, who like Cooper is a Democrat, told WRAL News that she wasn’t accusing the governor of anything. She noted that the governor makes thousands of appointments and said that she doesn’t know how the LGC appointments were handled, or who in the governor’s office decided on the appointees.

“He’s responsible for the appointments, but I don’t know that he necessarily made them,” Wood said. “My issues are with John Burns. They are not with the governor or anybody else.”

“Assuming that I would have some sort of back room deal is not fair,” he said.

Wood acknowledged that the end of Tuesday’s meeting was the first time she’d heard Burns try to get this issue on the agenda. She said the problems with moving forward with a sale are so obvious that she can’t see why anyone would try to advance the matter.

Two appraisals intended to support the sale price have been prepared, but both were paid for by the seller. In both appraisals a key plot of land for the ferry terminal was appraised at more than double the tax value set by the county tax appraiser in 2019.

There are also two competing bids. One is from the state authority that the legislature created in 2017 specifically to buy and operate these ferries. The other is from Bald Head Island Village itself, which voted in November to issue bonds to buy the system. The owner is the Mitchell family, a wealthy family that once owned much of Bald Head Island itself. The family has said it’s only interested in the state authority’s proposal.

Either deal would need approval from the LGC, which has to authorize bond sales for government entities in North Carolina. Wood has written several letters laying out her case and insisting the Bald Head deal stay off the commission’s agenda until a better appraisal is done.

She issued another letter Thursday, reiterating her concerns and predicting, without naming names, “renewed efforts to apply pressure.”

Cooper’s office has said the governor doesn’t care how the Bald Head Island deal is resolved, but that it does need to be resolved.

“The leadership of the Local Government Commission needs to quit being dysfunctional and resolve this issue as the law charges them to do,” Cooper spokesman Ford Porter said Friday.

Wood says the law is clear: The matter can’t even come before the commission until the appraisal is fixed, and moving forward without that would set a precedent other deal makers would try to take advantage of.

As chairman of the Commission, Folwell controls the agenda, but Burns suggested during this week’s meeting that other commission members could vote to add items without his consent. Wood refuted that.

“It’s not your choice to put it on the agenda or not put it on the agenda, period,” she said. “That is the chairman.”

Burns said he simply wants the commission to discuss the deal.

“I expressed no opinion about what I would do about this motion,” he said during the meeting. “I’ve formed absolutely no opinion whether I would vote to approve or deny this bond sale.”