Fight intensifies over NC SBI control

A behind-the-scenes saga at the State Bureau of Investigation continued to break into the open Tuesday.

Republican lawmakers questioned whether Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration had back channel conversations with the SBI director’s own in-house attorney, going around the director’s head. The attorney denied it.

At least one GOP House member suggested lawmakers might not confirm Cooper’s choice to replace Director Bob Schurmeier, whose term is up June 30. That leaves an open question as to who will head the agency come July 1, and there is some talk of lengthening Schurmeier’s term through legislation.

A Charlotte attorney said there’s an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint pending against Schurmeier alleging “multiple instances of race and gender discrimination.”

Those allegations seem to have been a catalyst for meetings that Cooper’s chief of staff, Kristi Jones, and Cooper’s general counsel, Eric Fletcher, had with Schurmeier last year. Those meetings fueled Schurmeier’s own accusations against the administration: That the governor’s top aides pressured him to resign so Cooper could replace him, holding threats of an investigation into Schurmeier’s hiring practices over his head.

The N.C. House Oversight and Reform Committee held its second hearing on these issues Tuesday, with Republican committee members questioning Jones and Fletcher about what conversations they had with, and about, Schurmeier. The committee also questioned Angel Gray, Schurmeier’s general counsel at the SBI.

This committee heard from Schurmeier in late March and didn’t invite the Cooper administration to that hearing.

The hearings are part of a broader power struggle. House leadership put language in their budget proposal splitting the SBI off from the state’s Department of Public Safety and elevating it to a full cabinet agency, partly in an effort to increase its independence. That language would also give the General Assembly newfound power to remove the director with a three-fifth’s majority vote.

So far it’s just House Republicans probing Schurmeier’s concerns, at least publicly. But Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said Tuesday that he’s heard people discuss the possibility of the General Assembly voting to extend Schurmeier’s term as director.

But, Berger said, “we’ve had no conversations in the nature of ‘this is what we’re going to do.’”

Last week Cooper announced that he wanted State Capitol Police Chief R.E. "Chip" Hawley to replace Schurmeier. SBI directors are appointed to six-year terms, the General Assembly has to confirm the governor's choice, and a governor can only fire the director in limited circumstances.

Cooper is term limited, and North Carolina will elect a new governor next year.

Rep. Jeff McNeely, R-Iredell and an oversight committee member, intimated Tuesday that lawmakers might not back Cooper’s pick, asking Jones and Fletcher who would run the SBI in that case: Schurmeier or an interim director Cooper selects.

Jones and Fletcher said they couldn’t say, with Fletcher calling it a legal question that he wasn’t ready to opine on.

Allegations

Charlotte attorney Meg Maloney told WRAL News Tuesday that there’s an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint pending against Schurmeier alleging “multiple instances of race and gender discrimination as well as retaliation … against several current and former minority employees, including minority females.”

“Employees report an environment of fear and intimidation requiring personal loyalty to the director rather than institutional loyalty,” Maloney said.

Schurmeier has generally denied these allegations though, due to confidentiality rules surrounding EEOC complaints and state personnel files, the details aren’t public. His attorney, Chris Swecker, said last month that Schurmeier, who was with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department before joining the SBI, has had an “impeccable career” without “a hint of any allegations of racism, discrimination, you name it.”

Swecker said Tuesday that there is “only one complainant” in the EEOC matter.

These sorts of allegations are why the Cooper administration confronted Schurmeier, Jones has said.

“When whistleblowers brought additional concerns about the SBI to the attention of the Governor’s Office, we were obligated to take them seriously,” Jones said in a written opening statement to the committee, which she was not allowed to read during Tuesday’s two-hour meeting.

The hearing was often tense. Instead of directly answering one question early in the proceedings, Jones instead spoke glowingly of SBI agents and called for “a round of applause to the men and women of the SBI.”

Some in the room applauded. Republican committee members were not pleased.

“We don’t do that in this committee,” said Rep. Sarah Stevens, who was questioning Jones at the time.

“You don’t acknowledge and thank people?” Jones asked.

Committee members assured anyone listening that they appreciate SBI agents.

Fall meeting

Jones has acknowledged meeting with Schurmeier last fall to discuss concerns, but she would not say whether the administration asked for his resignation.

Schurmeier says it did. Jones said it would violate state personnel confidentiality rules for her to discuss the matter publicly, and though Schurmeier has waived attorney client privilege as part of these proceedings, he has declined to waive this personnel confidentiality.

Jones said she urged Schurmeier to “implement an outside review of SBI human resources practices.”

“Not an investigation,” Jones said. “It was just a review. An HR personnel review of the facts and the allegations that were made.”

Because of the SBI’s independent nature, Jones said, “I was clear that any decision was his, but that he needed to know the ramifications for the SBI.”

Schurmeier has described the administration’s push for an inquiry as “clear intimidation” meant to force his resignation. Jones said these meetings were less intimidating than Tuesday’s committee proceedings and that they always ended “with a handshake and a smile.”

“Director Schurmeier has done good work for the SBI,” she said.

No one has publicly accused the governor of interfering with an SBI investigation, but a committee Democrat asked Jones Tuesday to confirm that neither the governor nor his staff has done so.

“Not at all,” Jones said.

Back channel talks intimated

Committee Republicans spent much of Tuesday’s meeting questioning Gray, Schurmeier’s general counsel at the bureau.

Committee Co-chair Jake Johnson, R-Henderson, read from emails he said passed between some combination of Gray, Jones, Fletcher or Fletcher's predecessor in the governor’s office. Schurmeier was copied on some of those emails, but on others he wasn’t.

Schurmeier testified in March that he felt Gray’s loyalties were divided between the SBI and the governor’s office. Republican lawmakers suggested Tuesday that Gray, who previously worked under Cooper when he was attorney general, had back channel conversations with Cooper administration officials as they questioned his work at the SBI.

Lawmakers asked Gray repeatedly whether she ever discussed SBI issues with Cooper's office without Schurmeier knowing about it.

Gray said the rules of professional conduct as an attorney prohibited her from answering that specific question. But she also said those same rules prohibit that sort of secret discussion and that she never knowingly violated those rules.

Johnson read excerpts from a handful of emails going back to 2019, calling it “a pretty constant stream of communication.” He asked Fletcher about some of the emails but didn’t provide him with copies.

“You’re asking me about two email exchanges that … occurred more than a year ago that I haven’t seen,” Fletcher responded. “It’s hard for me to give any kind of context.”