The city of Charlotte has not released details of a financial settlement City Council recently reached with police Chief Johnny Jennings over threatening text messages he received from a former council member.
The settlement — which one council member said was $300,000 — has divided the council, as well as rank-and-file police officers.
All Things Considered host Nick De La Canal talked with WFAE’s Steve Harrison about the city’s refusal to provide information.
DE LA CANAL: Steve, before we get into the weeds on the North Carolina open records law, catch us up briefly on what’s happened so far.
HARRISON: Sure. Last year, former council member Tariq Bokhari and Jennings, the police chief, had a bitter dispute over whether officers should be allowed to wear new protective vests that go over their uniform.
The chief at first didn’t want the officers wearing them, and Bokhari did. The two men exchanged text messages in the summer of 2024, with Bokhari writing that he would try and get Jennings fired and would work to cripple his legacy.
WFAE reported on the messages in November, and the city was silent, with neither Mayor Vi Lyles or any council member coming to the chief’s defense.
And the chief was reportedly upset about that, as well as the interim city attorney’s decision in January to dismiss an ethics complaint filed against Bokhari by the president of the local NAACP about the text messages.
DE LA CANAL: And then Jennings apparently threatens a lawsuit?
HARRISON: Apparently so. Council discussed the chief’s claims in closed session, and there’s a lot of back-and-forth about whether the vote was taken properly. But in the end the city decided that the settlement is a go.
DE LA CANAL: Which council member Tiawana Brown wrote on Facebook was $300,000.
HARRISON: Yes, she wrote that. But there’s been no confirmation from the city, and there might never be.
DE LA CANAL: OK, Steve, we talked earlier and state law requires that local governments must disclose the details of all settlements, even those agreed to in private, closed sessions. So why is the city not doing that?
HARRISON: That’s right on the law, which says the details of any suit, administrative proceeding or arbitration must be released.
I asked interim City Attorney Anthny Fox about that Monday, and this is what he said
FOX: OK, you are using the term settlement, but I’m not.
HARRISON: He didn’t elaborate, but it appears his argument is that because Jennings never filed a lawsuit, the city didn’t reach an official legal settlement.
DE LA CANAL: It just agreed to pay him money under the threat of legal action. OK, feels like we’re playing with some semantics there. What else did the attorney say?
HARRISON: Fox also said that even if the payment was considered a settlement — which he says it isn’t — then the state’s law on keeping personnel files private trumps that requirement to release it. And he pointed to a blog post from the UNC School of Government, which says that in many cases, a legal settlement made by a city with an employee may be shielded from disclosure.
DE LA CANAL: But I understand the state’s personnel privacy law has some exceptions?
HARRISON: It does require some information to be released, like how much an employee is paid, whether they have been promoted or demoted. It also requires release of any contract by which the employee is employed whether written or oral, past and current.
You could make a case that if this isn’t a settlement, then it’s a contract with an employee — Jennings reportedly signed an agreement about his claims; he received additional compensation, or will receive it; and he’s still the police chief.
But Fox said in an email that, in his view, the law about disclosing employment contracts only applies to someone’s contract for employment moving forward, not retiring or leaving. And it appears this agreement is part of a severance for the police chief, even though he has not announced his retirement yet.
DE LA CANAL: So let’s back up. Charlotte’s position is that it can reach a severance agreement, or settlement, with a departing employee, for any reason or any amount — and not have to disclose any of it, ever. Even though we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars?
HARRISON: Right.
Let’s say hypothetically there are a group of employees who threaten legal action against the city over harassment by a supervisor.
And the City Council agrees to pay them, say, each $200,000 severance in exchange for the harm caused and for them to forgo any claims. The copies of the checks would be public records, but the city could pay the money in installments over several months, which would make it extremely difficult for the public to find that information.
That’s what happened with former city attorney Patrick Baker’s severance — he was paid out in two different checks.
DE LA CANAL: And the city attorney says it would be a crime for council members or anyone in the city to disclose that?
HARRISON: That’s the city’s interpretation. And even if a member of the public found a copy of a check through a public records request, the city could not say what it was for.
One more thing, Nick. There was a case to similar to this more than 30 years ago from Warren County in North Carolina.
County Commissioners there decided to pay a departing bonus of $5,000 to a county manager for a job well done. Several citizens complained, filed a lawsuit, and the North Carolina Supreme Court found it was incorrectly labeled as severance and that it shouldn’t have been paid out at all.
