Former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Crystal Hill has said in a leaked memo that former CMS board chair Stephanie Sneed secured a $30,000-per-month consulting subcontract for a political ally, Raki McGregor, without the knowledge of Hill or much of the board. The push to secure a contract for McGregor came after former Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio last year severed ties with McGregor’s wife’s consulting business, which had received more than $500,000 from the county.
In an interview with WFAE, Diorio said Raki McGregor was angry at the loss of funding — and threatened to sue Diorio if she publicly alleged he had a conflict of interest. Diorio said dealing with the McGregors was "icky" and "shocking."
Diorio's account, reported here for the first time, sheds more light on the relationship between the McGregors and local governments, as the couple's payments from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools for various contracts are at the center of a series of overlapping controversies around leadership, contracting and governance.
Reached by text message, McGregor declined to comment to WFAE for this story. He said his wife also would not comment.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mecklenburg County increased funding to a local educational nonprofit called SYDKIMYL.
SYDKIMYL is run by Kim McGregor.Her husband, Raki McGregor, is a political power player and member of the Black Political Caucus, with a particular focus on CMS.
Diorio said they appeared to meet a need.
"Primarily, I think they do sort of tutoring for kids, and that was obviously a big need during COVID. So we funded them through that, and then after COVID, we continued to fund them for some period of time," she said.
SYDKIMYL also had a contract directly with CMS, though the Mecklenburg County contract by itself was lucrative, paying the organization roughly $500,000 annually.
But Diorio says the county questioned in early 2025 whether it was getting its money’s worth.
"We had our office of contractual and clinical services look at these contracts. And there was some questions raised about the overall return on investment on the return on the SYDKIMYL contract, in particular on the amount of kids being served. And that was sort of a red flag," she said.
Diorio says the county was paying not only the SYDKIMYL contract but, after he left his job with Novant, paying Raki McGregor’s $ 13,000-a-month salary as an executive in residence with CMS. The idea was that Raki McGregor would act as a liaison between corporations and CMS while he was on loan to the school district by the Charlotte Executive Leadership Council.
But when McGregor left Novant in 2025, the district began paying his salary through money it received from the county.
"It didn’t seem to make sense that we should be funding all of that. So we made the decision at that point — it felt like a conflict of interest — so we ended up eliminating the contracts out of the budget process," Diorio said.
After the county told SYDIMYL it was ending its contract, Diorio says the McGregors began to lobby county commissioners to reverse her decision. Diorio says she scheduled a meeting with Kim McGregor to talk about her recommendation for ending the agreement. Raki McGregor has distanced himself from SYDKIMYL and said he’s not directly involved with his wife’s company. At the meeting, Diorio assumed she would be meeting only with Kim McGregor.
"But when Kim McGregor arrived, Raki McGregor was with her. So going back to this conflict of interest. It sort of solidified that there was something that wasn’t appropriate," she said.
Diorio says she told the McGregors that SYDKIMYL wasn’t serving enough kids. She also said she believed it was a conflict for the county to be funding both the SYDKIMYL contract and Raki McGregor’s CMS salary through a separate county appropriation.
"At that point, Raki got a little heated. And sort of stood up and leaned over the table and said if anyone accuses me of a conflict of interest, I will sue them. So you know, we ended the meeting and that was the end of it," she said.
She says she was stunned that McGregor threatened her.
"It’s shocking, if you ask me. It raises a lot of questions for me. I mean, again, I had been doing this for a long time and you learn to trust your instincts — and my instincts were saying there was just something icky about it," she said.
Diorio retired last year. She says she has been following Hill’s accusations that former CMS board chair Stephanie Sneed went behind the superintendent's back to make sure Raki McGregor’s firm Qonnect received a $30,000- a- month consulting subcontract from a law firm helping with a CMS affordable housing project. Qonnect had another contract for $132,000 to assist the district with a compliance review.
Sneed is a political ally and friend of Raki McGregor.
Hill, who CMS fired earlier this month, said CMS decided not to sign another contract with SYDKIMYL after its last one expired in January. The former county manager says she’s not surprised that the McGregors wanted to keep their CMS funding.
"The other thing was that SYDKIL had no other contracts except for the ones with the county and CMS. She (Kim McGregor) didn’t work with any other school districts. We were the sole funder of her organization. Which also makes people uncomfortable over time. You expect people to grow and expect people to get other business. She really had one customer which was CMS, and Raki has one income which was from CMS, and when all of that goes away, it can be a little unsettling.
The state auditor has said his office is looking into CMS’ finances, and District Attorney Spencer Merriweather has requested a state criminal investigation of potential “financial irregularities.”
Neither has specifically named any targets of the investigations.
