The silly Cleveland County Commissioners think they can run and hide from the North Carolina laws requiring them to produce public documents for inspection regarding the forced retirement of Sam Lockridge, former Director over the Landfill, Animal Control and the Shooting Range. They may think they can run. They may think they can just lay low and keep their mouths shut. But I assure them they can NOT hide from their legal responsibilities as Cleveland County Commissioners in this particular matter.
This is what has happened.
On Friday, June 30, 2017 and the last day of Sam Lockridge’s forced Administrative Leave-With Pay-information came to me that caused me to make two requests for public documents from Cleveland County. One request was for Sam Lockridge’s employment contract-if there is one. The other request was for documents related to any legal actions Cleveland County has taken against Sam Lockridge. I emailed these two public document requests to all five Commissioners, the County Clerk, the County Manager, the Assistant County Manager, the County Attorney and the Assistant County Attorney.
The next day I received two messages, both saying both requests for documents had been “delayed” for everyone except for the County Attorney, Tim Moore. The next day after that I received two more messages saying the same thing.
As a long time observer of the shady ways these Commissioners operate and being one to believe things like this don’t just happen by accident, I smelled a rat. (Or maybe I was smelling a dead cat.)
The thing is County Attorney Tim Moore did receive my requests and that is enough to set into motion my requests for these public documents. I also suspect Tim Moore received my emails because I emailed him at his own business email account while all the others were emailed to the Cleveland County email account-which, I also suspect, was turned off for the purpose of delaying the receipt of my emails. Which makes me even more determined to get access to those public documents.
No matter folks what tricks the Commissioners try to play to cover up whatever mess there is in regard to Sam Lockridge or the Landfill or the Animal Control or the Shooting Range or all of the above, Sam is probably just the fall guy here, relative to the Commissioners, and I intend to find out and report what is really going on.
Stay Tuned!!!
