CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- An investigation found no conflict of interest or favors exchanged when a nonprofit health center hired Mecklenburg County Commission chair Harold Cogdell two months after Cogdell successfully pushed the board to give the center an additional $110,000.
Findings of the independent probe by U.S. ISS Agency of Huntersville were released Friday and will be addressed by the board at its regular meeting Tuesday.
Cogdell, a Democrat and Charlotte lawyer who’d been hired last year by C.W. Williams Community Health Center on “an as-needed basis,” was first to call for the independent investigation to restore any lost credibility. He said he’d asked for the additional money – on top of what County Manager Harry Jones had recommended – so the center could hire another physician. The request was made during a budget workshop session last June 2. The board approved it in a 6-3 vote.
Another Democrat commissioner, George Dunlap, first brought up concerns about the hiring at the Dec. 3 meeting, the night Cogdell upset members of his own party in December by allying with the board’s four Republican to oust Democrat Jennifer Roberts as chair.
The ISS report said there was no evidence of impropriety on Cogdell’s part and no favors had been exchanged “in the attorney-client relationship” between Cogdell and C.W. Williams. The investigation also concluded that Cogdell hadn’t violated the county’s code of ethics and that no issues involving C.W. Williams had come before the board since commissioners amended Jones’ budget.
Meanwhile, in a separate investigation, county attorney Marvin Bethune concluded that Dunlap and the other commissioners didn’t violate the county’s code of ethics by withholding information of the working relationship between Cogdell and C.W. Williams. Dunlap said a caller had told him about it a week before the Dec. 6 commission meeting, when the relationship came to light, Bethune wrote in his report.
Other commissioners knew about the relationship for a shorter period, or didn’t hear about it until the meeting, Bethune said.
