As the Uptown paper of record still cannot or will not identify the “charles” that Bank of America lobbyist Betty Turner told County Manager Harry Jones she had “alerted” over a what Turner termed “embarrasing” complaints about county management of DSS from a Bank of America employee, allow us to step into the gap.
Bank of America’s North Carolina and Charlotte market president Charles Bowman is a logical candidate. Bowman is BofA’s local point-man for all things charitable. Charlotte Magazine calls Bowman one of Charlotte’s top power brokers noting that he is “the primary contact for local community issues.” The magazine adds: “As one philanthropic leader told us, ‘he’s writing lots of checks.’ And if you’re writing checks, you’ve got power.”
And if you’ve got a network of spies hard-wired into local government, you’ve got power.
Bowman was also on the board of the United Way for the Gloria Pace King firing and fiasco. He has also been front and center for various Charlotte Rent Seekers Guild efforts. Bowman’s Uptown crowd bona fides are unassailable.
So if Bowman is our “charles” let’s run this back a few steps.
The local United Way gets fat for years off of compulsory giving from Bank of Wachovia employees, so fat a board composed of local Charles Bowmans does not notice and/or care that Pace King is being handed obscene sacks of cash. Pace King has the misfortune to overreach at the precise moment the nation’s financial sector craters, creating a huge embarrassment for the Uptown crowd and sucking away millions that local government had been counting on to fund charitable efforts.
Meanwhile, the county’s own chronically messed up DSS finally gets audited, and what do you know, it cannot account for hundreds of thousands from its charitable efforts. This prompts one contributor, BAC employee Harry Lomax, to criticize DSS and county management in an email sent from a private, non-corporate email address. Harry Jones receives the email, deduces by means still unknown that Lomax is a BAC employee, and forwards the email to BAC lobbyist Turner with the notation “Do you know Harry Lomax.”
Turner replies almost immediately, telling Jones that she is “embarrassed” by Lomax’s comments and that: “I am tracking it down. I don’t know him — I have alerted charles. Will be back to you.” If our supposition is correct, Turner has immediately contacted the head of BAC’s North Carolina operations and one of the most powerful players in Charlotte over an email calling for better controls and accountability in county charitable efforts sent by a BAC employee.
Now let’s stop and catch our breath and make some observations.
As we suggested yesterday, it does not seem likely that an email from Harry Lomax made Harry Jones do something he’d never done before — namely reach out to corporate fixers to silence critics. By the same token, that fact that Betty Turner immediately responds and reports that she has alerted a top bank executive — again, assuming we are talking about Charles Bowman — also suggests that this is not an uncommon or extraordinary act. To find out, how about a release of all email correspondence between Jones and Turner, and Jones and Bowman since, oh, Jan. 1, 2007?
There is also great irony in Jones taking umbrage at Lomax’s comments and, in effect, turning to Bowman (we assume) for help considering Lomax’s criticism of lax accounting of charitable dollars could also have been leveled at the very United Way on whose board Bowman served.
Finally, there remains one gap in the official account of this incident thus far. Betty Turner, via BAC spokeswoman Nicole Nastacie a filter which is interesting in and of itself, told the Uptown paper of record that she:
suspected that Lomax’s e-mail involved issues related to the bank and appropriately looked into the situation, Nastacie said. When she determined Lomax was speaking as a private citizen, there were no further discussions, Nastacie said.
Why would Turner think that “issues related to the bank” were involved when Lomax did not mention BAC? And what kind of “further discussions” can you have after you’ve already contacted (we suppose) the top guy in the whole damn bank for such matters?
No doubt about, this little episode casts a sliver of light on how the Uptown crowd controls the local agenda and moves with lightning speed to stamp out any dissent. We should not be surprised that Jennifer Roberts will do as she is told and move on. Ditto the Uptown paper.
