There don’t appear to be any red flags in the employee records of two candidates for Alamance County’s sheriff who have previous work experience as law enforcement officers.
According to information obtained by The Alamance News, there are no demotions or suspensions on record for either Billy Clayton, a retired state trooper and a contender for sheriff in next week’s Republican primary, or for Shannon Long, a former Orange County deputy who hopes to wage an independent bid for Alamance County’s sheriff in this fall’s general election.
Meanwhile, The Alamance News is still waiting on the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation to release information on the county’s Republican sheriff Terry Johnson, who put in 30 years with the bureau before he was elected to his current position in 2002.
Earlier this year, The Alamance News contacted the former employers of Johnson, Clayton, and Long in order to obtain any publicly-available information about their tenures in their previous law enforcement posts. The newspaper made no similar request for Dana Byrd Pasour – a third contender in the Republican primary without any prior law enforcement experience.
Under North Carolina’s Public Records Laws, both state and local agencies are obligated to provide certain details about current and past employees, such as their salaries, job titles, and dates of employment. The law also requires the release of any change in an employee’s job status, including demotions and suspensions that are disciplinary in nature. Moreover, in the event that an employee leaves involuntarily, the agency must release some explanation of the reasons for that staff member’s dismissal.
In the cases of Clayton and Long, the newspaper has received prompt answers from the one-time taskmasters of these would-be sheriffs.
[Editor’s Note: The Alamance News filed public records requests seeking certain personnel records for each of the two Republican primary candidates who had been employed by state law enforcement agencies (Terry Johnson with the State Bureau of Investigation and Billy Clayton with the State Highway Patrol), as well as unaffiliated candidate Shannon Lemar Long, who is conducting a petition campaign to get on the fall ballot. Long had worked with the Orange County sheriff’s office. Each agency was emailed the newspaper’s public records request on Friday, January 9.
[In each case, the newspaper sought a list of changes of each employee’s employment status during his tenure with the agency, including instances in which they had been suspended (with or without pay), demoted, or transferred during their respective tenures, as well as a record of their promotions while with their agency.
[The newspaper also sought each employee’s exact dates of employment, his beginning salary, as well as the salary when his employment with the agency was concluded.
[The Highway Patrol and Orange County government were prompt in providing their responses, each responding on Monday, January 12. The SBI acknowledged receipt of the public records request on the same day it was sent, January 9: “I am forwarding it to our Legal team to be processed,” said Patrick Blalock, to whom online inquiries were directed, but has not responded substantively to the newspaper’s request in the more than six weeks since.
[When the newspaper had not heard from the State Bureau of Investigation, a follow-up email was sent on February 3.
[When the newspaper still had not heard from the SBI more than two weeks later – last Thursday, February 19 – the newspaper approached sheriff Terry Johnson to see if he could intercede with his former employer in an attempt to expedite a response to the newspaper’s public records request. The newspaper forwarded a copy of its original public records request to Johnson, in hopes it would assist in expediting a response from the SBI.
[Johnson readily agreed to do so. He informed the newspaper on Tuesday afternoon that he had made several phone calls, attempting to reach the agency’s director, R.E. “Chip” Hawley, but thus far unsuccessfully. Subsequently, Johnson called back to say he had heard back from the director and asked him to expedite a response to the newspaper.
[However, as of the newspaper’s press deadline on Wednesday, the newspaper had not received a response from the agency. Based on other public records, Johnson worked for the SBI from approximately August 1973 until his retirement in August 2001. He first ran for sheriff in 2002.
[In the event that the information is provided by the SBI after the newspaper’s print deadline, the comparable information will be posted online at alamancenews.com.]
Billy Thomas Clayton II
The N.C. Highway Patrol, for one, has provided a lengthy work record for Clayton, who ultimately served as the state agency’s second in command before his retirement on February 1, 2017.
According to the state agency, Clayton had a much more humble beginning on August 7, 1989 when the N.C. Department of Justice hired him as an administrative assistant with an annual salary of $18,240. Three months later, Clayton enrolled in the highway patrol as a cadet with a yearly wage of $20,640.
Clayton was promoted to the status of a full-time state trooper on May 1, 1990. At the same time, he was assigned to patrol a beat that lay within Alamance County for an annual salary of $21,672. He would remain in Alamance County until April 1, 2000 when he received a promotion to sergeant that coincided with a transfer to Stokes County and a pay raise to $50,329.
Clayton continued to ascend through the ranks over the next decade or so, while his base of operations shifted to Rockingham, Pitt, Wake, Catawba, and Guilford counties. Then, on April 28, 2013, Clayton returned to Wake County to hold the upper echelon post of lieutenant colonel, which came with a six-figure salary of $103,089 a year.
On March 2, 2015, Clayton clinched the executive post of deputy commander, which saw his wages go up to $109,068. He continued to hold this position – the agency’s second highest – until February 1, 2017, when he retired with a salary of $114,025.
In addition to his geographic transfers and increases in rank, Clayton’s work record with the Highway Patrol chronicles 39 separate pay increases, some of which correspond to his promotions while others are attributed to actions of the state legislature. Nine of these raises are categorized as “performance increases” while three others in the late ‘90s are attached to a “career growth recognition award.”
Shannon Lemar Long
In the meantime, Orange County has sent the newspaper a much shorter, but apparently complete, timeline for Long, whose campaign website notes his past experience as both a jailer and a sheriff’s deputy with the neighboring county.
According to Orange County’s personnel office, Long held the title of Deputy Sheriff I from his date of hire on February 16, 2002 until his resignation on July 23, 2010. The county’s personnel office hasn’t shared any pay data for the first four years of Long’s tenure. In 2006, however, he was receiving a salary of $34,046 that eventually rose to $38,807 thanks to three “cost-of-living adjustments” and two “in-range salary increases.”
According to Orange County’s personnel office, Long briefly left the sheriff’s office in May of 2006 to pursue an unspecified “advancement opportunity.” He nevertheless returned to the fold that August and was reenlisted at his former salary – plus the cost-of-the-living adjustment that the whole staff had received in July.
The final entry in Long’s employment record is another external “advancement opportunity” that he left to pursue on July 23, 2010. According to the candidate’s own website, Long continues to serve as a reserve officer for Orange County’s sheriff, although the personnel office hasn’t passed along any records about this part-time position.
