Alamance County’s tax administrator has abruptly resigned from his post after more than a decade at the head of the county’s tax office.
Jeremy Akins ultimately hung up his lanyard on Friday following the dismissals of two tax office employees who were reportedly caught fudging the tax values of properties on behalf of themselves or their relatives.
Akins, who had been with the tax office since 2006, made no mention of these alleged transgressions by his subordinates when he notified county manager Heidi York of own resignation on Wednesday, August 7.
“It has been a tremendous honor and pleasure to serve Alamance County these past eighteen years, with the past eleven as the tax administrator,” Akins declared a letter to York that predated the actual date of his departure by two days. “I have found the staff, management, and board to be excellent to work with, and our citizens a joy to work for. I cannot adequately express my gratitude at the opportunity given and all of the support provided over the years.”
Despite the uniformly upbeat tenor of his letter, Akins’ departure has come in the midst of some distinctly less graceful exits among the rank and file of the county’s tax office.
Two tax department employees fired for tampering with property values – for themselves and relatives
These transitions included the involuntary departures of two veteran staff members who had joined the tax office at roughly the same time that Akins took over as the county’s tax administrator in 2013.
The first of these two staff-level changes occurred on July 24 when the county dismissed Sharon Carter from her job as a farm appraiser with the tax office. Carter, who had been on the county’s payroll since July 29, 2013, was ultimately fired over an alleged violation of county policy that’s spelled out in a termination letter she received on the date of her departure from the county’s personnel director Cheryl Ray.
“The allegation related to this disciplinary action includes adjusting property…values, including land and structures, for perceived self-benefit,” Ray’s letter explains. “This violation is considered gross misconduct or conduct unbecoming of a county employee.”
Ray noted that these actions constituted “falsification of county records for personal profit or to grant special privileges.” She also reminded the former farm appraiser that she and Akins had given her a chance to defend herself during a “pre-disciplinary conference” on July 23. In the end, Ray said that she saw no recourse other than to end Carter’s employment “effective immediately.”
According to the county’s personnel office, Carter had a salary of $59,136.98 a year prior to her termination.
Barely two weeks after Ray drafted this letter to Carter, she sent similarly grim tidings to Thomas Southern, a Level II tax appraiser who had been with county since May 15, 2013.
Southern was notified of his own alleged lapses in a termination letter on August 8 – the effective date of his separation from the county’s employ.
“The allegations related to this disciplinary action,” the county’s personnel director explains in the letter, “include adjusting and tampering with personal (and relatives) property values without proper authorization.”
The rest of Southern’s termination letter is a rehash of the one that Carter received on July 24. The only difference in that Southern’s letter alludes to a pre-disciplinary conference with Ray and assistant county manager Brian Baker – Akins having relayed his own resignation to the county manager on the same day as this meeting.
The Alamance News has learned that both Carter and Southern are now the subjects of criminal investigations into their alleged actions while they were employed at the tax office.
Akins, meanwhile, originally joined the tax office on May 11, 2006 and was initially tapped as the county’s interim tax administrator in December of 2012. The board of commissioners eventually made his assignment a permanent one after his predecessor, Gerald York, cut short what was supposed to have been a six-month transition period.
Akins nevertheless managed to land on his feet, and he soon won the confidence of the board of commissioners with his calm, serious demeanor, his attention to detail, and commitment to public accountability.
The trust of the county’s governing board was vindicated in 2017 when Akins used the tax office’s own staff to conduct a remarkably smooth mass revaluation of the county’s taxable property. This reval came in stark contrast to the previous countywide reassessment in 2009, which spawned twice the anticipated number of appeals and ultimately led to departure of the then-tax administrator after the commissioners learned she had been moonlighting for the private contractor she had hired to conduct the revaluation.
After the successful completion of his first reval in 2017, Akins persuaded the commissioners to gradually transition away from the county’s traditional eight-year revaluation cycle to a new four year-schedule. As an interim measure, he convinced them to authorize a six-year reval in 2023, whose results seemed satisfactory to most of the commissioners.
Yet, the timing of this mass reassessment drew some largely after-the-fact grumbling from commissioner Pam Thompson. Meanwhile, Barry Joyce, a one-time candidate for the board of commissioners, has taken Akins to task over the seemingly low assessment of one big box retailer in Burlington. In response, Akins went back over the county’s commercial tax values and found 10 properties that appeared to him to be undervalued. His revelation of this discovery left some of the commissioners eager to adjust these tax values despite the tax administrator’s caveats about an inevitable legal battle with the property owners. The board’s enthusiasm for this contretemps was dampened however, when a subsequent review by a private contractor determined just three of these to be severely below par.
By and large, the county’s elected leaders have remained solidly behind Akins despite the occasional raised eyebrow from the commissioners. The board’s tendency to defer to his judgment was nevertheless shaken earlier this summer, when Akins proposed farming out the entirety of the county’s next revaluation to a private firm that had helped him with commercial reassessments in 2023.
The commissioners ultimately postponed their decision on this proposal due, in part, to the $2.6 million price tag that the tax administrator had placed on the firm’s services. They had yet to come back around to the matter before Akins tendered his resignation last Wednesday.
Two days before Akins submitted his resignation letter to the county manager, the commissioners spent nearly four hours in closed session to discuss various issues, including matters pertaining to unspecified county staff members. It is unclear whether this marathon closed meeting touched on the tax administrator’s job performance or delved into the allegations against his subordinates. Even so, it doesn’t appear that the commissioners used this opportunity to prepare themselves for a future without Akins.
In an interview earlier this week, York told The Alamance News that the county currently has no heir apparent to take over the tax office in Akins’ absence.
“Just like with any other department head vacancy,” she said, “we will post the position and go through a competitive hiring process…If we’re able to find an interim [department head] we would appoint them. But we don’t have anyone in mind at the moment.”
Meanwhile, John Paisley, Jr., the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, insisted that he is unaware of any connection between the tax administrator’s resignation and the recent dismissals of his former subordinates.
“As far as I know, the answer is ‘no [there isn’t a link],” Paisley said in an interview Wednesday. “But I can’t give you any reasons for his resignation other than what he said in his letter.”
Akins officially left the county’s employ on August 9 with a final salary of $104,286.15.
