This year’s race for Alamance County’s board of commissioners has presented area voters with three Democrats and a trio of Republicans who espouse some strikingly different views on what’s in the best interest of the community.
But the positions of these six would-be commissioners don’t always break cleanly along party lines – with candidates of the same outward persuasion diverging on issues like school funding, corporate incentives, and the integrity of the county’s latest property tax revaluation.
This blurring of partisan expectations is borne out by the replies that each of the six contenders for the county’s governing board has offered in response to a candidate questionnaire that they recently received from The Alamance News. In preparation for next month’s general election, the newspaper sent each candidate for the board of commissioners an inventory of questions about taxes, spending priorities, local government policies, and some of the hot button issues that have confronted the county’s elected leaders.
Many of these same queries were previously posed to the Republican contenders ahead of this spring’s GOP primary. Yet, in addition to giving three Democrats a crack at those inquiries, the newspaper has also thrown in some additional questions about late-breaking developments in county government.
All six of the candidates ultimately responded to this general election questionnaire, although a few skipped over particular items or tried to sidestep them with somewhat evasive responses. Even so, the candidates were thorough enough in their responses to reveal some genuine differences in their positions – distinctions that sometimes fly in the face of their party allegiances.
Taxing inquiries
The departures from partisan unity are readily evident in the reactions to the newspaper’s inaugural inquiries about property taxes.
When asked about the appropriate level of taxation, Democrats Anthony Pierce and Chris Smith were more or less satisfied with the current rate of 46.9 cents for every $100 of property value – as was incumbent Republican commissioner Pam Thompson. Democrat Carissa Graves hazarded the position that this figure is “POSSIBLY too low,” while Republican Ed Priola found it “too high” and offered a rate of 42.2 cents as an alternative. Also inclined to go lower – down to a rate 43 cents in this case – was John Paisley, Jr., an incumbent Republican who serves as the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners and who cast one of two dissenting votes against the budget that solidified the current tax rate.
Priola’s lowball proposal for the property tax rate would go on to be something of a running theme for the Mebane Republican, who made his political debut in 2022 when he narrowly lost the GOP primary for the state’s 63rd house district. Priola effectively puts his cards on the table when he describes his overall philosophy on taxes and government spending.
“My top priority for Alamance County is to cut property taxes so families can keep more of their hard-earned money,” he declares. “I previously served as the field director for the National Taxpayers Union, traveling the nation fighting to cut taxes, government waste, and bloated bureaucracy.”
Priola is nevertheless willing to concede that he isn’t alone in his mission to minimize taxes. The aspiring county commissioner even commends the board’s current chairman by name for his lone opposition to a tax rate in 2023 that exceeded the level needed for the county to break even after a mass revaluation that year.
Paisley is a bit more circumspect when he outlines his own position on taxes. Despite his crusade for a “revenue neutral” rate in 2023, the board’s chairman acknowledges that “situations arise that might make it impossible.”
“The tax rate,” Paisley adds on a more general note, “must be at a level to support the actual needs of our citizens, but the county should not be a supplier of every wish list item for all interests.”
In contrast to Paisley measured position, Democrat Carissa Graves is quite firm when she describes her own position on revenue neutrality.
“I will advocate for a revenue neutral rate as a key priority in office,” asserts Graves, who previously served on Green Level’s town council and, for a time, wielded the gavel as mayor. “My philosophy is to maintain a balanced tax rate that ensures essential services like education, healthcare, and public safety are properly funded, while also protecting residents from excessive tax burdens.”
When the “levy” breaks…
Aside from Graves, Democrat Anthony Pierce is the only other candidate who declares his support for a revenue neutral tax rate. A member of Alamance County’s planning board who made an unsuccessful bid for the board of commissioners, Pierce is nevertheless pessimistic on the current prospects for a property tax decrease.
“Anyone who tells you the county is in a position to cut taxes this upcoming year is misleading you,” he contends. “I want to cut taxes across the board but we have to protect our children at schools from both mold and other safety threats.”
Chris Smith, the other Democratic contender for the county’s governing board, presents a alternate view on taxation.
“Alamance County should maintain a low property tax rate,” he states. “We are not Orange or Guilford, we are Alamance. Our taxes should remain significantly lower than those counties.”
Smith goes on to fault the county’s tax office for its “corruption and bad tax evaluations,” which he deems fertile grounds for an overhaul. Pierce, in much the same spirit, chides the current board of commissioners for their “lack of willingness to advocate for residential property owners” during the reval.
These criticisms of the revaluation seem to echo a major theme of Thompson’s re-election campaign. The incumbent commissioner has been particularly critical of the reval’s assessment of commercial properties – a possibility that the county’s former tax administrator acknowledged after he noticed some irregularities in the tax values of 10 big box retailers. A subsequent independent review of those values found that only three were significantly out of synch with the real estate market. Yet, Thompson has continued to hammer away at the reval’s results in her answers to the newspaper’s questionnaire, asserting that residential property has “carried the burden for the county” due to the alleged undervaluation of commercial real estate.
In order to reduce the county’s reliance on property taxes, Thompson has also called for a new referendum on a potential 1/4-cent increase in sales taxes. This measure, which has already tanked four times with the local electorate, had once been the darling of Republican office holders who had sought to offset the tax burden on property owners.
In this year’s race for the board of commissioners, Paisley and Priola insist that they’ll have no truck with another sales tax referendum, while the three Democratic challengers join Thompson’s call to put it back on the ballot.
Question of priorities
The shifting allegiances among the six candidates also extend to their positions on certain county departments or programs.
Traditionally, voters in Alamance County have been able to count on Democratic candidates to favor public education and Republicans for their support of criminal justice and public safety initiatives. This partisan penchant still seems to have some lingering effect the current field of contenders.
When asked about the county’s financial contribution to public education, all three of Republican candidates find the current level of funding sufficient, while Pierce and Graves deem it inadequate. Smith, meanwhile, sees a need for more spending on education – albeit not from the county’s board of commissioners.
“ABSS does not receive enough funding overall,” he asserts, “but this is more a result of our state legislature than our county commissioners.”
In contrast to Smith, Graves is emphatic that the current all-Republican board of commissioners has made an “inadequate investment in public education,” while Pierce calls for a more “proactive” approach to funding the school system in order to avoid “a disaster” like last year’s mold infestation, which cost the county nearly $20 million to remediate.
Thompson, meanwhile, breaks ranks with her fellow Republicans in pressing for an increase in the county’s salary supplement for area teachers. A former member of the Alamance-Burlington school board, Thompson declares the supplement increase as her foremost spending priority. The incumbent commissioner also calls for more spending on recreation and parks and a project to house the county’s homeless veterans.
In previous elections, the county’s financial support of the sheriff’s office has been a reliable litmus test to distinguish the liberals from the conservatives. This year, however, the issue is a bit muddled due to the near unanimous conclusion that the county’s contribution to the sheriff is “about right.”
The only dissenter in this case is Priola who insists that the commissioners are short-changing the sheriff, although he contends that wouldn’t raise property taxes to correct this apparent deficiency.
“We can increase funding for the sheriff’s office by cutting wasteful spending (e.g. administrative bloat),” he asserts.
Paisley, for his part, sees other public safety needs as the county’s primary funding priorities. The board’s chairman is especially keen to see the county proceed with a proposed $37 million expansion of the Judge J.B. Allen, Jr. Court House in Graham.
This same project, however, tops Thompson’s list of the county’s boondoggles. Thompson has also consistently voted against items related to the courthouse expansion when they’ve come before the board of commissions. Yet, contrary to her current position that the county is spending too much on this venture, she has previously pointed to this project’s reduced scale, which actually brought down its expense, to explain her persistent objections.
Changing colors
The newspaper’s questionnaire has elicited a number of other responses that may make it difficult to separate the “reds” from the “blues” in this year’s race for the board of commissioners.
Traditionally, one mark of distinction between liberals and conservatives in Alamance County has been their position on countywide zoning. In recent years, some confirmed opponents of zoning have begun to see it as a potential barrier against the intrusion of heavy industry or dense residential development into rural parts of the county. In the race for the board of commissioners, Thompson joins the three Democratic contenders in espousing this view. Meanwhile, Paisley and Priola offer strikingly similar objections that focus on the county’s current provision of land use regulations.
“We currently have a land development plan and 62 other ordinances to protect citizens,” Paisley points out.
“The county already some 62 ordinances that include rules similar to zoning,” Priola concurs. “We need less bureaucracy, not more.”
Another political purity test for candidates in Alamance County has been their support for the county’s long-time Republican sheriff Terry Johnson. To this end, the newspaper asked the six would-be commissioners to state their positions on two federal detention contracts that have, in the past, been among Johnson’s more controversial initiatives.
All three of the Republicans assert their support for these contracts, which have allowed the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to rent jail beds for their detainees in exchange for lease payments that have gone into the county’s general fund. Graves acknowledges her opposition to these arrangements since “such contracts can create divisions and concerns in the community.” But Pierce acknowledges the positive impact they’ve had on the bottom line.
“I support saving taxpayers’ dollars,” he adds, “[through] rental space or temporary housing for inmates being transported from facility to facility.”
Partisan affiliations are further clouded by Smith’s silence about his stance on these contracts, which is followed by a somewhat oblique explanation of this non-answer:
“Sheriff Johnson is understaffed and shouldn’t have to do the job of other federal agencies,” the Democratic contender elaborates. “Keeping Alamance safe should be our top priority.”
Smith is equally keen to declare his neutrality on two of the other hot-button issues that appeared in the newspaper’s questionnaire. When asked whether Alamance County needs an ordinance to prohibit discrimination against people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer, Smith simply asserts that “we need to get the culture wars out of our politics.” Pierce and Graves have no problem joining the fray with statements of support for this sort of ordinance, while Priola, Thompson, and Paisley readily assert their opposition.
Smith also retreats to his figurative refuge from the culture wars when asked about the proposed relocation of a Confederate monument that has long guarded the entrance to the county’s historic courthouse. In this case, however, the other five candidates aren’t nearly as eager to form battle lines over the monument’s fate.
While Graves says she supports the monument’s shift “to a more appropriate location, such as a museum, where it can be contextualized,” Pierce observes that the General Assembly, backed up by the state’s courts, has taken the decision out of the county’s hands.
Priola asserts that the monument’s fate is “best left to the voters or the courts (not a mob or elected officials).” Meanwhile, Thompson offers what amounts to cry of utter indifference to the entire debate.
“This is an old fight,” she assets. “I honesty do not have an opinion.”
The newspaper’s questionnaire appears in its entirety on pages 10 and 11 along with the full responses that each candidate submitted. In some cases, the answers have been trimmed to meet the word limits imposed by the newspaper. Biographical information for each of the six contenders can also be found on page 9.
