Roughly four months after it received a public records request from The Alamance News, the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation has finally provided a smattering of information about its former employment of Alamance County’s incumbent sheriff Terry Johnson.
The Alamance News had originally tendered its request on January 9 in order to obtain payroll and disciplinary records from Johnson’s nearly 26-year tenure as an SBI agent.
The newspaper had dispatched this request in tandem with a similar submission to the N.C. Highway Patrol for the employment records of retired state trooper Billy Clayton, who had mounted a bid to unseat Johnson in this spring’s Republican primary. For good measure, the newspaper also contacted the office of Orange County’s sheriff in regard to Shannon Long, a former detention officer who was then collecting signatures in order to stand as an independent contender for sheriff in November’s general election.
Under state law, all three of these agencies were obligated to provide certain data about their former staff members. This information is not only spelled out in the N.C. Public Records Act but is also reiterated in the N.C. Human Resources Act – not to mention the parallel statutes that apply to county and municipal personnel.
In the case of the Human Resources Act, state agencies are legally required to keep certain records “open to inspection.” This information is deemed to include the “date and amount of each increase or decrease in salary;” the “date and type of each promotion, demotion, transfer, suspension, separation, or other change in position classification; and the “date and general description of the reasons for each promotion.”
In its request to each state or local agency, The Alamance News had cited both the Public Records and Human Resources acts (or the county-level equivalent in Shannon Long’s case) to justify its requests. Within a few days of the newspaper’s submissions, both the N.C. Highway Patrol and the office of Orange County’s sheriff had provided copious details for their two former employees – as mandated by state law.
The SBI, for its part, merely acknowledged receipt of the newspaper’s plea without any further response. As the date of the March 3 primary approached, the newspaper sent a follow-up email to the state bureau and even asked Terry Johnson himself to intervene with his former employer.
In spite of these efforts, the newspaper remained in the lurch when, in a moment of desperation, it resolved to run the records it had received for Clayton and Long on February 26 along with a lengthy editor’s note about the SBI’s non-response to the request about Johnson.
[Story continues below special subscription offer.]
FOR THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE LOCAL NEWS, SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALAMANCE NEWS:
Johnson went on to prevail in the Republican primary, while Long managed to amass the signatures he needed to appear on November’s ballot – with his petition receiving official confirmation on March 11. Throughout all this, the SBI remained entirely mum to the newspaper’s request.
It wasn’t until May 7 that The Alamance News received a reply from the state agency, and the information it contained was disappointingly parsimonious compared to the responses from Orange County’s sheriff and the highway patrol.
Within a meager page and a half, the state agency recounted Johnson’s start date, the date of his retirement, 10 changes in rank (along with the corresponding dates), and 42 salary changes (also with the date of each specified). There are no further explanations for any of the promotions. Nor is there distinction made between the changes in rank that correspond to promotions or demotions – although the difference can probably be ascertained from the trajectory of Johnson’s salary on those same dates.
According to the SBI’s disclosures, Johnson first joined the agency on June 5, 1975 as an SBI Agent III with a starting salary of $11,148. He was promoted to the rank of SBI Agent on September 1 of the same year with a $528 increase in pay. On February 1, 1977, he was elevated to the rank of senior agent, while his salary continued to increase at a rate of once, or twice a year, throughout his first four years with the bureau.
Something peculiar occurs to this pattern of promotions and pay raises on August 1, 1979. According to the SBI’s disclosures, that date saw Johnson raised to the rank of lead agent, while his salary went up from $17,700 to $18,540. Yet, on the same date, he was reduced in rank from lead agent to agent while his salary was bumped back down to its earlier level of $17,700.
Johnson would go on to claw his way back up through the ranks over the next 14 years. On January 1, 1981, he reclaimed the position of lead agent before he became a special services coordinator on December 1, 1988, a criminal specialist on June 1, 1991, and a special unit supervisor on June 1, 1992. Along the way, his pay rose in steady increments until he was making $50,872 as of July 1, 1992.
In another odd turn of events, Johnson’s salary tumbled to $45,625 on June 1, 1993. On that same date, his rank was reduced to SBI Agent III – the same level where it had stood for the first few months of his employment in 1975.
According to the SBI’s disclosures, Johnson’s rank would remain at Agent III until his retirement on February 28, 2001. His pay nevertheless continued to rise, and Johnson was making $53,809 when he obtained his final raise on July 1, 2000, according to the records that the SBI furnished.
Not mentioned in this inventory of dates and dollar amounts is any explanation of the circumstances that surrounded Johnson’s pay cuts and reductions in rank. The state agency doesn’t even specify which changes in Johnson’s employment status are “promotions” or “demotions,” despite being required to do so under the N.C. Human Resources Act.
In a brief cover letter to the newspaper, Chad Flowers, the SBI’s public information officer claimed he had provided The Alamance News with all the data on Johnson that the law required him to release.
“Other than what has been provided,” the agency representative added in his missive of May 7, “the NCSBI has no other public records that are responsive to your request.”
