Yow, Coleman keep on sparring
Earlier this week, a guy named Tony Wilkins sent some e-mails to Guilford County administrators about District 9 county commissioner Carolyn Coleman. He Cc'd local media outlets, including Scoop.
Wilkins said he was requesting documents about Coleman's county salary being withheld from her pending a disability hearing. If the county didn't comply with his request, he wrote, "pursuit of legal remedy will be forthcoming."
Turns out, Wilkins is working on the campaign of Coleman's Republican election opponent, local fire chief Vernon Ward. Ward has the support of Republican commissioner Billy Yow, who unsuccessfully tried earlier this year to get the commissioners to release documents related to the deferment.
The vote was 9-to-2 against. But Yow is still trying.
"It's just a hunch I got," Yow said in an interview, " … and it seems awfully suspicious that they got a dying need to keep this hid."
Yow is accusing Coleman, a Democrat, of manipulating the disability system by deferring about $8,400 of county salary around 2005. She was paid back the money out of former manager Willie Best’s contingency fund after a disability ruling.
Coleman, a former special assistant to former Gov. Jim Hunt, retired on disability from the state before being elected in 2002. When she came to the board, she said in an interview, it wasn't clear how much income she could receive in addition to her disability income. After her second year on the board, she said, she was told she may be over the limit, so she asked the county to hold much of her salary pending a ruling.
She got the ruling, and was satisfied that she could recoup the money, and says the only reason the whole thing came up is because it crossed budget cycles and had to be paid out of the manager's contingency fund.
"The only difference was Billy received his on a monthly basis, and I received some of mine in a lump sum," she said.
But Yow says otherwise.
"She attempted to fraud the federal government by deferring her money and then coming back and claiming it," he said.
Yow and Wilkins maintain that Ward, a fire chief making his first try at elected office, has nothing to do with their efforts.
"What I have said to Vernon is that 'If there is anything here, I'll let you know,'" said Wilkins, who owns a High Point Road furniture store.
Yow and Coleman have traded plenty of barbs over the years. Coleman once compared him to a Ku Klux Klan member, and he once called her "the worst racist in Guilford County."
"I just think she's a crook," Yow said. "She's just out to beat the system. She's floundered her whole life to try to beat the system."
Said Coleman: "Billy wants to make a problem where a problem doesn't exist."
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