County Commissioners reject the Board of Elections budget request
The Brunswick County Board of Elections (BOE) operates year-round to administer elections for all voters in our county and to fulfill all of our voter-related needs. Its full-time staff of six people is responsible for operating voting sites; processing voter registrations; maintaining accurate voter rolls; recruiting and training poll workers; keeping the public abreast of voting schedules, registration procedures, and new voter laws; handling absentee by mail voting; overseeing candidate compliance with campaign finance requirements; and much more.
Our esteemed BOE director, Sarah LaVere, is also the president of the North Carolina Association of Directors of Elections. Ms. LaVere and her team were recognized last year as one of the nation’s top ten “Centers for Election Excellence” by the non-partisan Alliance for Election Excellence. They are revered in our county for their integrity and professionalism.
We live in the fastest-growing county in the state, with the number of eligible voters increasing by 70% since 2010. More than 50,000 new homes have been approved in recent years, which will lead to a further onslaught of new voters.
Despite soaring population growth, no additional full-time BOE employees have been hired in almost a decade. The six dedicated public servants who comprise the full-time staff put in hundreds of hours of overtime each year to manage the ever-increasing workload.
Consequently, Director LaVere submitted a 2024-2025 budget to the county commissioners that included two much-needed additional full-time staffers: a public information officer and a campaign finance person. Currently, the public information and campaign finance duties are shared between the existing full-time staff and temporary workers.
Our county commissioners have rejected the request. Further, for the second year in a row, they asked Director LaVere to slash the full BOE budget request by over 350K.
Let’s review the context in which the commissioners have rebuffed the BOE budget proposal: 1) the integrity of our elections continues to be baselessly assaulted by MAGA Republicans who increasingly reject any results that don’t favor them; 2) MAGA General Assembly legislators in our state have passed byzantine and constitutionally questionable new voter laws — which boards of elections then have to dissect and implement; and 3) our county commissioners have allowed unfettered growth in our county, leading to enormous population increases. These three factors indicate that our BOE needs additional resources to continue operating at optimum levels. So, one has to wonder why the all-Republican county commission has decided that Director LaVere and her staff should continue functioning with one hand tied behind their backs.
Please attend the Board of Commissioners meeting on Monday, May 6, at 3 p.m. (Sandifer Bldg, 30 Govt. Center Dr NE, Bolivia) to express support for our BOE and to encourage the commissioners to rethink their unfair decision to deny Director LaVere and her staff the resources they need.
Can't attend? You can also contact the Commissioners HERE to express your views, or send them an email:
Randy Thompson (Chair): randy.thomposn@brunswickcountync.gov
Mike Forte (Vice Chair): commissioner.forte@brunswickcountync.gov
J. Martin (Marty) Cooke: commissioner.cooke@brunswickcountync.gov
Patricia (Pat) Sykes: commissioner.sykes@brunswickcountync.gov
Frank Williams: frank.williams@brunswickcountync.gov
And, remember to vote for Tom Simmons, Bob Fulton, and Jonathan Damico
for Brunswick County Commissioners in November!