Former Cabarrus County Manager’s Lawsuit Makes Claims of Collusion

Former Cabarrus County Manager Mike Downs has filed a lawsuit against the county following his firing earlier this year, claiming that certain Cabarrus County Commissioners wrongfully pushed for his ouster in an act of favoritism. 

The lawsuit asks for $488,000 in unpaid severance, potentially with interest attached, stemming from Downs firing in January, which he claims was carried out by three commissioners who conspired to replace him with a less experienced loyalist. 

The complaint was filed on March 19, nearly two weeks after Downs’ attorney sent a letter to Cabarrus County attorney Daniel Peterson threatening to sue the county if it did not pay Downs’ gross severance and bonus sums by March 14. The date came and went without word from Peterson or the Board.

Downs’ complaint alleges that “the County flagrantly breached Mr. Downs’ employment contract in bad faith through the actions of a majority of its Board of County Commissioners,” specifically through the “malicious and baseless actions” of County Commission Chair Christopher Measmer and commissioners Larry Pittman and Laura Lindsey “acting as a cabal of ill will in terminating Mr. Downs and replacing him with an inexperienced crony, minion, and clandestine former partner of Mesmer.”

The three commissioners named in the suit make up a majority of the five-member board of commissioners. 

Downs was fired on Jan. 21 and replaced 13 days later by Sean Newton, a former business partner of Measmer. Despite having no prior government experience and with no public disclosure of Measmer and Newton’s previous connection, Newton was brought on as county manager and offered a higher salary than Downs. 

How Mike Downs’ firing went down 

Measmer presented Downs with a termination letter after the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners (CCBC) voted 3-1 to fire him during a closed session on Jan. 21. Measmer and fellow Republican commissioners Lindsey and Pittman voted for the termination while commissioner Kenny Wortman voted against. Commissioner Lynn Shue did not attend the meeting due to personal matters.

Downs’ lawsuit questions the validity of the cause given by CCBC for his firing, which called his actions during the purchase of the ACN building in Concord by the county last October a “critical failure to perform [Downs’] duties as County Manager [that] creates a credibility issue for your ability to move forward as such.”

The letter states that Downs failed to inform the Local Government Commission (LGC), an arm of the North Carolina Treasurer’s Office that is responsible for approving the issuance of debts for local governments, that the property had been given an appraisal below the $42 million that the county agreed to pay. 

Downs’ lawsuit retorts that, while he was present during meetings, presentations and Q&A sessions related to the ACN building purchase, dealings with the LGC staff were led by then-CCBC Chair Steve Morris, Downs’ direct supervisor. 

In his letter, Stafford pointed out that Measmer was present during an Oct. 1 LGC meeting in which LGC members questioned Morris and county staff at length about the two available appraisal amounts. The LGC then approved the county’s purchase of the ACN property.

“Consequently, if Mr. Measmer has a grievance of some sort relating to information (or the purported lack thereof) relayed to the LGC or the timing of same, he should direct his ire toward his predecessor, not Mr. Downs,” Stafford’s letter read.

On March 17, Wortman joined Shue in moving to fire Downs’ replacement, Sean Newton, due to his undisclosed business relationship with Measmer. The motion was defeated 3-2, with Measmer, Lindsey and Pittman, who Wortman claimed all knew about the relationship, voting against it.

Backroom dealings and questions about transparency

The decision to terminate Downs may not have been as abrupt as the Jan. 21 decision made it seem.

Texts shared by Commissioner Wortman in a since-deleted November 2022 Facebook post showed that Downs’ firing was a long time in the making. In the text exchange, Wortman and Midland Town Manager Doug Paris discuss an offer that Paris had received to become interim Cabarrus County manager for a lower salary than Downs. 

Wortman told the Independent Tribune that then-commissioner Strang and Measmer, at the time just a candidate, asked him to meet prior to the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners election to ensure that, if Measmer won, they would have a majority vote in favor of ousting Downs to appoint Paris as interim county manager. 

Wortman told the Independent Tribune in November 2022, after Measmer won his election, that he shared the plans between him, Strang and Measmer in the interest of transparency. 

“It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “This has been going on for years. There is a little pocket of people trying to control things. I am not their puppet. People wanted transparency, and it doesn’t get much more transparent than this.”

He has continued to call out colleagues for lack of transparency, claiming during this year’s March 17 CCBC meeting that Lindsey fed him information from the Cabarrus County School Board closed sessions when she served on that body.

Kim Biondi, a Cabarrus-based volunteer with Down Home NC, a progressive organization dedicated to organizing poor and working-class people in North Carolina’s small towns and rural communities, said the drama surrounding the 2022 election is what drew her interest to the “ridiculous corruption on [CCBC].”

Two years later, Lindsey and Pittman were controversial candidates on the November 2024 CCBC ballot, beating out Democratic candidates Ingrid Nurse and Eulonda Rushing by running on far-right platforms 

Biondi said Lindsey led the charge in book bannings in Cabarrus county schools in 2022, targeting teachers like Biondi and incited discussion about porn in school libraries.

In a Sept. 19, 2022, Cabarrus County Board of Education (CCBOE) meeting, Lindsey, then the vice chair of the CCBOE, read aloud an excerpt from John Green’s award-winning book, Looking for Alaska, detailing an oral sex scene. Lindsey claimed the book, which was only available in Cabarrus County high schools, exposed children to adult subject matter.

Read more: Public School Strong Pushes Back on Movement to Undermine Public Education

Pittman, a former NC State Representative, made headlines in 2012 when he called for a reinstitution of public hangings to deter crime in an email he accidentally sent to every member of the North Carolina General Assembly. Pittman said “abortionists” should be executed as well as kidnappers and rapists.

After a 2018 mass shooting left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Pittman, then still a state representative, took to Facebook to voice his opinion: “So many of these shooters turn out to be communist democrats that I suspect they are doing these things to push for gun control so they can more easily take over the country.”

Pittman referenced the tragedy in his pitch to allow school personnel to carry guns on campus and be trained by law enforcement.

He was in news again in 2020 after he called Black Lives Matter protestors “ignorant thugs,” “criminals,” “domestic terrorists,” and “vermin.” 

Biondi said many in the community have become impatient with the antics of Lindsey and Pittman, and she’d like to see both Measmer and Newton step down from their positions.

“It’s just ridiculous incompetence after incompetence,” she said. “I don’t know why they fired our county attorney, [then] went and hired somebody who’s obviously incompetent to do his job. Why would they let that go like that? It seems very, very foolish to me.”