Council members fail to achieve censure for censor

The Goldsboro City Council meeting ended with a touch of drama Monday, as three council members voted to censure Mayor Chuck Allen.

Well, at least we think that’s what they wanted to do.

It was, in reality, somewhat confusing — and left reason to question whether or not District 1 Councilman Antonio Williams, who was the subject of a censure hearing last year, even knows what the word means.

Here’s the backstory:

At a board meeting in June, Allen banged the gavel while Councilwoman Brandi Matthews was in mid-sentence — effectively ending the meeting.

He contends he thought she was done talking. She thinks it was intentional.

The rest of the board is split on what exactly went down.

If it was intentional, it was not, in our view, Allen’s finest moment, and we pointed that out at the time.

We thought it was probably best for the mayor to apologize and put the issue to rest.

For the record, he has said — and repeated Monday — that he is willing to talk to Ms. Matthews in a one-on-one setting in the interest of moving forward and has been respectful of her ever since. He even backed a water bill relief initiative she is spearheading when other board members expressed concerns about her plan. (More on that later.)

The two also appeared together in a tourism spot and seemed to get along well — at least on camera.

But ever since the incident, Ms. Matthews and her supporters have noted that the mayor has yet to apologize for his actions.

Fast-forward to Monday.

The apology, or lack thereof, came up again during the council’s comment period when Ms. Matthews confronted the majority of the board for what she characterized as them being against her even before she took her oath.

“I was elected to this board and when I came on, I already knew that the majority of you didn’t like me. That didn’t stop me then and it is not going to stop me now. Silence from the majority of this board is disappointing and it continues to prove that certain members have more loyalty to the mayor then they do to the citizens and their concerns in Goldsboro,” she said. “If we can’t even govern ourselves and hold ourselves accountable, how can we hold accountability for our districts and for an entire city?”

She then turned to the mayor adjourning the June meeting when she wasn’t done with her closing remarks — referencing something Councilman David Ham said during last year’s censure hearing that stemmed from Williams’ alleged discrimination of and creation of a hostile work environment for a member of the city staff.

The quote she read began, “It is my belief that we cannot just ignore these actions. His behavior was an embarrassment.”

“Councilmember Ham, those were your words as it related to Councilman Williams. So, I want to ask you, how do you feel about the mayor’s behavior?” she said. “Because here we are ignoring the embarrassment from our mayor and his behavior toward me one, as a woman and two, as an elected official.”

She asked each individual member, one by one, how members felt and what should be done to “hold him accountable.”

Ham and Councilman Gene Aycock declined to comment.

Councilman Taj Polack said she was “done wrong.”

And Bill Broadway said he took offense to being misrepresented, adding he did not think “what the mayor did was intentional.”

“And if it was intentional, he probably owes you an apology,” he said. “I think we need to respect each other and stop trying to divide this board.”

But then Williams had his turn to address Allen’s actions and things took a turn.

“I feel when someone is censored, what you reap is what you sow. And I think that when they censored you, the mayor should be censored. I think there should be a censor hearing,” he said. “This has nothing to do with what happened to me, but it’s about accountability. … All should be held to the same standards.”

Here’s the thing.

When Matthews was interrupted, she was, in Williams’ view, “censored.”

So, based on what he said after that, he thought Allen, too, should be “censored” and there should be a “censor hearing.”

 We really hope he probably just got confused.

To censure someone is to formally and officially disapprove of what they did. And surely, Allen wasn’t doing that to Ms. Matthews when he banged the gavel.

The second issue worth noting is that Williams’ motion was seconded by Ms. Matthews.

For her to weigh in on something as consequential as a censure hearing that involves her isn’t exactly ethical. 

It’s the same problem we had when Williams voted in his favor during his own censure hearing.

You just don’t do that. You excuse yourself from votes that involve you or your interests to avoid perceptions of a conflict.

Honestly, we know Ms. Matthews is new to the board and, in the heat of the moment, likely just seconded the motion on pure passion. But it’s food for thought for future votes — again, if we want the board to function in a respectable way.

It’s a microcosm of the bigger problem with the way the Goldsboro City Council is operating right now.

Here we have a board that heard presentations about important things during its work session — from roads that need repaving and how to spend CARES Act funds to a potential plan to assist Wayne County Public Schools with remote learning — and instead of using their time to address those pressing issues, we have council members comparing what was, at worst, an act of disrespect by the mayor to a councilman who was the subject of an investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a lawsuit against the city that he said publicly was settled with taxpayer dollars.

The two are not even close.

Again, we already called on Allen to apologize. But it’s also true that no member of that board has been attacked more than the mayor.

And the assaults continue, which he admitted is part of the reason he is reluctant to address the issue outside of a one-on-one conversation with Ms. Matthews.

“I think that if you went back and looked at the tape, you would see that I gave you the opportunity to go ahead and speak. You elected to get up and leave. You go back and look at the tape and then you tell me what I did wrong, and then I’ll be glad to talk to you,” he said. “This is a you and I thing. And if you want to fix it … I’ll be glad to work through it with you. But you attacking me, that’s not going to help you.”

And it certainly doesn’t help the citizens of Goldsboro or the public’s image of our government.