Raleigh, NC – Thirteen House Democrats asked North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein this week to investigate the land deals surrounding the Catawba tribe casino that is under construction on Kings Mountain.
The attorney general plans to refuse, with a spokeswoman telling WRAL News on Friday that the office “does not have the authority to launch an investigation like this” without a request from a local district attorney.
“As it stands today, this would have to be a local investigation,” spokeswoman Laura Brewer said in an email.
Deputy Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe, the main signatory of a letter requesting the inquiry, said on Friday that she was not sure about the next steps. The Oriental Band of Indians Cherokee, which has competing casinos and rejected the plans of the Catawba tribe from the beginning, circulated the letter.
“As soon as the news reaches the Eastern Strip, (a local order is) probably the next step,” said Fisher.
An attempt to contact the band’s lobbyist at the General Assembly, John Metcalf, was not immediately successful, nor were attempts to contact representatives of the Catawba casino project.
The Catawba casino, which opened last year, is a saga in North Carolina, with political intrigue never fully revealed. The tribe is based in South Carolina, but a casino was denied there. He turned his attention to North Carolina, eventually gaining federal approval to cross state borders.
Governor Roy Cooper’s administration struck a deal earlier this year that moves the facility an important step towards the full board game less than an hour west of Charlotte. Cherokee Nation has casinos in Cherokee and Murphy.
Fisher and other lawmakers who signed the letter calling for Stein’s intervention said they could not point to a specific offense, but are concerned about the land deals surrounding the project and who stands to gain.
“The main objective, for me, was to achieve some transparency,” said Fisher. “There are a number of LLCs [with] no name attached. … I think it would make sense to have more transparency to know who exactly is investing in it. “
The letter asks if there was any “hearing behind closed doors” in which local leaders “may have received information that could be used to obtain undue benefits”. It also says that unidentified properties were “purchased by an almost undetectable network of LLCs, sometimes by entities that do not appear to have any legal organization or registration.”
The letter mentions a local name: the mayor of Kings Mountain, Scott Neisler, saying he will benefit from the development of a casino through family land nearby.
Neisler told WRAL News on Friday that he would like an investigation. He said he does not expect to profit from the casino and that the nearly 700 acres his family owns a few kilometers from the project are, for the most part, being mined and “cannot be built because of mineral rights over them”.
“There is no smoke here,” he said.
“This strong pressure that the Cherokees put on state lawmakers when trying to fabricate a conspiracy theory is shameful,” he added.
Mayor Tim Moore is not mentioned in the letter, but that is part of the subtext for some signatories.
Moore, R-Cleveland, is from Kings Mountain, is the county attorney for the Cleveland County Board of County Commissioners and, years ago, represented Kings Mountain landowners working with developers on the casino proposal, The Carolina Journal reported in 2014.
Moore’s spokesman did not respond on Friday to a request for comment.
Some of the speaker’s other businesses have caused astonishment, including a Siler City chicken plant that he bought from bankruptcy in 2013 and then sold for more than six times the purchase price.
Moore was investigated two years ago over legislation he sponsored in 2013 that forced Durham to extend water and sewage services to a major development nearby. A company owned by this developer hired Moore as a lawyer, but Wake County district attorney Lorrin Freeman said an analysis “found no misuse of public office for private gain or other wrongdoing”.
The casino letter was distributed by a lobbyist from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and many of the signatories are from western North Carolina, where the Cherokee tribe has strong political influence. But some are from the Triangle area.
“This business clearly smells like stinking money,” Rep. Graig Meyer, D-Orange, said on Friday.
Meyer said he could not point out specific allegations, saying he wants to know more about “who bought the properties” near the casino’s website and “what are their business relationships?”
“I don’t see how it looks like anything other than a privileged deal that someone will profit from,” he said.
Congresswoman Cynthia Ball, D-Wake, said she signed after being informed that “there is a monkey business going on”.
“Some conversations under the table … that’s how it was described to me,” said Ball. “The reason I signed the letter is, if it is really true, then we need the attorney general to investigate.”