Cogdell: Let's have full investigation into my hiring

Mecklenburg commissioners Chairman Harold Cogdell said this morning that he will ask the board of C.W. Williams Community Health Center to make public how much the nonprofit is paying him.

"I'm going to seek their permission to release the employment contract," Cogdell told me this morning. "It describes the scope of services, and what I get paid, and what I get paid to do and when that relationship was formed."

Cogdell, a Democrat, has come under scrutiny for being hired by C.W. Williams about two months after he fought for a 39 percent hike in the county's allocation to the group.

Cogdell said he wants all the information about the arrangement to come out. He said he will ask commissioners at their Dec. 20 meeting to authorize a full investigation into his hiring.

"I absolutely want to bring that out. I think the public is entitled to that. We need to make sure there are answers to the questions that have been raised."

We called for such transparency in an editorial in this morning's paper, an opinion Cogdell said he doesn't disagree with.

Cogdell said he first started talking with C.W. Williams about a job in mid to late July, about a month after the budget talks. The group provides medical care to the poor.

He said he and other commissioners were lobbied by C.W. Williams for more than $1.7 million in county money, compared with the $280,000 that County Manager Harry Jones recommended. Cogdell said he supported giving C.W. Williams $110,000 more than Jones' recommendation in part because of difficult talks the county had been having with Carolinas Healthcare System about indigent care.

"I could see the potential moving forward that these centers are going to play a bigger role in providing indigent health care," Cogdell said.

We repeat our call for a thorough look into this matter, and applaud Cogdell for being open to that.

-- Taylor Batten