What happened after NC gave millions to prevent domestic abuse with little oversight
Last summer, the parents of a Pitt County woman found a way to create something positive out of her death from domestic violence.
They persuaded state lawmakers to provide $3.5 million to their newly formed nonprofit to provide pre-trial electronic monitoring that would alert accusers when defendants are nearby.
Experts say that’s an excellent use for electronic monitoring, but as the nonprofit Caitlyn’s Courage launched the program that will serve several North Carolina judicial districts, it used a flawed process to select the company that would supply and service the devices.
Three advertisements for bids came out 12 to 14 days after a three-week bid period opened that was already short by government standards, giving companies little time to ask questions or offer a proposal. Three companies — including one providing other electronic monitoring services for the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office — told The News & Observer they didn’t learn about what they and others say is a lucrative opportunity, until after the nonprofit had selected Tarheel Monitoring of Wilmington.
Some experts and competitors of the winning bidder describe it as an odd or surprising way to award a contract. The process is bringing new attention to legislators’ decision to hand over control of millions in federal COVID-19 relief money to a new and untested nonprofit with little oversight by any government agency.
Track Group of Naperville, Illinois, specializes in domestic violence tracking, including victim notification. It provides other electronic monitoring services to the Pitt County sheriff. But it didn’t learn of Caitlyn’s Courage’s program until a News & Observer reporter reached out last week.
“That’s really kind of Track Group’s specialty,” said AJ Gigler, the company’s vice president for marketing and product management. “So I was a bit surprised that a domestic violence program was being started, and we weren’t aware of it.”
Bidding processes, if done properly, provide taxpayers with the best service at the lowest cost. But purchasing requirements weren’t included in the state legislation that handed Caitlyn’s Courage the money.
“If you are looking for the best options and for the best procurement process you would allow far more time and you would provide greater notice,” said Joe Russo, an expert in electronic monitoring with the University of Denver. “Perhaps even seeking potential providers because it’s a fairly known universe, and it’s not hard to determine the providers of this service.”
Now, some of those involved aren’t talking, including the lawmaker who filed the legislation and the company that won the contract. The state agencies named in the legislation are directing all questions about oversight and spending to the nonprofit.
Judson Whitehurst, the chairman of Caitlyn’s Courage and the father of the young woman murdered by an ex-boyfriend, has provided limited responses that do not fully explain how the legislation came about and how the nonprofit conducted the bidding.
The Whitehurst family formed Caitlyn’s Courage in October 2019, five months after Laura Caitlyn Whitehurst, 25, of Greenville, died of domestic violence — a murder-suicide. Judson Whitehurst, a Greenville businessman, found his daughter and her ex-boyfriend dead at the entrance to the family home.
Caitlyn Whitehurst had not filed charges against her ex-boyfriend, which would have been the first step toward the electronic monitoring program if it had existed. But her father said in email correspondence such a program might have saved his daughter’s life. He said before she died, she had confided in a cousin that she wished she could know his whereabouts and “thus, catch him stalking her, but also provide her ample time to get somewhere safe.”
Noting Caitlyn’s Courage is a private nonprofit, Judson Whitehurst declined to identify the companies that bid on the project other than to confirm Tarheel won it. There is case law, however, that suggests private nonprofits spending government money on public, governmental purposes would be subject to North Carolina’s public records law.
Questions were raised in writing of the bill
Tarheel Monitoring has two ties to House Speaker Tim Moore, a Cleveland County Republican. The wife of Tarheel Monitoring’s owner has made two campaign contributions to Moore, including $3,000 in June 2019. State records also show Raleigh attorney Gene Davis, a close friend of Moore’s who shares legal clients with him, reported an ownership in an offshoot of the business several years ago.
One of the House’s top budget writers, Rep. Donny Lambeth, a Forsyth County Republican, directed questions to the former colleague who first requested the funding, Perrin Jones, a Greenville Republican who lost an election in November.
Legislative correspondence showed Lambeth was among the lawmakers in the loop as the legislation started picking up speed. Lambeth said in a text message he was not involved in the details.
“Sorry but I don’t always know what goes on from a member and the speaker’s office,” Lambeth said.
In 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019, Lambeth tried to pass a similar law for a pilot program in Forsyth County. It put the state Department of Public Safety in charge. It cleared the House three times but he could not get the state Senate to pass it.
Legislative correspondence shows Jones faced questions about how the money would be spent in his early drafting of the legislation. Legislative staff attorney Jacob Davis asked whether several specifications in the legislation might exclude potential vendors who would provide the equipment and services for the electronic monitoring program.
He asked also whether the Administrative Office of the Courts should manage the program with the nonprofit’s assistance.
The legislation did little to address those concerns.
The pilot project started out as a bill Jones filed May 27 that would have given Caitlyn’s Courage a $100,000 grant to launch the project in Pitt County. Jones and other lawmakers had been petitioned by the Whitehurst family and by John Guard, a chief deputy of the Pitt County sheriff’s office who leads domestic violence prevention efforts.
The correspondence identified two others involved: former state District Court Judge Marion Warren of Brunswick County and a former Senate legislative staffer, Jordan Hennessy. Warren later became the director of the state Administrative Office of the Courts while Chief Justice Mark Martin was in charge. Martin, a Republican, retired in early 2019 to lead Regent University’s law school. Warren is now a senior associate dean there.
Email correspondence shows Warren and Hennessy wrote the provision in the law that created seven specifications an electronic monitoring provider had to meet. They include a “disposable strap” attaching the device around a defendant’s ankle, the ability for monitoring devices to switch to different cellular providers if a carrier’s signal fades and a “minimum single charge 48-hour capacity via an inaccessible battery.”
“Below is the language that Judge Warren and I put together,” Hennessy said in an email to Jones, dated May 15, that included the specifications. “Recognizing that it’s budgetary related, it might be something to consider just inserting in the budget.”
Hennessy said he is a family friend of the Whitehursts. He referred questions to Caitlyn’s Courage. Warren declined to comment.
Jones’ bill included the specification language from Hennessy, and required the AOC to act as the pass-through agency for COVID-19 relief funds. But it did not give the state agency spending oversight. The bill never got a committee hearing, and Jones did not return several phone messages for comment.
Legislation that includes specifications for goods and services is atypical, said Gerry Cohen, who had led the legislature’s bill drafting division for 31 years before retiring in 2014. He couldn’t say whether the few bills that included specifications resulted in bad lawmaking.
Placed in COVID-19 relief bill
On June 23, the Senate Appropriations Committee gutted House Bill 1023, which had been intended to provide storm disaster relief, and replaced it with the massive COVID-19 relief spending bill. Among the spending provisions was Caitlyn’s Courage, but the funding had jumped to $3.5 million for pilot projects in “at least” nine judicial districts.
The AOC remained the funding agency. Later that day, the AOC’s legislative liaison, Andrew Simpson, emailed Jones and two House budget writers, Reps. Lambeth and Jason Saine, that his agency wanted out of the role.
“AOC does not often administer grants to non-profits or (domestic violence) service agencies,” he wrote. “We would respectfully recommend that another agency is better equipped and more appropriate to efficiently administer these grants.”
He recommended the departments of Public Safety or Administration, which fund domestic violence programs.
The bill cleared the full Senate without the changes. Simpson then sent a similar message that included Moore and Speaker Pro Tem Sarah Stevens, before the House voted to agree to the Senate version of the bill. The House still passed the legislation, but the next day ran another bill that amended the Caitlyn’s Courage provision to shift the funding from the AOC to the Department of Public Safety.
One lawmaker, Rep. Mary Belk, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, said during the floor debate that she wanted assurances the work would be bid out.
“We would ask that multiple companies be allowed to bid on something like that,” Belk said.
But that fix didn’t require a specific bid process, or give DPS any oversight beyond providing the money. The department just serves as the pass-through agency, said Pam Walker, a department spokeswoman.
The AOC and East Carolina University’s Criminal Justice Department continued to have an advisory role in the legislation, but neither said they were involved in deciding what company or companies would provide the equipment and service.
Several people in the electronic monitoring business said $3.5 million is a lot of money. For comparison, DPS is spending $5.7 million to monitor adults and juveniles on probation or parole across the state from July 1 through the end of January.
The bill cited an urgent need to help combat a surge in domestic violence caused by the pandemic, which shut down schools and businesses, forcing people to spend most of their time in their homes.
Domestic violence groups found it remarkable that state lawmakers would provide that much money to a nonprofit with no track record, while state funding for traditional programs languished.
April Burgess-Johnson, then the chairwoman of the N.C. Domestic Violence Commission, whose members are appointed by the governor and the legislature, said in a statement to lawmakers the money should be put toward established programs through the state’s domestic violence center fund.
She said that fund spends $4.8 million annually for domestic violence and sexual assault victim services, and that spending has “decreased by approximately 3 percent since 2015.”
“During the same time the number of victims served by the funded domestic violence centers has risen from 51,074 to over 60,301 victims last year,” she said.
COVID-19 has made victim protection more costly, she and other advocates say. For example, organizations running shelters have had to pay for hotel rooms for those escaping dangerous relationships to limit the virus’ spread in their facilities.
“It’s a real challenge for all of us now,” said Laura King, executive director of the Center for Family Violence Prevention, which serves Pitt, Martin and Washington counties. She said she, too, did not know about the Caitlyn’s Courage funding until it emerged in the legislature.
State lawmakers later helped domestic violence organizations in another round of COVID-19 relief funding in September, providing $12 million to the N.C. Council for Women in House Bill 1105. The bill, passed with wide support, provides half the funding to domestic violence centers and the other half for programs tackling sexual assault.
Bidding for the contract
The COVID-19 relief legislation signed into law July 1 made no mention of how companies would be selected to provide the monitoring. Whitehurst said as a nonprofit, Caitlyn’s Courage didn’t have to put out a request for proposals, but its website shows one for electronic monitoring that listed July 15 as the opening and Aug. 5 as the close. The nonprofit would take questions about its RFP until July 29.
Whitehurst said advertisements were taken out in four newspapers and two national websites. But advertisements for the RFP weren’t taken out in the national RFPdb.com database until July 27, said David Kutcher, the website’s president. They were ordered on July 28 in the state’s two largest newspapers — The Charlotte Observer and the N&O — and ran on July 29.
Those advertisements gave any interested bidders who hadn’t been aware of the opportunity little time to ask questions or pull together a proposal.
Whitehurst said the nonprofit extended the bid period and took out additional advertising. The notices reviewed by the N&O show no change in the deadlines. Whitehurst did not respond to questions about the notices.
Larry Powell’s wife, Sonja, is the chief financial officer for Tarheel Monitoring. She has twice given campaign money to Moore since 2014, including a $3,000 contribution on June 13, 2019.
The N&O previously reported that Sonja Powell gave Moore a $2,000 contribution in 2014 at about the time Moore had told a lobbyist that a legislative fix was on the way to help Larry Powell and Davis form an insurance company for bail agents, according to a 2014 email another partner in the insurance company, Mark Cartret, shared with a reporter. Moore, a Cleveland County attorney, did private legal work for the North Carolina Bail Agents Association in early 2012.
Davis reported an ownership interest in a Tarheel Monitoring spinoff on his economic interest statements from 2012 through 2014. Other emails Cartret provided show that Davis took an interest in 2011 legislation filed by then-Sen. Don Vaughan, a Greensboro Democrat, that would have given courts an electronic monitoring option in domestic violence cases. It never got a committee hearing.
“This is helpful — I wonder if the Senator should be informed of the possibility of the victim carrying a device — what if those devices had to be made available as an option to the victim?” Davis said in response to an evaluation of the legislation by a representative of Tarheel Monitoring’s supplier.
Cartret said he founded Tarheel Monitoring but sold his share in the company in 2015 and is no longer involved in the business.
Tarheel Monitoring is not a manufacturer of electronic monitoring equipment. It sells and services that equipment, as do several others in North Carolina. Government agencies are among its customers.
Whitehurst said in a brief interview that Tarheel Monitoring was one of two companies he and others with the nonprofit spoke with as it put together the program. The other was a company they visited at a booth at a Las Vegas convention. He said he did not speak to Tarheel Monitoring until after the legislation was passed.
He then ended the interview and only responded to subsequent questions via email. In two subsequent email responses, Whitehurst did not say specifically when he or others with the nonprofit first spoke with Tarheel Monitoring.
Competing bid
Whitehurst said in the email that each of the bidders “met the session law requirements” and none complained about the bid process.
The N&O learned by calling other companies that BI Incorporated, the electronic monitoring provider that holds the state probation and parole contract, bid for the work. Monica Hook, a spokeswoman for the company based in Boulder, Colorado, said it learned about the opportunity because it routinely monitors state legislation.
“This is a situation where it’s a sizable piece of money and because we have the (state) contract we thought we could help them out with the districts where we are, which is pretty much the whole state,” Hook said.
She said Caitlyn’s Courage informed BI it didn’t get the contract but didn’t explain why or identify other bidders. If a public agency had handled the bid process, BI and others would have been able to get that information through a public records request. But BI didn’t see that happening with Caitlyn’s Courage because it’s a private nonprofit.
A public records battle 40 years ago between the N&O and Wake County’s hospital system didn’t go that way. The state’s courts ruled that the hospital system could not withhold records because it was a private nonprofit, said Brooks Fuller, who leads the North Carolina Open Government Coalition at Elon University.
“They found that if a private nonprofit organization is doing public and governmental functions then it can be subject to the North Carolina public records act,” Fuller said. “So these cases hang on whether the work of the nonprofit is inextricably tied to public governmental work.”
Whitehurst said in one of his email responses that Tarheel Monitoring’s proposal offered several features that separated it from other bidders.
“Tarheel Monitoring was the only proposal submitted that committed to have live / direct interaction with victims, versus Caitlyn’s Courage taking that risk, liability and responsibility,” Whitehurst said.
That includes a lengthy list of services, he said, such as contacting accusers so they know the defendant is on monitoring, training accusers how to receive notifications and testing their cellphones to make sure they receive alerts around the clock.
He said Caitlyn’s Courage has decided to offer the program statewide “as a result of multiple judges and other (domestic violence) community stakeholders requesting the program in their respective areas.”
Steve Chapin, the CEO of Buddi, a manufacturer of electronic monitoring devices in the Tampa, Florida, area, said he did not learn about the pilot program until a few weeks ago. A representative for SCRAM Systems of Littleton, Colorado, also said it was not aware of the bid opportunity.
“We monitor the bid sites, and normally when a public agency wants to solicit bids they advertise it, and that’s how we find out,” Chapin said. “And in this case, it either was not advertised, or it wasn’t advertised in any of the places that we normally monitor.”
Russo, the electronic monitoring expert, also found it unusual that a newly formed nonprofit would be put in charge.
Gigler, of Track Group, said in his 17 years in the business, he’s never seen state funding for electronic monitoring be handled this way.
“There’s probably 20 plus different states that have domestic violence legislation and do some form of electronic monitoring,” he said. “Those are all procured through government.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 2:33 PM with the headline "What happened after NC gave millions to prevent domestic abuse with little oversight."