Mooresville board asks Mayor Chris Carney to resign over late-night encounter
The Mooresville Board of Commissioners voted 4-2 Monday night in favor of a resolution expressing “no confidence” in Mayor Chris Carney and requested that he resign.
“Public confidence has been shattered,” commissioner Dana Tucker said before making the motion before a packed audience at Town Hall, which broke out in applause after the vote.
Carney said in a phone call Tuesday with The Charlotte Observer that he does not plan to resign.
“This again is the unfortunate side of politics. I just got reelected. Nothing different has come out about this,” he said. “I am accountable to the 58,000 residents, not these four (commissioners) who voted the way they did.”
Faith in town leadership has continued to erode since Carney’s late-night visit into Town Hall with a woman on Oct. 10, 2024, and lawsuits by former town employees who said they were forced out for raising concerns about the mayor’s actions, commissioners who voted for the measures said.
“Public trust is not an option,” town commissioner and mayor pro tem Eddie Dingler told the audience. “It is the foundation of local government. The people of Mooresville deserve better.”
Commissioner Frank Owens voted against the motion. He said he’s known Carney for 30 years and has seen all the good he has done for the town. Carney shouldn’t be punished for one incident, he said, adding that commissioners haven’t seen the video at issue.
“My God had only one person who was perfect,” Owens said.
Others weren’t swayed.
“These events have impacted our brand, eroded trust in our town leadership,” commissioner Gary West said.
Carney apologized to the audience and then left for a back room in Town Hall before the board discussed and voted on Tucker’s motion.
“I could not apologize more or feel worse,” Carney told the crowd.
He said, however, that he “had nothing to do with the three people who filed lawsuits against the town” alleging retaliation.
“This has just been good ole ugly politics coming into play, taking advantage of the situation,” the mayor said, without citing further evidence of that claim.
What’s this all about?
The imbroglio involving the mayor began in June 2025 when WBTV filed a civil lawsuit against Mooresville after the town refused to release town hall video from Oct. 10, 2024.
The video reportedly shows Carney and a female town consultant in town hall late at night. Alarms were twice triggered in the building, requiring police response each time, Carney has acknowledged in an interview with The Charlotte Observer.
He didn’t have pants on “for an extended period,” according to the WBTV complaint in court.
Carney has said he was drinking with town officials at a restaurant and got sick because of medicine and had to go inside. The consultant was simply assisting him, he has said.
With the WBTV lawsuit pending, three civil lawsuits were filed by former town employees alleging retaliation over the fallout from the late night encounter.
• In January, former IT employee Jeffrey Noble filed a federal lawsuit against the town, Carney and others for compensation after he said he was fired in retaliation for reporting misconduct seen on the video, including the mayor being pantless.
• In February, Frank Falzone, a former Mooresville assistant police chief, filed a lawsuit alleging he was forced to retire for raising concerns about two late-night incidents involving the mayor.
• In March, former town IT director Chris Lee filed a federal lawsuit alleging he was told to conceal evidence or resign.
WBTV’s lawsuit and the three civil lawsuits against the town all remain pending.
Judge still to rule on WBTV lawsuit
WBTV sued the town for the video’s release in June 2025.
“These are public records and not sensitive materials” as the town argues, lawyer Lauren Russell told Judge Richard Gottlieb during a hearing in Iredell County Civil Superior Court in Statesville in March.
Carney and other town officials didn’t attend the hearing. Regarding allegations he was pantless in town hall at the time, Carney has said he was cleaning vomit off himself.
Transparency of public officials also is at issue, and the video “is of great public interest,” Russell said.
Keith Merritt of the Charlotte law firm Hamilton Stephens Steele + Martin, a lawyer retained by the town, argued in court that most video cameras in Town Hall “are not in public areas,” including the one cited in the WBTV lawsuit. And someone with nefarious purposes could see where to dodge cameras inside Town Hall if the video was released, he argued in court.
“There are vulnerabilities in the system that could be revealed,” Merritt said. “We strongly believe (the video) is sensitive security information.”
Gottlieb has yet to issue a ruling.
Carney and the woman “twice triggered motion detectors at Town Hall, alerting the Mooresville Police Department,” according to the WBTV lawsuit.
The woman was a paid public relations consultant for the town, according to the lawsuit and documents obtained by The Charlotte Observer through a public records request.
In an interview, Carney told WBTV that he went to Town Hall to retrieve his work phone, “and then stayed for a few hours in order to sober up following a dinner with Town commissioners,” the lawsuit states.
He took an unexpected leave of absence for three weeks after the incident, which he said was to take bereavement and to address substance use issues, according to the complaint.
The videos would merely show him walking in the hallways and going to the bathroom, Carney told WBTV, the lawsuit states.
In denying the station’s request for the video, Town Attorney Sharon Crawford wrote that the videos are “criminal intelligence records” exempt from mandatory release under the state’s open records law. The lawsuit includes a copy of her letter.
In February, Carney and Mooresville Police Chief Ron Campurciani refuted claims in two of the lawsuits against the town about Carney’s behavior during the two late-night encounters involving police.
“Enough is enough,” Carney said in a previous interview with The Charlotte Observer and Observer news partner WSOC. “We need to come out and set the record straight.”
Carney said claims are false in the lawsuits filed against him, the town and other Mooresville officials .
But the facts of what happened that night remain murky.
Carney has repeatedly said in media interviews that he fell ill after medications he was on mixed with alcohol after a gathering at a bar near Town Hall.
“I never thought, to be fair, that vomiting and making a mess would become a national story,” the mayor previously said. “I really couldn’t have imagined that.”
This story was originally published April 6, 2026 at 10:41 PM.