The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is investigating an unnamed member of the Greensboro City Council; however, according to several sources, that investigation is not related to the SBI investigation of former Greensboro City Attorney Chuck Watts, who retired suddenly at the start of July.

Though SBI officials have not said which City Council member is under investigation, many people have surmised that it may be Councilmember Zack Matheny due to a lot of recent discussion of potential conflicts of interest and other concerns regarding his role as the president of Downtown Greensboro Inc. in conjunction with his position on the Greensboro City Council.

For about two decades, George Hartzman, a Greensboro tax consultant and financial planner, has been providing local news outlets and government officials with information on what he sees as wrongdoing by city leaders and others. Sometimes there has been something to those claims; sometimes they have turned out to be dead ends. In recent months, Hartzman has been sending a flurry of emails to multiple news outlets – including the Rhino Times – as well as to law enforcement officials, government attorneys, Downtown Greensboro Inc. board members and many others regarding his concerns about Matheny and other DGI issues.

One email Hartzman sent to the Rhino Times was 8,000 words long.

One interesting thing about the SBI investigation is that former News and Record reporter Joe Killian, who now writes for an online newspaper called The Assembly, wrote an article in late June in which he – after listening to Hartzman and seeing allegations popping up on social media – got a complete denial from the SBI that any investigation was taking place.

“The SBI is not investigating anything concerning the Greensboro City Council and/or the city attorney,” Chad Flowers, the public information officer for the SBI, told [The Assembly]. “The SBI has no investigations running and we don’t know of any investigations that the SBI is doing into anything concerning the Greensboro City Council.”

Just days after Killian wrote the article, the same SBI spokesperson said that there was an investigation of a Greensboro City Council member and maintained that, the first time he spoke with Killian, there in fact was no investigation going on.

Flowers told Killian that it was an investigation into the activities of a City Council member but did not provide a name.

Matheny did not return a call from the Rhino Times this week.

He has filed to run again to maintain his seat on the City Council.

If the investigation centers on him, Matheny told Killian, he’s fine with that.

“If it were to be me, I am happy for anybody to come and have a conversation with me and look into anything,” Matheny is quoted as saying in The Assembly article. “I know I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve been around serving this community for over 20 years. I’m proud of the work I’ve done and have nothing to hide.”

In an email sent to members of the DGI Board of Directors, Hartzman laid out a series of concerns suggesting that several current board members are too closely tied to Matheny or have benefited personally from DGI operations to provide impartial oversight.

According to Hartzman, the conflicts fall into three categories for Matheny: campaign contributions he received, personal benefits, and relationships involving taxpayer-supported financial benefits.

Hartzman claimed in the email that some board members or their affiliates made contributions to Matheny’s City Council campaigns – not just directly, but also through family members or controlled business entities. The allegations also stated that Matheny received in-kind contributions such as volunteer services with monetary value and coordinated “bundling” of donations from others.

Hartzman’s email stated that other board members may have received personal benefits from DGI itself. That list allegedly includes free tickets to sporting or entertainment events, meals and hospitality, and other perks funded by the organization.

In the third category, Hartzman alleged that some board members – or their employers or affiliated entities – received taxpayer-funded support or other financial advantages through DGI while also having financial or political ties to Matheny.

For years, there’s been an argument as to whether Matheny had significant conflicts of interest. In fact, when he first took the job as DGI president in 2015, he stepped down from the City Council for that very reason.  After a hiatus of about six years, he was back in his City Council seat.

Since then, questions have been raised about potential conflicts between the nonprofit’s public-private mission and Matheny’s dual roles.

In 2015, when Matheny first took the DGI job, he issued the following public statement: “It has been my distinct honor to serve the City and residents as the District 3 Council representative since 2007. During my four terms on City Council, I have worked diligently to do what I believed was in the best interest for residents of District 3 and the entire city. It’s been my goal as a member of Council to always advocate for ways to help Greensboro meet its potential as one of the best cities in the southeast. The downtown area is a huge part of our growth as a city and it’s certainly near and dear to my heart. A few months ago, I expressed interest in leading Downtown Greensboro Incorporated and have interviewed to become the organization’s next President and CEO. Due to the nature of the discussions and my desire to avoid any perceived conflicts of interest, as of today, I plan to resign from City Council at the June 16 meeting.”

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