It takes a special kind of person to exploit human suffering for political gain, but another adjective is needed to describe the person who would do that during the catastrophic event and not afterward.
We will contemplate that word for a moment.
Raymond Cummings, the chairman of the Robeson County Board of Commissioners and a candidate for chairman of the Lumbee Tribe, more than once has shown himself before to be special.
This is a man who used his mother’s death to defend paying his taxes late; nevermind that she died a week after the deadline. This is a man who orchestrated the dismissal of a tax administrator so that his wife could step into the position and its triple-digit salary (yes, we know that’s pending, but no one doubts it). This is a man who tried to turn a celebration of a Dixie Youth World Series championship team into a campaign rally for himself, and shows up at emergency shelters with a campaign hat on.
So perhaps we should not be surprised that as Hurricane Florence continued to lash Robeson County, destroying people’s property, altering their life’s course, and putting them in a corner fearing for their survival, that Cummings went on Facebook and posted without comment a picture of the flooded temporary office of the Public Schools of Robeson County and a photo of the Angel Exchange building that had not flooded.
His message was implicit: I told you so.
Except he didn’t.
Back to that in a second.
It is fair to blast the Board of Education for its decision to locate on Kahn Drive in a building that had flooded during Hurricane Matthew. And if voters want board members to pay the price, it should be easy to remember who is culpable. The vote to move to the old BB&T building was unanimous, all 11 in favor.
The board members likely didn’t believe that a 1,000-year flood event would occur twice in two years. We calculate those odds at about a million to one.
But no matter now; it has happened.
When Angel Exchange was first floated as a possible permanent place for the central office, we said in this space the zip code should not matter. We wrote: “If the school system were to use the 35 acres of land that it already owns at COMtech, then the central office would be perceived as being in Pembroke, and those who believe they must fight to protect Lumberton’s claim as the center of all things that matter in Robeson County believe a revolt would follow.
“We doubt it. You could send a litter of kids through the Public Schools of Robeson County and never find the occasion to drive to the central office, so location isn’t that big a deal. If it were, COMtech is less than six miles from the old central office.”
We also said the building needed to meet the system’s needs, and the decision was the school board’s. Eleven spoke, as we said, in one voice.
The reason that Angel Exchange was never seriously considered as a permanent place for the central office is because of Raymond Cummings. Cummings could have pushed for the purchase in a transparent way, taking the case to the public instead of trying to bully it through in the dark.
He could have consulted with the school board in advance; he didn’t.
He could have placed on the agenda the possibility of spending millions of dollars for a public building for discussion; he didn’t.
He could have waited until all of the county’s eight districts were represented before there was a vote by the commissioners; he didn’t, claiming urgency on his lie that a private buyer might snatch it from underneath the school system.
We don’t remember his saying Angel Exchange’s high ground was necessary as protection against another once-in-a-millennium event.
So Cummings does what Cummings does, and that is to make the deals out of the public’s view, and typically so that he, family or friends will be the chief beneficiaries.
But Cummings was wrong when he thought he could count on fellow Commissioners Berlester Campbell, Roger Oxendine and Jerry Stephens for the necessary votes and, in a pinch, nudge Noah Woods to raise his hand. He lost sufficient support as the onion continued to get peeled.
The school board is again in need of a central office, and perhaps this time it makes sense to buy Angel Exchange. It is in foreclosure so the county should be able to get a great deal.
It should be hard to believe that a public official could take such delight in claiming he was right, doing so in the midst of a hurricane that was raining misery on this county and it residents. But with Cummings, it is what we have come to expect.
Loathsome is the word we were looking for, and it certainly applies to the chairman of our Board of Commissioners.
