Cabarrus County Commissioners voted 3-1 Tuesday night to fire both longtime County Manager Mike Downs and County Attorney Richard Koch. By Wednesday afternoon, county website pages related to both men had been taken down.
Downs started working for Cabarrus County in 1986 as a zoning inspector and had been county manager since 2011. Koch, who also has a private practice, had been county attorney since 2006.
Messages for all five Cabarrus County commissioners were left via county emails and listed phone numbers Wednesday. Commissioners Lynn Shue and Kenneth Wortman returned messages from Business North Carolina. Board Chair Chris Measmer declined to comment, referring questions to the board’s attorney.
Shue could not attend Tuesday’s meeting because of complications related to dialysis treatment, but said he was “well aware” of what transpired. He called Downs “a good man who loves Cabarrus County,” adding he opposed his firing.
“This new crew that took over (in the 2024 election) has an agenda and getting rid of him (Downs) was one of them,” says Shue, who has served on the county board for 14 years. “I don’t know why. There’s not a better man in the world.”
Commissioner Measmer, who became board chair after the 2024 election, was joined by commission newcomers Laura Blackwell Lindsey and Larry Pittman to fire Downs and Koch. Commissioner Kenneth Wortman voted in opposition. Wortman changed his party affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated in 2023 after getting elected to the board in 2022. The other four members of the county board are registered as Republicans.
“This is a sad for Cabarrus County,” says Wortman. “The amount of experience and leadership we lost with one bad decision is astounding.”
Shue and Wortman says the board fired Downs “with cause,” although the reason was not stated in open session. That could become a legal issue, says Shue and Wortman. Downs’ contract states if he is fired without cause, he gets 18 months salary as severance pay. If he’s fired “with cause,” he gets no severance. Downs earned a salary of $280,000 a year, according to Shue and Wortman.
Wortman would not disclose the reason the others say Downs needed to be fired, saying it was discussed in closed session. Neither Downs nor Koch could be reached for comment.
Lindsey previously served six years on the Cabarrus County Board of Education. Pittman was in the N.C. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2023, where his controversial statements periodically made national news.
Pittman reportedly wrote in a 2017 Facebook post that Abraham Lincoln was “the same sort of tyrant” as Adolph Hitler. He compared Lincoln to Hitler again in 2019, which led to House Republicans voting to condemn his actions.
Cabarrus abuts Mecklenburg County and is the state’s ninth-most populous county with about 245,000 residents. The population has nearly doubled since 2000.
Separately, WCNC reports the entire Cabarrus County Fair department has resigned, citing a hostile work environment and alleged threats from leadership.