Why did Buncombe County agree to the latest Wanda Greene settlement?

ASHEVILLE – A settlement with former county manager Wanda Greene temporarily ended Buncombe County’s quest to recover taxpayer funds misspent by the disgraced longtime government employee and her colleagues.

But taxpayers will not reap the full benefits of the half-million-dollar settlement because each party pays their own legal fees.

The settlement, announced after a closed session during the Oct. 3 Buncombe County Board of Commissioners meeting, required Greene and her co-defendants to pay $502,500 to the county through December 2025. That settlement followed a Sept. 22 mediation between the county and defendants. Commissioners Martin Moore and Al Whitesides attended the mediation.

Buncombe County alleged that Greene transferred assets to her son, Michael Greene, and daughter-in-law, Celena Greene, to avoid paying a $419,372 judgment owed to the county from a separate lawsuit regarding money Greene spent on equestrian trips and dinners. The county obtained that judgment August 2021.

Buncombe County contracted outside firms to recover misappropriated funds from Wanda Greene and other officials. Since the judge handed down the ruling in the equestrian lawsuit through Feb. 9, Buncombe County has paid contracted attorneys $46,966.56 for their work recovering funds inappropriately spent by Greene and others.

Asheville-based Ron Payne and Philip Anderson are the two attorneys who have worked on the recovery efforts. They have worked with two law firms over the course of the case. The attorneys have not submitted their most recent bill to the county.

It is unclear from the billings whether all the charges owed to these attorneys pertain to work they did on the most recently settled upon lawsuit, but after legal fees, Buncombe County residents will not net much more than the $419,372 they were originally owed.

Payne told the Citizen Times Oct. 9 that the alternative to accepting the settlement was going to trial, risking a loss and further driving up legal fees.

“It really came down to a judgment,” he said. “Do we take this $502,000 known that we can recover, or do we go through a three- or four-day trial? No guarantee of recovery on the fraudulent conveyance (and) incur more legal fees. It was a pure business decision.”

“Without any reservation it was the right thing to do for the county, so it didn’t incur more expenses, get it resolved. We got the entire amount of the judgment, plus some on top of it,” Payne added.

North Carolina state law sets an interest rate of 8% per year to collect on judgments until payment is satisfied. If the lawsuit stretched to August 2024, Greene would have owed the county $520,021. Experts agree that continuing litigation would have been expensive for the county.

The deal the county made “probably saved the county a lot of money to try to run around and collect it,” Duke Law professor, Donald Beskind told the Citizen Times Oct. 9. Beskind teaches a class on torts. “That sounds like a pretty good settlement for the county.”

Buncombe County residents will not benefit from the interest accrued on the original judgment. Beskind said that’s a fact of the legal system.

“That’s the problem with litigation,” he said. “There are lawyers involved and they cost money.”

More: Judge denies ex-Buncombe manager Wanda Greene’s attempt to avoid paying $419,000

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Buncombe County spent at least $207,858.31 on outside legal counsel from 2018 to present to recoup money that Greene and others misappropriated, according to bills provided by the county. The county agreed to pay the attorneys $350 per hour for their work.

Anderson told the Board of Commissioners during the Oct. 3 meeting that the attorneys recovered nearly $4 million.

Buncombe County Government Attorney Michael Frue told the Citizen Times in an email that the outside attorneys “have recovered all sums it possibly could from all parties involved with these misappropriations.”

“Our hope was to recoup all the money that was owed to the citizens of Buncombe County,” Whitesides told the Citizen Times Oct. 9. “And that’s what we did through this process.”

Mitchell Black covers Buncombe County and health care for the Citizen Times. Email him at mblack@citizentimes.com or follow him on Twitter @MitchABlack. Please help support local journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Why did Buncombe County agree to the latest Wanda Greene settlement?