The most important CMS questions remain unanswered

Today is Monday, October 19, 2026. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.

Today's Charlotte Ledger is sponsored by Carnegie Private Wealth. At Carnegie Private Wealth, we bring clarity to complexity. Through thoughtful planning and personal attention, we help you pursue opportunities and reclaim time for what matters most.

Happy Monday! It’s Tony. Our team has spent the past month digging into Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ turmoil. Today, in our lead story, we take a step back to assess what we know and what we don’t — and how the criminal investigations might unfold. If you’re interested in the topic but haven’t kept track of the sometimes confusing and complex details, this one’s for you. Plus, we have advice for navigating the new Wegmans, info on the upcoming election and a Lawrence Toppman arts review. I was also sad to read about injuries at the Lazy 5 Ranch, a beloved spot where we took our children years ago to feed giraffes and view other animals.

by Tony Mecia

Let’s stipulate that having the FBI, State Bureau of Investigation and state auditor examining your operation puts you in an uncomfortable spot.

That, of course, is where Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools finds itself just weeks after a bombshell memo from the then-superintendent, Crystal Hill, hit the media. It suggested financial and contracting shenanigans surrounding the hiring of a $30,000-a-month politically connected consultant, Raki McGregor, by a law firm CMS had hired without the knowledge of Hill or most of the school board.

The school board fired Hill the following week in a contentious 5-4 vote.

It has been a month since those allegations surfaced. We've learned plenty about the people involved, the contracts they signed and the money that flowed from CMS. But we still don't know enough to answer a basic question: Was this simply a case of sloppy contracting and lax oversight? Or something more troubling?

At this point, there’s no smoking gun … just some smoke.

I’ve been looking into this issue for the last month, along with my Charlotte Ledger colleagues Michelle Crouch and Ashley Fahey. We’ve pored over the available public documents and requested many others, and collectively talked to a couple of dozen people who have expertise in law or contracting or board dynamics or local politics.

But nobody we’ve talked to seems to know exactly how serious the problems are. Many important details are missing, and the key players who could help fill in the blanks aren’t talking.

School board member Stephanie Sneed, who stepped down as board chair but stayed on the board after Hill’s account suggested that she was involved in the questionable contracting, has struck a defiant tone while refusing to provide details that could provide clarity.

“Assumptions and allegations and mischaracterizations have been repeated as facts,” she said at last week’s school board meeting, sounding irritated as she read from a prepared statement. “An investigation is not a finding of wrongdoing. An allegation is not a verdict.”

That is all true. But it’s also true that indignation is not an explanation.

She, McGregor and CMS have offered no public explanations or alternate interpretations of the facts that Hill presented a month ago, which she bolstered with more than 200 pages of records. While lawyers have probably advised them to stay silent amid criminal investigations, they’re taking a beating in the court of public opinion because nobody has advanced an alternate narrative.

Let’s examine some of the most basic questions that remain largely unanswered.

What we know: CMS documents show that on Feb. 4, Poyner Spruill, a well-respected statewide law firm, entered into a contract with CMS to assist with an initiative to build affordable housing for teachers, an issue that is legally tricky. The contract was signed by Sneed, chief financial officer Kelly Kluttz and acting general counsel Anna Hehenberger for CMS and partner Katie Cornetto for Poyner Spruill.

The law firm’s billing records sent to CMS show that Cornetto had conversations that same day with another law firm partner about “potential hiring of consultant for the schools through Poyner Spruill and best means to do so.” Cornetto talked to Sneed that same day, the records show, as well as to a “consultant” who is not named.

On Feb. 6, Cornetto sent a letter to McGregor that confirmed that his company, Qonnect, would perform consulting work in connection with Poyner Spruill’s work with CMS on a $30,000-a-month retainer. It said that McGregor would be paid only if CMS reimbursed Poyner Spruill for his work.

McGregor had previously worked on the affordable housing project for CMS in his time as an adviser to Hill.

Hill said she was unaware that McGregor was hired by the law firm at the time the contract was entered into.

What we don’t know: Nobody has publicly explained why Poyner Spruill decided to hire McGregor, a former Novant Health senior vice president of new business, digital equity and community growth. He had also been an “executive-in-residence” to CMS and a former adviser to Hill until CMS cut off his contracts in 2025. (Hill’s memo said she made that decision after reading a Charlotte Ledger article in July 2025 about McGregor’s political activities.)

McGregor is a well-connected figure who had backed the candidacies of several school board members and donated to local politicians, including Sneed. Until recently, McGregor served as chair of the transportation committee of the influential Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Well-known businessmen Malcomb Coley and Hugh McColl Jr. are listed as advisers to McGregor’s son’s transportation company, and a 2023 Axios Charlotte article said McGregor’s son was a regular driver for Coley and McColl.

Poyner Spruill has not said why it hired McGregor. Sneed has not discussed her involvement.

What we know: The four-page “strategic services agreement” between Poyner Spruill and McGregor was obtained from CMS through a public records request.

It lists Qonnect’s responsibilities on the affordable housing project in general terms and outlines a series of potential tasks that draw heavily on providing advice and making connections. It does not identify specific reports, deadlines or minimum work hours.

Some of the duties include giving advice “regarding political, organizational and regulatory dynamics,” providing “guidance on stakeholder engagement sequencing and tone” and “support in repairing or restructuring opportunities affected by misalignment, timing or perception.” Consulting agreements often use vague language and are structured on a retainer basis, as the tasks can be difficult to determine in advance.

Poyner Spruill’s billing records list Cornetto as having three calls with the consultant in March, totaling three hours, and writing four pieces of correspondence to him that month.

CMS has no records of anything produced by McGregor and his company regarding the affordable housing initiative, the district told The Ledger this month. CMS also has no records of a $220,000 compliance assessment that the district hired Poyner Spruill to conduct starting in June, with McGregor to receive $132,000 of that, in an agreement that was to run through September 2026.

What we don’t know: Poyner Spruill presumably has a better idea of what it received from its work with McGregor, but it has not provided information on his work.

What we know: According to the N.C. State Board of Elections, McGregor donated $500 to Sneed’s reelection campaign in October 2025.

The two also worked together to pitch the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office on a consulting proposal this spring, which the Sheriff’s Office turned down, The Ledger reported last month.

What we don’t know: Were there other business or financial arrangements between Sneed and McGregor? What would she have stood to gain, if anything, from promoting McGregor as a CMS consultant? No evidence has surfaced showing that she personally profited from the contracts.

What we know: In August, CMS finance officials alerted Hill of problems with a Poyner Spruill invoice. Kluttz, the chief financial officer, said she was “unable to locate a contract and an associated purchase order supporting the expenditure.” Sneed had said in an email that she was unaware documentation was missing.

Board members have said they were unaware of the contract and McGregor’s involvement.

CMS policy allows the district to enter into contracts of up to $250,000 without a board vote. The board chair along with finance officials can sign contracts for lower amounts.

A March 4 revision to the Poyner Spruill contract called for it to be extended by 11 months, which means it could have been worth more than that threshold, though the full board appears not to have voted on that or been informed of it. (The relationship was subsequently revised again a few weeks later to encompass the compliance review that was to run for a shorter term, CMS records show.)

In her memo, Hill said she believed that Sneed intentionally circumvented CMS contracting requirements to conceal McGregor’s involvement, though available documents do not establish that Sneed intentionally did so.

Generally, board members’ responsibilities are to manage the superintendent and general counsel and to set policy, not to manage the selection of vendors and become involved in day-to-day operations.

What we don’t know: It’s unclear how or why the Poyner Spruill invoices didn’t follow usual procedures.

The finance department reports to the superintendent, not to the board. The contracts in question originated through the general counsel’s office, which is a separate chain of command to the board that does not involve the superintendent.

To gain some perspective on the investigations, I talked last week with Jonathan Vogel, a Charlotte lawyer and former federal prosecutor who has prosecuted financial fraud cases and has a background in education law.

Vogel, who has no inside knowledge of the situation, said that based on what he has read, the contracting practices sound suspicious. The investigations, he said, are fact-finding exercises.

And whether or not there will be criminal charges depends on the answers to some of the questions above.

If it’s a matter of recommending a friend for a job or overpaying or sloppy paperwork, those are red flags and poor governance that are probably of little interest to law enforcement, he said.

But if it’s a matter of hiring someone unqualified and paying them with taxpayer money for no work, that would look more like a fraudulent scheme that could interest prosecutors.

No evidence has emerged to establish that there was such a plan, but if it does, the most common charge would be wire fraud or mail fraud, which are favored by prosecutors because they are easier to prove than other corruption-related charges.

“It doesn’t require evidence of bribery or a kickback, but it could involve evidence of that,” Vogel said. “It essentially requires evidence of a dishonest scheme of intentionally defrauding someone of money. And we’re not talking about bad contracting practices. We’re talking about someone with the intent to defraud.”

He said investigators would start by talking with people who know details, like Hill. And they would seek documents from CMS, the McGregors and perhaps Poyner Spruill, though he said it can be challenging to receive records from law firms, whose communications with clients are often privileged.

If investigators need to, they can seek bank records to track the flows of money.

“They will follow the facts,” Vogel said. “They will not necessarily go on a fishing expedition, but if they have suspicion that money is going for services that are not being provided and they want to see where that money traveled … then they might issue grand jury subpoenas to the various banks and get those bank records to go through and see.”

But, he said, we might not see a resolution for a while. Investigations like this are document-intensive and typically take at least six to 12 months.

The difference between suspicion and a crime is proof. And we haven’t seen that yet.

Tony Mecia is The Ledger’s executive editor. Reach him at [email protected].

—

➡ You can read all of The Ledger’s articles on the CMS investigation at The Charlotte Ledger’s dedicated webpage

Today’s supporting sponsor is Landon A. Dunn, attorney-at-law in Matthews:

Thousands of shoppers descended on the Charlotte region’s newest grocery curiosity this weekend, the Wegmans that opened Wednesday in Ballantyne.

One of the local residents among the masses was The Ledger’s operations manager, Brie Chrisman, a Syracuse, N.Y., native who fondly recalls her childhood experiences with the grocery chain. She confesses she was “ridiculously excited” when Wegmans announced it was opening its first store here.

If you’re planning to check out what the hype is all about, here are Brie’s tips for navigating the new Wegmans, following her pilgrimage on Saturday:

In-person early voting continues through Oct. 31. Early voting sites can be found online here. There are 25 early voting sites across Mecklenburg County. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.

You can check your voter status and your sample ballot here.

Why is your vote in Mecklenburg County so important? Check out this four-minute video from The Election Hub and the Hometown Holler Foundation:

The latest on local elections:

➡ Learn about every candidate on your ballot at The Election Hub

Events submitted by readers to The Ledger’s events board:

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21: “Facing Your Financial Fears: Smart Money Across Generations—Gen X,” 5:30-7:30 p.m., Mint Museum Randolph, 2730 Randolph Road. Join The Charlotte Ledger for an in-person discussion with tips on how to get ahead in personal finance areas such as retirement readiness, refining your investment strategy and balancing your financial needs with those of parents and children. Every Wednesday in October, we tackle the money questions that show up at different stages in life. Free.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24: “Bourbon for Booty,” 6:30-10 p.m., at Swinerton, 901 Berryhill Rd. Sip. Savor. Support. Raise a glass to help support our local cancer community. Join 24 Foundation for an exceptional evening of curated bourbons, whiskeys, wines and chef-prepared small bites. This unforgettable night of fine sips and flavorful bites directly benefits local cancer navigation and survivorship programs. Guests must be 21 or older. $150/ticket.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24: “Thrown Together Potters Fall Sale,” 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 1225 Dade St. Celebrate Thrown Together Potters Fall Sale and discover distinct artistic points of view in one inspiring event. Explore functional and sculptural pottery, meet the artists behind the work and find one-of-a-kind holiday gifts and beautiful pieces for your home. Free. 

NOVEMBER 8: “Unlisted Arts Market,” 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., at Mint Museum Randolph, 2730 Randolph Road. The Unlisted Arts Market, hosted by Upcycle Arts, is where you find artists first. On Nov. 8 at the Mint Museum Randolph, Charlotte's established makers share the floor with The First-Timer’s Cohort selling their work for the very first time. Come shop both, meet the people behind the work and be able to say you knew them when! Free to enter.

➡️ List your event on the Ledger events board.