Clay County Overkill

According to the Clay County Progress the North Carolina Association of Realtors (NCAR) has invested $38,000 in "Clay County Citizens Against the Home Tax" the latest local referendum committee set up by William DePriest and run out of NCAR's Greensboro office to defeat the transfer tax. According to voter registration records, Clay County has about 8,300 registered voters. That puts the NCAR investment at about $4.50 per registered voter, a new record high. Election day is Friday, August 29th and early voting has begun.

For the Orange County referendum in May spending per registered voter by NCAR was $1.96, the highest to that point. Area realtor organizations contributed another $0.37 per registered voter (mostly from the Triangle MLS which gave $30,000) while other groups like the National Association of Homebuilders, the NC Homebuilders (NCHBA) and Triangle Community Coalition (TRICC aka realtors and builders) threw in another $0.77 per registered voter. This made for a total of $300,011.66 or $3.11 per registered voter spent in Orange County.

According to the Campaign Reports filed with the Orange County Board of Elections $151,068.90 of that went to Public Solutions Inc, the firm of Chris Sinclair, head of the TRICC, for for flyers, mailings and website design. $23,018.96 went to Cornerstone Strategy of West Palm Beach, the firm of Rick Asnani a political consultant and advisor to TRICC. Sinclair and Asnani have since set up a joint firm called Cornerstone Solutions along with a former NCHBA lobbyist.*

Now NCAR is using even more brute force in Clay County by committing over $4.50 per registered voter to defeat the transfer tax. North Carolina has almost 6 million registered voters (5,913,332 to be exact). Is NCAR planning to spend over $20 million to keep defeating the transfer tax statewide? NCAR is not defending homeowners, especially those on fixed or low incomes. NCAR is defending the property tax with complete overkill.

Who is going to pay for the schools?

Support Your County Transfer Tax

Update: *Cornestone Solutions & Communications, Inc., was dissolved effective 11:59pm on June 30th, 2008. Articles of dissolution dated June 18th, 2008 were filed June 19th, 2008.