Tue, Aug 26, 2025; Nonprofit Leaders Seeking Office: Where’s the Financial Transparency?
Greensboro voters are being asked to elect candidates who already control millions in taxpayer and charitable dollars, but how that money is spent is anything but clear.
Robbie Perkins is President of Yvonne Johnson’s One Step Further. Hugh Holston runs the Greensboro Housing Coalition. Richard Beard heads the Greensboro Sports Foundation. Zack Matheny cashes a paycheck from Downtown Greensboro Inc. Jamilla Pinder works for Cone Health Foundation and Michael McKinney is the CEO of Piedmont Business Capital. Every one of these groups receives tax free public funds or grants meant to serve the city with little meaningful oversight.
Unlike businesses that succeed or fail based on accountability to paying customers, nonprofits spend other people’s money; taxpayer dollars, grants and donations. Without credible scrutiny, these funds can be managed with little public accountability, and Greensboro has recently witnessed troubling entanglements between public service, nonprofit work and political careers.
If these leaders want our votes, they should first provide full transparency about the finances of the organizations they represent. If they aren’t open about the money they already oversee, why should they be trusted with even more power?
We need to know how much of their spending goes to programs versus salaries and perks. How much has been spent on entertainment, travel, or meals - and with whom? Where are the ledgers, published in full, for everyone to see?
The public should not have to rely on rumors or piecemeal disclosures. Before anyone asks for our vote, they should show us the books. Transparency must come first.
George Hartzman
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Wed, Aug 13, 2025; When Public Funds Become Private Perks: Greensboro’s Ethical Crisis
Picture this: Top government officials, the very people entrusted with safeguarding our tax money, violating multiple laws by enjoying exclusive luxury events and lavish meals. Who’s footing the bill? A nonprofit funded by our hard earned tax dollars.
Now follow the money: That nonprofit’s CEO is an elected official who sets the salaries and budgets of the same people enjoying the tax-funded perks.
But it gets worse. In an election year, the same CEO invites the nonprofit’s board members, many of whom are campaign donors, government contractors or both, to taxpayer subsidized affairs. Meanwhile, the CEO and multiple elected officials who also accepted “gifts”, vote on deals involving those same contractors, funneling even more of our money into their pockets.
This isn’t just unethical, it very much looks illegal. State law prohibits contractors from giving gifts to officials who control public funds. Federal law forbids nonprofits from using funds to benefit their own leadership.
Yet here we are: Our taxes are treated as a slush fund for the connected.
When do we say enough?
George Hartzman
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Aug 19, 2024; Why Government-Created Inflation Could Lead to Food Lines and Civil Unrest
Since 2008, 60% of the US money supply was created, as the other 40% was generated between 1913 and 2007.
Prices rise from inflation of the currency, governmental spending deficits and unsustainable debt issuance.
From 2008 to 2024, US Federal Debt has increased by approximately $25 trillion, an increase of about 249% over 16 years.
Approximately $8.1 trillion more federal borrowing will occur if current federal deficits continue as projected over the next five years.
If, by blaming private industry for government created inflation, the authorities prohibit grocery stores and food producers from raising prices to prevent profiteering, the food industry would become unprofitable, leading to reduced reinvestment.
Food producers would discontinue unprofitable products.
Stores which couldn’t cover operating costs would shut down.
Unprofitable food producers would go out of business.
The federal government would have to take over closed grocery stores and production facilities.
As the economy fails, the Federal Reserve would print more money to maintain short term stability.
Expect lines at grocery stores for what’s left, rationing, scarcity, civil disobedience and authoritarian violence, as that’s what happens in a Banana Republic.
George Hartzman
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Wed, Dec 8, 2021; This LTE was in a Sunday News & Record edition but is not on the website; Matheny’s Return: A Conflict of Interest Greensboro Can’t Ignore
In 2015’s “Matheny and DGI” the News and Record’s Allen Johnson wrote; “In what comes as only a mild surprise (at best), City Councilman Zack Matheny wants to head Downtown Greensboro Inc.” And “One thing should be certain, though: If he gets the DGI job, no way in the world should Matheny be on the council as well. It would be an obvious and blatant conflict of interest. The City Council funds DGI and has had an increasing voice in its mission and its operations.”
On December 7, 2021, DGI CEO Bryan Zachary Matheny filed to run for Greensboro City Council’s District 3 seat.
Matheny, as a sitting Greensboro City Councilman, elected to fund DGI while openly criticizing his predecessor while placing himself in a position he helped create in which he allocated his future income of taxpayer monies with permission from his former colleagues.
Michelle Kennedy’s resignation as executive director of the IRC before accepting a job as director of Greensboro’s Neighborhood Development Department highlights the ethical issue in stark contrast to Zack’s candidacy.
Before the official filing, many wondered if Matheny was just kidding or if he really meant to run.
Now we know.
George Hartzman
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Sun, Oct 17, 2021; The Everything Bubble: When Pretend Money Becomes Real Hardship
The Federal Reserve bought $80 billion of Treasury bonds and $40 billion of mortgage-backed debt every month since June 2020 to help fund the $2.8 billion difference between how much the federal government spent over and above 2021’s fiscal year taxation.
In 2008, the Fed printed about a trillion dollars to minimize economic stress, doubling its balance sheet to more than $2 trillion. Since Covid, the U.S. central bank “created” more than $4.3 trillion to keep more employed and interest rates low. Other powerful central banks have and are acting in a similar fashion, ever expanding a global everything bubble. The Fed’s Total Assets are now $8.46 trillion after “buying” debt without anyone actually borrowing the money.
If price inflation is a function of an expanded money supply created by the Treasury and Fed as mandated by Congress and the President, both past and present Congresses and Presidents are more than partially responsible for the increased prices inflicting hardship on our mid to lower income populations.
Historically, buying so much debt with pretend money has led to massive higher repricing of the cost of living. It’s been a fun ride for the top at the expense of everyone else.
George Hartzman
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Jun 19, 2021; Greensboro Council Extends Its Own Power in the Dark
Greensboro’s City Council voted to extend the 2021 Mayoral and At-large elections to 2022 on June 15th.
As the item was not on the agenda, the item passed without public knowledge or input.
The Ethical Responsibilities of the Governing Body of the City of Greensboro “requires members of the governing body be honest, impartial, fair and responsible to the citizens”. The scheme to extend the Mayoral and At-Large terms, pay and political power was not.
This “governmental decision” was not “made in proper channels... that public office not be used for personal gain.”
Those At-large and Mayor Vaughan have violated the public trust and the “integrity of [our] local government.”
Two of our current At-Large council member’s who voted to extend their terms and pay in violation of their ethical responsibilities also receive Greensboro taxpayer monies allocated by City Council to non-profits they oversee from which they receive compensation.
As the Mayor and At-large members clearly had conflicts of interest in voting themselves longer terms with pay, the vote should be negated and retaken after a public hearing without Nancy Vaughan, Michelle Kennedy, Marikay Abuzuaiter and Yvonne Johnson’s participation.
George Hartzman
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Jun 10, 2018; VIP Parking Math Doesn’t Add Up at the Tanger Center
On December 19, 2017, Greensboro Coliseum Director Matt Brown, the City’s highest paid employee, told City Council the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts (STPAC) would be paid for in part by patrons paying $18 a piece for 330 VIP parking spaces 150 times per year. The same math was sent by Brown to Kathy Manning, Co-Chair of the Development/Marketing Task Force and Chief Fundraiser for the Center, and Walker Sanders, president of The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro which is charging fees on some of the $20 million in private pledges actually received for the project as of November, 2017, with the rest covered by debt until the rest of the money appears through 2023.
Manning’s husband Randall Kaplan, who served on the STPACs Economic Impact/Feasibility Task Force, is set to profit from the venture with a more than $30 million taxpayer funded parking deck under a new hotel down the street.
One problem with the arithmetic is more than 30 annual anticipated events without ticket charges. Student plays and concerts, dance recitals, talent competitions and non-profit uses selling out 330 VIP spots each for $18 a piece seems a bit more than unlikely.
George Hartzman
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Mar 2, 2016; Wall Street Executives Escape, But Wachovia Shareholders Paid the Price
On February 17, 2016 as a pro se litigant, I survived a motion to dismiss in Greensboro’s federal court, implicating many Wall Street execs with false SEC certifications, securities fraud and insider trading during the financial crisis.
In 2008 and 2009, Wachovia borrowed billions from the Federal Reserve’s Term Auction Facility (TAF) with an undisclosed and underutilized Federal Reserve credit line worth more than $50 Billion.
After serving at the US Treasury, former Wachovia CEO Robert Steel, with the help of former Goldman Sachs colleague Peter Weinberg, sold Wachovia to Wells Fargo for substantially less than it was worth without telling Wachovia shareholders of the size of the credit lines while citing liquidity risks as justification.
Both Steel and Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf illegally traded their company’s stocks with inside information and falsely certified SEC and merger related court filings, not unlike many other Wall Street executives.
After becoming CEO of Perella Weinberg Partners in 2014, Steel earned some of the money he allocated to Perella Weinberg Partners as Wachovia’s CEO and mislead a North Carolina Business Court without consequence, costing Wachovia shareholders including North Carolina’s pension plan more than $42 billion.
George Hartzman
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Feb 27, 2015; Wall Street’s Best-Kept Secret: Beating the “Experts” with Simplicity
I am not a stock broker, however it is common knowledge within the investment world that the low cost index funds, on average, have outperformed actively managed programs.
George Hartzman’s presentation to the City of Greensboro finds its basis in the above concept. His idea isn’t new, as the proposal essentially replicates the federal government’s Thrift Savings Plan, but merely exposing the kabuki dance of most managed funds. Hartzman is facilitating knowledge that is otherwise purposely hidden.
The facts he presented are such common knowledge in finance circles that a quick Google search finds tons of information confirming his position. The actively managed fund folks, rationally, don’t want to confront the comparison George makes to become widely known as they make their living off those fees and the projected idea, that they, and only they, have the expertise to produce results, when in fact non-managed, extremely low administration fee products outperform the supposed “experts”.
It’s not surprising that the City’s Deferred Compensation Committee and the plan provider didn’t have the courage to show up to the meeting.
W.E. Heasley, CLU, LUTCF
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Dec 9, 2013; When Earning Less Pays More: Obamacare’s Perverse Incentives
The (ACA) Affordable Care Act, (Obamacare), appears to have created an incentive to diminish government tax revenues.
Many enrolling appear to qualify for 100% subsidized taxpayer funded Medicaid, as singles without children are now eligible in many states.
At the other end of the income spectrum, if family of four making less than a hypothetical $90,000 could get federal dollars to subsidize insurance, but above $90,000, the same family gets nothing, then reducing net taxable income, by increasing deductions and/or other strategies, could shift about $5,000 of what would have been incoming revenue to outgoing taxpayer funded subsidies.
So if a family making $91,000 brings home less net income than a family making $89,000, it makes financial sense to make less to qualify for the lower rates.
In the short term, government tax revenues may fall, as many may legally lower taxable income to qualify for subsidies.
By creating a disincentive to report higher income, local and state revenues may not balance with municipal, state and federal spending plans in the near future, unless the plan is to continue to debase our currency further to finance our deficits.
George Hartzman and William Heasley