We hate to be downers but there are some folks out there who tried their hardest to make this year worse rather than better and they deserve to be called on it.
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LEAST TRANSPARENT: Johnny Jennings
When news broke that a majority of Charlotte City Council members had, in a closed session, voted to approve a large settlement for CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings to help ease his hurt feelings and convince him not to sue the city for getting yelled at by former council rep Tariq Bokhari the previous summer, folks were up in arms about the lack of transparency around the decision. Rightfully so, though that was more of a question of city leadership rather than Jennings.
Regardless, it’s not about how Jennings went out — he’ll retire with his $305,000 check at the end of the year, as The Charlotte Optimist’s Michael Graff eventually reported — but how he came in. See, we’re old enough to remember when Jennings was sworn in as chief in July 2020, replacing Kerr Putney and promising that his administration would prioritize transparency.
Then in the summer of 2022, Jennings turned around and announced changes to the department’s public information department, ending weekly press conferences and cutting back on answering questions from the media about any given incident or issue. Us journalists were informed we’d need to file a public records request if we wanted any info not provided in the department’s reports (some of our records requests from 2020 took two years to fulfill) while public information officers shifted their focus to creating social media content. So much for that transparency promise.
WORST POLITICIAN: Carla Cunningham
In a year where NC Republicans refused to pass a budget and re-gerrymandered our state so that Donald Trump can subvert democracy in the mid-terms, it’s hard to award a single ‘Worst Politician’ title. But unfortunately, Carla Cunningham exists…