When Megan Garner took the job running the City of Graham, she was already under a cloud – not in Graham where she seems to have settled in well enough – but in the small town of Rural Hall where she ran for local government from 2017 until it became impossible for her.
A lawsuit she filed in Alamance County puts much of the blame for that on a sitting member of the Rural Hall Town Council, Susan Gordon, who Garner is now suing for defamation over public comments accusing Garner of everything from embezzlement to adultery.
Support local journalism as a Times-News subscriber
Forsyth County Superior Court will hear that case now, as well as several other lawsuits against Garner, after a hearing this week allowing Garner’s case to be transferred out of Alamance County, according to Anna Davis, representing the woman Garner is suing.
More: Alamance-Burlington Board of Education decides on name for high school set to open next August
Garner’s transition to Graham came after a dramatic exit from her old job Oct. 21, 2021. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, Garner and three of the four members of the Rural Hall Town Council and the town attorney resigned that night over conflicts among council members and what the resigning council members said was a smear campaign against Garner.
In her suit, Garner claims she had to not only leave her job in Rural Hall but move away because of unfounded rumors Gordon spread.
Gordon, according to the suit, told a meeting of a local historical society that Garner stole money from the town, used “crappy spreadsheets” to cover her tracks and had an affair with a married sheriff’s deputy, knowing none of it was true. Gordon denied all that in her response to Garner’s suit.
However those rumors got started, there were media reports and reporters asking Garner about a missing $1.5 million, an audit from the State Auditor’s Office that found no evidence of missing funds and Garner being interviewed about where the reports of missing money came from, all of which she found embarrassing and humiliating, according to the suit.
This is far from the only lawsuit between Garner, Rural Hall and others in town. Garner hired a lawyer months before leaving Rural Hall who wrote letters complaining about disgruntled employees and officials creating a hostile work environment by spreading false rumors about lost money and affairs with employees.
When she left, the town council voted 3-1, with Gordon voting ‘nay’ to give her a six-figure severance package or settlement before the three of them approving the funds resigned, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.
The town council later sued Garner and those three council members saying that settlement violated her contract since she was not fired, had another job lined up and never submitted a written resignation, according to the lawsuit. She never received the severance. Garner made counterclaims in that suit alleging a hostile work environment based on her gender.
The ex-wife of the former Rural Hall fire chief also filed an alienation of affection suit against Garner in Forsyth County alleging an affair between them that Garner has denied.
Gordon’s lawyers argued the defamation suit, while filed in Alamance County, should be heard in Forsyth because that is where most of the witnesses live, and any government officials called to testify would have to travel to Graham at public expense.
Garner was just the second person to manage Rural Hall government, according to the town’s suit against Garner. Garner’s lawyers allege the man who preceded her ran the town through informal networks of mostly female employees and played favorites. Her efforts to make operations more professional made enemies, some of whom seem to be running town government now, according to the suit.
Garner had been looking at the job in Graham for some time before leaving Rural Hall. Job postings for the vacant city manager job went up in June of 2021 and the city council met three times in late September and early October to consider the final six of 35 applicants.
Her salary went from more than $111,000 to $120,000 when Garner moved to Graham, a town more than four times the population of Rural Hall.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Graham City Manager takes defamation suit against old boss back to Forsyth County
