No debating his passion

Talkative John Skinner was the Association’s ‘life and soul’ for three decades as secretary-treasurer

A long line of characters make up the rich history of the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, but none may have been more colorful than John Skinner, a former Warren County commissioner who served as secretary-treasurer of the Association from 1923 until his untimely death in October 1950.

A man who loved politics, county government and making money, Skinner found a way to combine those three passions as secretary-treasurer of the Association. Skinner was hired in 1923 at the salary of $150 per year plus expenses, but he also was to receive 70 percent of the advertising revenues generated by the Association’s yearbook.

His official duties were to manage the Association’s finances, to collect dues from the counties – no small feat in those days – and to organize the annual meeting. In 1933, his report to the membership gave a cash balance of $346. His annual salary was eventually increased to $50 per month – but only if the Association had the money to pay it, and that was not always the case.

While the Association struggled to maintain a positive cash balance each year, Skinner was proving to be an excellent salesman for the annual yearbook, so much so that some in the Association began to believe he was making too much money off selling advertisements. At the annual meeting in 1944, President J. Henry Vaughan of Nash County made a motion to change the revenue split to a 50/50 division of the proceeds after noting that Skinner had made more than $27,000 from the sales in the previous 10 years. Vaughan’s motion failed to pass, and the 70/30 split remained in effect.

Skinner listed his occupation as farmer, but one of his contemporaries in the Association is quoted in “Call From Craven” (Jerry Elliott’s 1985 history of the Association) as saying that Skinner’s work at the NCACC was his “cash crop.”

While Skinner was certainly interested in making a living for his family, he was also very passionate about county government. He took his duties as secretary-treasurer seriously, and he also viewed himself as the Association’s spokesperson and lobbyist on legislative issues.

In one of his first official duties as treasurer during the 1924 Annual Conference, Skinner delivered a blistering report aimed at the General Assembly. According to the official notes of the session, Skinner “scored the General Assembly of 1923 for the indefensible way in which it dumped the school debt on the counties, after said counties had complied with the law and levied amounts asked for by various school boards.”

When researching “Call from Craven” in the early 1980s, Elliott set up an interview with then Secretary of State Thad Eure in November 1983 as Eure was serving his 47th year in office. Even though it had been more than two decades since Skinner’s death from injuries suffered in an automobile accident, Eure had vivid recollections of his many discussions with Skinner.

“Talked incessantly,” Eure recalled. “He was really devoted to county government. He was a lobbyist, and that was before we had any laws regulating lobbyists.”

Almost every county official who came into contact with Skinner had an opinion about the man – most were positive, although he did have a few detractors. Former Forsyth County Commissioner Ancus L. “Hank” Payne, who served as Association president in 1932-33, said in “Call from Craven” that Skinner “was the type of man who, when you first met him, you’d like him. And then, the better you knew him, the more you would like him.”

During the debate over his cut of the yearbook ad sales, Durham County Manager D.W. Newsome defended Skinner, saying he “has been the life and soul of this Association through its long history.”

One of his detractors, however, called Skinner “a professional hayseed but cunning.”

Skinner’s tenure came to an unexpected end in October 1950, when he died from injuries suffered in an automobile accident. According to his obituary, he served as a member on the Warren County Board of Commissioners and Board of Education, and the Local Government Commission.