Meet Thomas Hill - Libertarian Party of North Carolina Candidate Cabarrus County Commission
Thomas's LP National Candidate Page
Thomas Hill on the Liberty Lead with C. Michael Pickens
Inform Cabarrus Questionnaire - Thomas Hill
Thomas's Interview with the Tar Heel Libertarian:
Tar Heel: You have lived in Cabarrus since 1972, worked 42 years as an electrician, and this is roughly the eleventh time you have put your name on a ballot. Why county commission now, instead of another statewide race?
Thomas Hill: County government is where most of the decisions that actually touch people’s property, taxes, and daily lives get made.
Hill: After living in Cabarrus since 1972 and working here as an electrician for 44 years, I know this county from the ground up—what it costs to keep the lights on, how rules land on small businesses and homeowners, and where local spending drifts away from core services.
That is the level I want to work at now.
Statewide races matter, and I have run them because voters deserve a real choice, not just two versions of more government.
But a state legislator or statewide candidate is one voice among many, often far from the zoning cases, budget line items, and fee increases that hit Cabarrus families directly.
The county commission is closer to the checkbook and the permit counter. That is where a consistent limit on spending, debt, and regulation can show up in the tax bill and in whether someone can use their own property without unnecessary delay.
This is the eleventh time I have put my name on a ballot because I believe voters should have that option every cycle, not only when it is convenient for the major parties. I am not running to build a career in politics.
I am running because Cabarrus has grown fast, the budget has grown with it, and someone needs to ask, every year, whether each new dollar and each new rule is actually necessary. That question belongs at the county level, where the answers affect the people I have lived and worked beside for more than fifty years.
Tar Heel: Healing Our America is a grassroots libertarian service ministry. How does that work differ from campaigning, and how would it change the way you vote on social-service and public-safety budgets?
Hill: Healing Our America is service, not a campaign. It is voluntary work with neighbors—help offered freely, without a tax bill, a bureaucracy, or a promise of votes. Campaigning asks for authority. The ministry asks nothing from government and nothing compulsory from anyone else.
That difference would shape my votes. On social-service budgets, I would resist growing county programs that crowd out churches, families, and private charity. Compassion is real when it is voluntary; a line item is not a substitute.
On public safety, I would fund the core job—protecting persons and property—and oppose mission creep, new fees, and spending that does not make Cabarrus safer. County government should do less, and do that well, so people keep the means to help one another directly.
The first item I would demand a real explanation for is the jail. The detention center budget rose from about $16.1 million in fiscal year 2024 to $21.6 million in fiscal year 2026, and the fiscal year 2027 recommendation adds 16 detention officers to open a new housing pod because the average daily population is rising.
Before I vote for that, I want the numbers behind the pod: who is in jail, for how long, and how much of the growth is pretrial rather than sentenced. Staffing and a new pod should follow the population we actually need to hold, not the other way around. Emergency response is a core duty. Expanding the jail is a choice, and it needs a plain explanation.
Tar Heel: You have said Sheriff Van Shaw is an honorable man and that morale improved after Brad Riley. If you respect the sheriff, what is still broken enough that a Libertarian commissioner needs to be in the room?
Hill: Respect for the sheriff is not a blank check. Sheriff Shaw can be an honorable man, and morale can be better than it was under Brad Riley, and the county can still be spending too much to lock too many people up. Commissioners do not run the Sheriff’s Office. They hold the purse strings.
What is still broken is the habit of treating every jail and public-safety request as automatic. The detention budget climbed from about $16.1 million in fiscal year 2024 to $21.6 million in fiscal year 2026, and the next budget asks for 16 more officers to open another pod. A Libertarian in the room asks who is being held, for how long, and whether taxpayers must fund the growth. Good leadership does not replace that vote.
Tar Heel: You have said local officers should be peacekeepers, not “revenuers and oppressors.” A commissioner cannot rewrite patrol tactics. What can the board do—pay, training requirements, jail standards, contract terms with Harrisburg, Midland, and Mount Pleasant—to push the office in that direction?
Hill: A commissioner cannot write patrol orders. The board can refuse to fund the habits that turn deputies into bill collectors. I would not add positions or pay merely to raise citation and forfeiture numbers, and I would tie new detention spending to who is held and for how long, not to filling another pod by default.
Town contracts with Harrisburg, Midland, and Mount Pleasant are the clearest lever. Those agreements should buy peacekeeping and response time, not quota-style enforcement, and the towns should keep paying their full share. Training paid by the county should stress constitutional stops, de-escalation, and the limits of the badge. Jail standards should cut needless pretrial holds. The purse is the policy.
Salary and psychological support are county fights. The board sets pay and can fund peer support and counseling in the Sheriff’s Office budget. That is a vote, not a speech.
No-knock culture is mostly the sheriff’s policy and state warrant law. The board cannot ban it, but it can refuse to fund training or equipment that treats dynamic entry as routine, and it can write that limit into the Harrisburg, Midland, and Mount Pleasant contracts.
Ending civil asset forfeiture and qualified immunity is state and federal law. A commissioner cannot repeal either. I will still say so, and I will not quietly budget the proceeds of forfeiture as if they were ordinary revenue. The purse is the part I can actually move.
Tar Heel: When the board funds school resource officers, animal control, and courtroom security, how do you keep those functions from becoming a second police department aimed at the poor and the inconvenient?
Hill: Those three jobs are not a second police department, and the budget should say so. School resource officers should be a contracted safety presence, not a school-discipline force. I would not fund SRO growth that turns classroom conflicts into arrests, and the contract should keep ordinary discipline with the schools.
Animal control should handle dangerous and neglected animals, not become a complaint bureau against poor neighbors. Fines and seizures ought to fit the harm, not the inconvenience.
Courtroom security is a narrow duty: keep the courthouse safe. It is not a roaming unit. I would fund the posts the courts actually need and vote against spare capacity that looks for work among people who cannot afford a lawyer or a permit. Scope is the safeguard.
Tar Heel: Cabarrus contracts sheriff services to smaller towns. What oversight would you add so those contracts buy peacekeeping instead of ticket volume?
Hill: The towns already pay for dedicated sheriff divisions in Harrisburg, Midland, and Mount Pleasant. I would make those contracts specify response, presence, and investigations—not citation counts. Renewal should report calls answered, response times, and serious crimes, and it should not treat ticket or forfeiture revenue as a performance measure.
Any town share that comes back as fine money should not be allowed to justify more deputies. If a town wants extra enforcement, it should say so in public and pay the full cost, rather than hide a quota inside a county contract. Oversight is the annual report and the refusal to renew a deal that measures peace by paper written.
Tar Heel: You wrote that you met and supported Joshua Rohrer, the disabled veteran whose 2021 Gastonia arrest ended with officers tasing his service dog, Sunshine, who later died. What about that case changed how you think about local government power?
Hill: I met Joshua Rohrer after Gastonia officers arrested him in October 2021 while he was standing with his service dog, Sunshine. An officer tased the dog. Sunshine got loose, and two days later she was struck and killed. The panhandling charges were later dismissed.
That case changed the scale of the problem for me. Local power does not have to announce itself as tyranny. It can start as a call about a veteran asking for help, and end with a man in jail and his dog dead. A commissioner cannot rewrite Gastonia’s tactics. I can refuse to fund the same habits here: stops that exist to write paper, a jail that holds people who are inconvenient, and contracts that never ask what the badge cost the person on the other end. Sunshine is the explanation.
Concord and Kannapolis police are not county deputies, and I cannot give them orders. If the same man were on a median here, I would still want the response to start with a welfare check, not a citation. A disabled veteran with PTSD and a service dog is not a blight to be cleared.
If an arrest happened anyway, the dog should stay with him or with a named handler, not be tased and left loose. The county jail should not be the default bed for panhandling. I would not fund holds that exist to move an inconvenient person off a corner, and I would not join any public attack on him after the fact. Leave him be, or offer help. Do not make him a case.
Tar Heel: You stood at Gastonia City Council in 2023 and told officials that if they came for Pastor Moses Colbert’s church, they would have to drag you out. You also said he had taught you to pray for your enemies and mean it. How did that night and that ministry change you?
Hill: On June 20, 2023, I told the Gastonia council that if they came for Pastor Moses Colbert’s church, they could drag me out. The city had piled code fines on Faith, Hope, and Love Ministries for sheltering people the county had no bed for.
I meant the line. I also meant the prayer.
Pastor Moses taught me to pray for the officials across the table and mean it. That night changed the posture, not the principle. Local power can fine a ministry out of existence and call it code enforcement. I still believe a church may feed and shelter the poor without a permit to exist. I left less interested in winning the argument, and more certain I will not help the county do to a Concord or Kannapolis ministry what Gastonia did to his.
Tar Heel: Colbert’s Faith, Hope and Love ministry was fined tens of thousands of dollars for feeding and sheltering people the city would not house. As a commissioner, how do you treat voluntary charity that is messy, unpopular, or out of perfect code—as a nuisance to regulate away, or as something the county should not crush?
Hill: I treat it as something the county should not crush. Faith, Hope, and Love was feeding and sheltering people Gastonia would not house, and the answer was fines that climbed past $100,000. That is regulation used as a weapon.
Messy is not a license for violence or a firetrap. If a camp produces a shooting or a real hazard, the county can address that act and that condition. It should not zone, fine, or nuisance a church out of existence for doing the work the budget will not do. Voluntary charity will fail a perfect code. I would rather the county get out of the way than spend tax money to replace it with a cleaner program that helps fewer people.
Tar Heel: Both fights happened in Gaston County, not Cabarrus. Why should a Concord voter care, and what specific Cabarrus ordinance, zoning rule, or sheriff-budget line would you change because of Rohrer and Colbert?
Hill: A Concord voter should care because the habit travels. Gastonia used a panhandling stop and a code fine. Cabarrus can do the same with a jail bed and a zoning notice. The county line does not change the incentive.
I would change two things I can actually vote on. First, the detention budget: no new pod or detention officers justified by low-level and pretrial holds of people who are inconvenient rather than dangerous. Second, county zoning and nuisance enforcement outside the cities: a church or ministry feeding and sheltering people should not be fined out of existence for imperfect code. Concord writes its own ordinances. The sheriff’s purse and county land-use rules are the Cabarrus lever, and Rohrer and Colbert are why I would pull it.
Tar Heel: Healing Our America and Colbert’s ministry both start from voluntary help rather than a government program. Where should the county get out of the way, and where does the board still have a duty to fund something?
Hill: The county should get out of the way where people are already helping each other. Zoning, nuisance cases, and permit delays should not be used to fine a ministry or a neighbor out of feeding and sheltering the poor. Healing Our America and Faith, Hope, and Love do not need a county contract to be legitimate. They need the board to stop treating voluntary help as a code violation.
The board still has a duty to fund what only government can compel: the sheriff’s response to violence, a jail for people who are a danger to others, the courts, and emergency medical services. That is the purse. Housing, food, and recovery are not. Those belong to families, churches, and anyone who gives freely—not to a new line item that crowds the voluntary work out.
Tar Heel: County jails are where ICE detainers, task-force holds, and federal “equitable sharing” actually happen. What is your standard for when Cabarrus should cooperate with ICE, DEA, ATF, or FBI—and when it should refuse?
Hill: Cooperate when a judge has signed a warrant for a crime against a person or property, and when the hold is no longer than that warrant requires. A Cabarrus jail bed is for local public safety, not a free federal cell.
Refuse administrative ICE detainers that lack a judicial warrant. Refuse DEA, ATF, and FBI task-force work aimed at drug prohibition, gun paperwork, or citation volume. Refuse equitable sharing. Forfeiture money is not a reason to lend deputies or jail space, and I would not budget those proceeds as revenue.
The standard is simple: a warrant for violence or theft, yes. A federal priority, a civil hold, or a check from seized property, no. The board cannot command the sheriff. It can refuse to fund the cooperation.
Yes. I would support ending Cabarrus County's participation in federal equitable sharing, and I would not vote to budget forfeiture proceeds as ordinary revenue.
Civil asset forfeiture lets property be taken without the conviction that ought to come first. Equitable sharing is the workaround: local officers hand a case to a federal agency, and the county gets a cut. That arrangement pays deputies to police for profit. It is the same incentive I do not want in the town contracts.
The board cannot repeal federal law. It can refuse the agreement, refuse the money, and refuse to fund the overtime and task-force slots that exist to produce it. If the sheriff needs equipment, it should come from taxes voted in public, not from property seized on the roadside.
Tar Heel: You have talked about inmate welfare and opioid withdrawal from personal experience with prescribed-drug addiction. What jail and mental-health budget changes would you fight for in the first budget cycle?
Hill: I know prescribed-drug addiction from the inside. Withdrawal in a jail is not a character flaw, and it should not be a death sentence or a reason to open another pod.
In the first budget, I would fight for two changes, not a new bureaucracy. Keep medication-assisted treatment for opioid withdrawal available to people the county is already holding, paid first from opioid-settlement funds rather than a larger detention budget. And stop using the jail as the mental-health plan. I would not add beds or officers to warehouse people in crisis, and I would not grow a county clinic that crowds out voluntary treatment.
Hold the dangerous. Treat withdrawal while they are held. Do not build a second system to manage the rest.
Tar Heel: Body cameras, complaint records, and use-of-force data are often treated as the sheriff’s property. What transparency would you attach to the county check that pays for that office?
The county check should buy a public record, not a private archive. I would attach three reports to the Sheriff’s Office budget: use-of-force incidents, complaints and how they ended, and body-camera footage requested and released. No names of victims. No fishing trips. Numbers the board can read before it votes on the next check.
North Carolina law limits who may release body-camera video, and a commissioner cannot rewrite that statute. The board can still refuse to fund cameras, storage, and overtime while those reports stay internal. Equitable-sharing proceeds should be listed the same way. If the public pays for the office, the public gets the tally of force, complaints, and footage—not a summary that says trust us. Transparency is a condition of the appropriation.
Tar Heel: Cabarrus is growing fast. How do you keep order and infrastructure from becoming an excuse for higher taxes, more occupational licensing, and more code enforcement aimed at small operators?
Hill: Growth is not a blank check. New residents should pay for the capacity they use through fees tied to the actual road, water, or emergency cost, not through a higher rate on people who already live here. I would not raise the property tax to build ahead of demand.
Occupational licensing is mostly state law. The county lever is the permit counter and code enforcement. I would not add local licenses for small operators, and I would not use zoning or nuisance rules to clear home-based work, food trucks, or a ministry that is messy but voluntary. Infrastructure for safe roads and emergency response is a duty. Using growth as an excuse to tax, license, and inspect the smallest operators is not. Order does not require a thicker codebook.
Tar Heel: You grew up in your father’s electrical construction company. Which county rules most punish the kind of small business that actually employs people here?
Hill: State licensing is not a county vote. The local penalty is delay and code used as a gate. A one-truck electrician employs people by showing up. I would simplify small-job permits, publish inspection times, and stop treating ordinary contractor yards as nuisances. The county should check for real hazards, not charge rent on the right to work.
Tar Heel: Housing costs, homelessness, and camping rules are now county fights. What is the Libertarian path that is neither “ignore open disorder” nor “fine the church that fed them”?
Hill: The path is to separate the person from the hazard. Open disorder—violence, a blocked road, a firetrap—is a sheriff and code problem, and I would fund that response. Poverty and a tent are not. I would not ban camping on private land when the owner consents, and I would not fine a church for feeding or sheltering people the county will not house.
Public right-of-way is different from a ministry lot. Clear the sidewalk and the on-ramp. Leave Faith, Hope, and Love alone if it is voluntary and not a threat. Housing costs fall when the county stops zoning small lots, extra units, and modest rentals out of existence. Do not manage the poor. Stop making a bed illegal, and stop punishing whoever offers one.
Tar Heel: Mental health keeps coming up in your interviews as a first priority. What would a commissioner actually vote on—crisis beds, diversion from jail, deputy wellness—that is not just another layer of bureaucracy?
Hill: A commissioner votes the line item, not the slogan. I would fund three things that already have a door, and I would not open a new department.
Deputy wellness is a Sheriff’s Office budget vote: peer support and counseling for the people we arm and send to other people’s worst day. Diversion is a jail vote: do not add detention officers or a pod to hold someone whose offense is a crisis rather than a threat. Crisis beds, if funded at all, should be a contracted bed the county can count, paid without building a county clinic around it.I would vote no on new administrative staff, new local licenses for helpers, and any program that needs the jail in order to justify itself. Treatment should be voluntary. The budget should not become the treatment.
Tar Heel: There are seven names on the ballot for three seats. When a voter likes your principles but thinks only a Democrat or Republican can “win,” what is the honest answer?
Hill: The honest answer is that a vote is not a bet you owe the favorite. There are seven names for three seats. You may choose three. Leaving me off so a Democrat or a Republican can “win” only works if those two already intend to do what you want. On the jail, the fine, and the permit counter, they have not.
I may not take a seat. The vote still counts. It tells the next board that Cabarrus has a price for another pod, another code case against a ministry, and another fee on a one-truck shop. If you like the principles, mark them. A wasted vote is one cast for a winner you do not believe.
Tar Heel: Inform Cabarrus sent its questionnaire to “all six candidates” and left you off. What does that episode say about how third-party candidates are treated even by groups that claim to inform voters?
Hill: It says the omission is the treatment. Inform Cabarrus told voters it had questioned all six candidates. There are seven names on the ballot for three seats. I was the one left off.
A group may favor Democrats and Republicans. It should not claim the field is complete while dropping the Libertarian. That is how third-party candidates are handled even by people who say their job is to inform: included in the count of “everyone,” then absent from the questions. Voters can still find the record. They should not have to hear, from an information group, that the choice in front of them does not exist.
Tar Heel: If you could force the other six candidates to take a public yes-or-no on one item—ICE detainers in the jail, civil asset forfeiture, no-knock raids, or fining ministries that shelter people—what would it be?
Hill: Civil asset forfeiture. I would make the other six answer yes or no: should Cabarrus keep participating in federal equitable sharing, and should seized property be budgeted as revenue?
ICE detainers, no-knock raids, and fines on a ministry matter, and I have a position on each. Forfeiture is the cleanest county question. It is a check. It pays the office to police for profit, and the board can refuse the agreement and the money. The others can be dodged as the sheriff’s policy or a city’s code case. This one cannot. Yes or no: will you take a cut of property taken without a conviction? I will not. I want that answer on the record before anyone asks for the public-safety budget.
Tar Heel: Looking at a four-year term, what would make you say the campaign worked: a vote total, a budget line changed, a jail practice ended, or something quieter?
Hill: A vote total is the campaign. A changed budget is the term. I would count it as worked if the detention request had to explain who is held and for how long before another pod or another 16 officers were funded, and if forfeiture proceeds were no longer treated as ordinary revenue.
Quieter still counts. A ministry in Cabarrus not fined out of feeding people. A one-truck shop not stalled for weeks on a small permit. A town contract renewed on response time, not tickets. I am not owed a seat. The campaign worked if those questions are harder to skip after this election than they were before it. That is the four-year test.
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