Name as it appears on the ballot: Matt Leatherman

Age: 38

Party affiliation: Democrat

Campaign website: www.MattForNC.com

Occupation & employer: FCLTGlobal, Financial and Fiscal Research

Years lived in North Carolina: 28

1) Tell us what in your record as a public official or private citizen demonstrates your ability to be an effective Treasurer? Please be specific.

Experience is one of the qualities that distinguishes me in this primary campaign. I am the only Democratic candidate with real-world experience in the Treasurer’s Office. Working as policy director for former Democratic Treasurer Janet Cowell gives me a track record of which I’m very proud.

  • Investments: I led efforts to hold companies accountable for behaving sustainably, for instance in the way that they compensate executives, and supported teammates’ efforts, such as advancing diversity in corporate boardrooms. I was the Department’s voice to the SEC. And I organized a team effort to invest in longer-term ways specifically with respect to environmental stewardship, social impact, and corporate governance.
  • State and Local Finance. Climate change, urbanization, and infrastructure neglect challenge public budgets and also our bond-financed infrastructure. I spearheaded an effort to get N.C.’s $8-billion need for new/improved schools squarely onto the State Board of Education’s agenda and helped lay the groundwork for more environmental sustainability by bringing local government leaders together for a day-long working session on regionalization.
  • Health. Treasurer Cowell and I pushed several health initiatives that were interrupted by the 2016 election, and bringing these to fruition is one of my biggest goals in seeking this office. People are suffering because of the clinics and hospitals that continue to close, and we began work on using remote-medicine practices learned from the international public health sector. Additionally, design of the State Health Plan often interferes with people making healthy choices, and we negotiated for a behavioral-science audit of the plan that Folwell subsequently terminated.

2) What are the three biggest challenges facing the Treasurer’s office? If elected, how would you propose to address these challenges?

I am running on a three-part platform:

  • Increasing access and equity in health care
  • Valuing our educators and the work that they do with our children
  • Strengthening the resilience of our communities

I have chosen these priorities because they reflect the office’s purpose, need urgent attention, and draw on my experience working in the office for former Treasurer Janet Cowell. Specifically:

  • Health Care. The Treasurer’s Office was instrumental in saving the life of my second child. My wife felt sick and worried about this pregnancy on a holiday and, after being unable to reach either the OB or our family doctor, it was the preventative care nurse of the State Health Plan – part of the Treasurer’s Office – who took her call and got her to the hospital just in time. She could make this call because she’s a public-school educator. Since then, the incumbent has cut preventative care in the State Health Plan everywhere that he can and also put rural clinics and hospitals at risk. Investing in preventative care, committing to health access, and working constantly to make health services more equitable are atop my priority list.
  • Valuing Educators and Their Work. Educator compensation rightly is the core issue for every progressive campaign, and benefits are a part of compensation. We must provide a better health benefit, and we also must recommit to the retirement benefit. The incumbent has pulled $15 billion of retirement savings out of the investment markets – the equivalent of stashing it in the mattress – and retirement security lessens every day that this continues. Investing and earning a return so that we can fulfill our retirement promise to educators and civil servants is another priority.
  • Community Resilience. Every bond issued by or within North Carolina is managed by the Treasurer’s office. Right now, the incumbent largely sits in Raleigh and waits for communities to come explain their needs for clean drinking water, safe schools, and modern transportation networks. Our state needs strong infrastructure, and I will be a proactive partner with communities to identify upcoming needs and to ensure their funding, when the time comes.

3) Last year, Treasurer Dale Folwell sought to move the State Health Plan toward a Clear Pricing Model, in which the state sets a rate with health care providers based on what Medicare pays rather than having each provider negotiate an individual rate for services with the plan’s administrator. The North Carolina Healthcare Association has argued that moving to the CPM could deny members and retirees access to critical services. What are your thoughts on the benefits and potential drawbacks of the Clear Pricing Model?

The so-called Clear Pricing Project already interferes with educators’ and civil servants’ access to health care. It has sowed confusion about which doctors and hospitals are in-network or not. Spread across a population of 730,000, that confusion will result in some folks delaying or foregoing care. It has raised the State Health Plan’s cost by giving some doctors a raise without producing any savings elsewhere. Over time, this is money that cannot be spent on legitimate ways of expanding access.

This interference pales in comparison to the dangerous effects of actually implementing the Clear Pricing Project. I know this from having talked with hospital leaders across the state myself. North Carolina has a number of communities in which most people with health coverage are State Health Plan members, and many others in the area lack coverage altogether. The Clear Pricing Project’s rote cut would necessarily reduce access to care, including NICUs, in these communities.

I caveat this initiative as the “so-called” Clear Pricing Project because Folwell already has the data that he claims to want. NC Session Law 2016-104 §3(b) stipulates that “Unless otherwise directed by the Plan, each Claims Processor shall provide the Plan with a Claims Data Feed, which includes all Claim Payment Data, at a frequency agreed to by the Plan and the Claims Processor. The frequency shall be no less than monthly.”

Educators and civil servants are rightly concerned with clarifying the costs of their care and with controlling those costs. The Treasurer’s Office can provide clarity by administering the plan in a way that out-of-pocket costs are the same irrespective of the where within the network that an educator or civil servant receives care. From there, the issue is controlling costs.

Expanding Medicaid is the most immediate way to control State Health Plan costs because educators’ and civil servants can shoulder less of the burden when more people in their community have access to coverage. Folwell is silent on this, yet the Treasurer must be the most forceful voice on expanding Medicaid in NC, and I will be. I expect to have a uniquely powerful opportunity because my family is a Medicaid family right now. My youngest daughter, born at 27 weeks and 1.5 pounds, receives supplementary Medicaid coverage, and this coverage has spared my family from bankruptcy, allowed my wife and me to remain in the workforce, and provided my daughter with stable access to prescriptions that have cost more than $8,500 each month.

Reinvesting in preventative care, streamlining the design of the plan so that its easier to make healthy choices, introducing telemedicine options, and working with doctors and hospitals to identify inefficiencies all can help to further control State Health Plan costs.

4) Folwell has argued that treatments for gender dysphoria should not be covered under the State Health Plan because they are “elective” procedures.” Advocates for the trans community say that these treatments, which include counseling, hormone therapy, and surgical care, are not elective at all—they are medically necessary and can even be life-saving. Do you believe the state plan should cover these procedures? Please explain why or why not.

The mother of an adolescent trans boy said something to me several months ago that I will never forget: “Forty percent of people like my son kill themselves. I’m doing my best to make sure that he’s not one of them.

Survival is not “elective.” It’s existential.

As policy director for former Treasurer Janet Cowell, I was part of the team that acknowledged inequity for transgendered members of the State Health Plan and that addressed this inequity by extending coverage for gender dysphoria treatment. Dale Folwell as rescinded this care, a shocking act of discrimination that interrupts treatment for some people and removes the possibility of treatment for others. This decision is an authority of the Treasurer’s, independent of other agencies or branches of government, and I will use this authority to restore care immediately. Access to quality health care is the center of my campaign, and I mean it for everyone, equitably, irrespective of sexual orientation, gender, race, income, or any other form of identity. This value will guide my health policymaking.

5) How well do you believe the state’s Pension Fund has been managed over the past four years? In your view, have there been any significant investment-strategy improvements or cost-savings that will make the fund sustainable for the long-term? How would you manage the fund differently, if at all?

Folwell’s governance of the investment portfolio has been so poor that I am concerned we are at risk of a lawsuit. Fiduciary law requires the trustee to act prudently, with care and loyalty to the educators and civil servants who back this fund, and neglecting to invest $15 billion of their money at all appears very clearly to be careless.

North Carolina pays educators’ and civil servants’ retirement benefits by investing, earning a return, and using it to cut checks. Investing fully is necessary, and I will begin that process on the first day of the job.

I view a number of additional changes as necessary:

  • North Carolina needs a trustee board to oversee state investments. Currently the Treasurer is the sole trustee, and that absolute authority is inappropriate and dangerous, as Folwell is showing us now. This plan is sponsored by the state on behalf of educators and civil servants, and each of these stakeholders should be part of a trustee board, along with several professionals with institutional-investing backgrounds.
  • Statute currently sets ranges for asset allocation, including the share of investments that can be held in stocks, bonds, and other securities. Once a trustee board is created, that decision should be given to the board and taken away from the legislature, which lacks the attention or expertise to make the decision prudently.
  • Folwell has suspended the policy on long-term stewardship of investment assets that I helped to create. This policy is a vital first step toward sustainable environmental-, social-, and governance-informed investing. I will immediately reinstate this policy and begin work to advance it further.

6) Will you state unequivocally that you would not accept a position on a corporate board while serving as state treasurer? Why or why not?

Policy and law currently allow for a sitting Treasurer to serve simultaneously on corporate boards. That is an inherent conflict of interest. I will not do it, prohibit it by policy, and advocate to make this change in statute.

7) Are there any other issues you would like to address that were not included on this questionnaire?

Having affordable housing is part of what makes a community resilient, and strengthening the resilience of our communities is so important that I made it an explicit part of my three-pronged platform. Cities in which people can afford to live have more equitable services, broader economic potential, better health, greater environmental sustainability, and stronger civic life.

The Treasurer’s Office affects affordable housing directly. Staff invest educators’ and civil servants’ retirement savings in a very broad range of assets, including real estate funds, and some of these funds buy affordable homes, drive up the rent to the point that residents are forced out, and the flip the property for wealthy purchasers. I will investigate N.C.’s real estate investments immediately to determine whether we are invested in these funds and, if we are, I will hold their managers accountable, beginning with setting a standard for affordability that they must maintain.

Simply put, we must not invest educators’ and civil servants’ savings in a way that prices them and people like them out of their own neighborhoods.