Off The Hook
Off The Hook
Navigating Politics and Integrity in New Hanover County with Dane Scalise
Tune in as we welcome Dane Scalise, New Hanover County Commissioner, who shares his captivating journey into politics, complete with some creative strategies involving a friend's Great Dane named Captain. We offer our heartfelt support to the Brunswick County community affected by recent storm damage. Hear Dane's intriguing campaign tales and the profound impact of his professional background on the local bail system and beyond.
From Morganton to Wilmington, Dane's journey is a testament to dedication and resilience. He takes us through his educational and professional milestones, including his law school days at Chapel Hill and his successful career in business law and insurance brokerage. As a county commissioner, Dane provides a behind-the-scenes look at managing vital local resources, funding the sheriff's office and schools, and the complexities of the electoral process. Learn how community support and strategic governance play pivotal roles in sustaining New Hanover County’s growth and development.
In our final segments, we address pressing issues like government spending, accountability, and environmental advocacy. Dane recounts his proactive stance against harmful imports and how local actions can have a significant impact. We dive into the financial implications of bail reform, challenges in maintaining law and order, and the importance of integrity in public service amidst government corruption. Highlighting public safety efforts and political discourse, this episode underscores the necessity of collective action and integrity in fostering a safer, more supportive community. Don't miss out on these powerful insights and inspiring stories!
When people are released from jail, they have the responsibility to appear in court, but some of these people choose to go on the run.
Speaker 2:They go back home to mommy.
Speaker 1:And that is when these guys come into the picture. So sit back and listen to the Off the Hook podcast with Chad and Rob Very fine people on both sides. These are real stories, but the names have been changed.
Speaker 2:What's going on everybody?
Speaker 3:This is Rob and I'm Chad, and we have a special guest this morning.
Speaker 2:Yes, I like the special guest stuff that we're doing. Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. How you on everybody. This is Rob and I'm Chad, and we have a special guest this morning. Yes, I like the special guest stuff that we're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, this is awesome how you been Chad, I'm doing all right, man. Just the storm that we just had, man, it just crushed our office in. Brunswick County. I mean, I just got a video. Someone sent me that our office is flooded.
Speaker 2:I know it's horrible, man, I mean.
Speaker 3:Russell County needs to step up and do something with their, their their drainage. I know it's horrible area.
Speaker 2:I hope everybody's okay down there. I hope, uh, uh, really hope that nobody is, you know, died because of it. Uh, I just I hope that the everybody stay safe, uh, including all law enforcement and fire and EMS and rescue teams and the whole public down there. So before I introduce you to this guy, I gotta get, I gotta do it again. So our special guest for today is Mr Dane Scalise, the New Hanover County commissioner. Right now this man is. This man has helped New Hanover County a lot and we want to let you guys hear from him because that's a good song, ain't it?
Speaker 4:It is such a good song. It's one of my favorites.
Speaker 2:I know right.
Speaker 4:Good coastal song.
Speaker 2:Especially down here. I think the last time we had somebody on we put Signal Fire for Hunter, oh yeah, for. Hunter yeah, so anyway. So I have to do that. So there you go, dane. Thank you for coming and being on the podcast with us. Man, that's awesome Guys.
Speaker 4:I am feeling special. You called me a special guest. Well, I'm feeling special. You called me a special guest. Well, I'm feeling special. Yeah, man, this is pretty darn cool. Got to say, just checking out your spot here, what you've got set up. This is an excellent location set up for a podcast. I feel like I'm just ready to get into it. Yeah man, yeah man, we got lots of stuff. I am inspired, yeah.
Speaker 2:We got lots of stuff to chit chat about. Yes, we do, um. So, everybody, if, if, if you're new to our show, um, you understand that we talk a lot about bail and what it does to our community and nationwide. And so, mr Dane Scalise here, um, I'm just going to call you Dane.
Speaker 4:Please, yeah, yeah, scalise, not necessary. I actually am pretty proud of having the name Dane. It's a name that not a whole lot of other people have, and if you see any of my signs or my commercials or whatever else for my campaign, you'll see that Dane is the most prominent feature of it, and I think that it sticks in people's minds.
Speaker 3:So do you have a dog?
Speaker 4:maybe a Great Dane? Yeah, I do have a dog, not a Great Dane. I have a plot hound, North Carolina state dog. Oh nice.
Speaker 2:Oh right.
Speaker 4:I've had plot hounds for a while now, but I do have a friend with a Great Dane and that Great Dane is named Captain and Captain is basically the mascot of my campaign and we've put a couple of commercials together. Yeah, we saw it, I mean it's low hanging fruit boys, but I mean, if your name is Dane and there's a great Dane out there- and you want to help build name ID.
Speaker 4:What you do is you say how about we do a little bit of comparison, dane, great Dane, and maybe it'll stick in people's brains.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you got to do that. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So, dane, I got a question for you, all right, so me, and I got to tell everybody. So me and Dane met through one of my best friends and one of his old best friends, david Gross. We've talked about this, we've talked about David on the show. He's a criminal defense attorney here in town that I've been good friends with for years. He's my duck hunting buddy, my fishing buddy, all that good stuff. So I met Dane through him, because y'all were roommates.
Speaker 4:When did you and David become friends?
Speaker 2:Oh damn, that's been years ago, bro, that's been 2007 for me and Dave.
Speaker 4:Wow, yeah, we went to law school together and, funnily enough, like many great friendships, I think, we hated each other from the first glance and then soon thereafter became basically inseparable. And yes, we did live together for a little while in law school and I pretty much followed him down here to Wilmington after he came down here to practice and just a great buddy, great friend for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah man, good dude, good dude. All right, so tell our viewers a little bit about you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure. So again, dane Scalise, currently work as your new Hanover County commissioner. I'm originally from Morganton, north Carolina. That's the Western part of the state between Hickory and Asheville and interstate 40. I went to freedom high school and, after I graduated from high school, basically just started moving east along Interstate 40 until I ultimately reached the termination point here in Wilmington I went to.
Speaker 4:UNCG. For undergraduate, I went to Chapel Hill for law school. That's where Dave and I met, practiced law out there for a couple of years and then in 2012, my wife and I moved here to the coast, and we've been here ever since.
Speaker 3:That's how it happened. I came from Winston-Salem, so yeah. I know how it goes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I came from this little town called Wilson. Oh, yeah, yeah because Dave actually used to live in Nash County.
Speaker 4:Man, he's lived about everywhere and he's done about every job too, including, I think, some things sort of adjacent to this. A private investigator yeah, he was a PI, and he was a bondsman at one time.
Speaker 2:David was yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, he didn't do anything with it, but it was a police officer up in Rocky Mount. Oh my God, that's yeah, that's a weird visual. He's been everywhere, man.
Speaker 4:Protect and serve yeah.
Speaker 2:It's, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 4:So, as you might imagine, by virtue of having gone to law school, I am a lawyer. I primarily do business law, primarily represent small businesses. I am a small business owner myself. As part of my representation in small business, I work with an insurance brokerage company that represents small businesses. We provide employee benefits to basically 200 employers in the area. So pretty much small business is my life, it's what I do for a living, and on top of that I have a wife. I have two sons, age six and nine. Great kids, great wife, great life Trying to make sure that everybody else in New.
Speaker 4:Canberra County has access to the same.
Speaker 2:Happy wife, happy wife, that's what they say.
Speaker 4:but fellas, it's true, it's definitely true. I'm not here to get into your personal business, right, but I'm just saying for my own business. I know keep the wifey happy is a good move every time.
Speaker 2:Oh, I've been married a couple of times. I'm divorced, but I do have a wonderful girlfriend. She works over at Child Protective Services. Yeah great For the county here and she's wonderful, all right, but so getting into more of the county here and she's wonderful, so getting into more of the county stuff. So explain to everybody your role with the county commissioners.
Speaker 4:Absolutely so.
Speaker 4:Let's begin at the beginning and explain that you've got all kinds of politicians that are out there and I don't blame people if they think they're all lousy, but some of them are good and I'm sure we're going to talk about some of that and I think that you're going to hear why I'm one of the good ones.
Speaker 4:New Hanover County is a place with about 240,000 people and we have five commissioners that basically look after a lot of the basic aspects of life your water, your sewer, your land development, making sure that, ultimately, the sheriff's office gets funding, the schools get funding, building schools, a lot of the just the little everyday things that aren't so little whenever you think about them are ultimately managed by the county commission. As I said, there are five county commissioners and we're all elected across the county. We don't have districts in New Hanover County, so anytime that one of us comes up, you've got basically to make your case to everybody across Carolina Beach, wrightsville Beach, curry Beach, wilmington, unincorporated areas. They're all looking at you and hopefully supporting you, and if they do, you move forward, and if you don't, you don't. And there is a four-year term that's associated with that.
Speaker 2:Now I don't know if you know this, because you said it, so I'm going to bring it up. School systems Funding for school systems. Yeah, so Chad's over there smiling because he knows where we're going with this.
Speaker 3:I know where you're going with this.
Speaker 2:So did you know that bond Right For that jurisdiction by the State statute, right, yeah, by state statute. But when you have somebody that's elected into a certain position here locally that I'm trying to word this right that doesn't like bail and wants't put in these bail reform issues, y'all lose a lot of money, right?
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, the school system is funded basically through three different entities the federal government, the state government and the local county government, and so those three governmental entities combined sort of put together the dollars that fund the schools. And, of course, there are funding sources like what you're describing that are critically important, and another one is the lottery.
Speaker 3:That's one that people maybe are less enthusiastic about, but it is actually a source of funding. We actually probably donate more collectively than the lottery does, believe it or not?
Speaker 2:I saw a statistic it was a few years ago with Hunter Ford that was like 58% or 60% somewhere in that area that it goes to run and salaries and I'm like what are we doing here? You know we're putting there like to me. People are putting their greed in front of our children, our children should come first period, no matter what. And especially when you take Bell away, you go from 14, 16, 17 million.
Speaker 3:Do you have any idea what the numbers are?
Speaker 4:For specifically, what money comes from your work to the schools On average? I don't know. Tell me.
Speaker 3:So on average, you know, across 100 counties in the state we contribute $11 to $14 million per year on average, Wow.
Speaker 2:But that was a few years ago, right.
Speaker 3:Well, that's on average. That's on average. Yeah, Now it's probably declined.
Speaker 2:It's declined since the bail reform is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, since we're getting more of the Soros-funded groups that are implementing this bail reform, and we've sat in on one of them in Little Washington and listened to the professor from Chapel Hill that taught that and she explained how it worked, and it's ridiculous what she had to say. I mean, you could just see the magistrates and judges shaking their heads. I know it's not going to work like this, right? You know if in an ideal world it would, but unfortunately people do not learn their lesson and will continue. Most of them will.
Speaker 2:And you don't want the crime to go up in the County? No, of course not Because. And you don't want the crime to go up in the county? No, of course not, because crime goes up in the county.
Speaker 4:Guess what More funding out of taxpayer pockets. Well, that's one of my main issues. One of my main issues is ensuring that we have law and order in New Hanover County, because nothing succeeds, absolutely nothing succeeds, if you don't have the core items taken care of. I'm talking about not only am I going to have to pay more to the sheriff and I did actually have to pay a lot more to the sheriff in the last budget. I'm happy to do it, but I wish I didn't, and I'll tell you why I had to.
Speaker 4:It was because during the 2020, the COVID era, during all of the revolt that was occurring throughout the country, where the law enforcement was demonized, it pushed a lot of people out of law enforcement that might have otherwise been in there. And now we can't recruit people, we can't retain people, and I'm having to pay overtime, like you wouldn't believe. Now, overtime fellas cost a lot of dang money, and so, in order for me to keep the people safe, I've got to give the sheriff the resources that he needs, and right now, that means a lot more overtime than I would prefer to pay. So that's increased the amount of money that I'm having to pay toward law enforcement, and I don't see what choice that I have. If you don't have that, then you don't have all the other things. You don't have small businesses that are doing well If you've got a downtown that's got broken windows. Have you heard this broken window theory? Basically, the premise is that if you can't keep small businesses safe from their windows getting broken, you're not going to have economic stability.
Speaker 3:It's a snowball effect? Yes, absolutely. This morning I just was taking pictures and I went down here to the dollar store to pick up a couple of things. This morning I counted four homeless people laying there.
Speaker 4:We've got that issue going on, yeah that's a big one that we've been talking about at the county. We just had a joint meeting with the city not long ago and everybody's solution just immediately is let's spend more money on it. And I said during the meeting y'all, I'm okay to spend money, but I want ROI, I want return on investment. I want to be able to demonstrate that whenever I invest in something, what am I getting for it? At the end of the day, I don't want to spend so much money to become just the absolute best at homelessness services so that what we're like San Francisco. That's not what I want.
Speaker 4:What I want to do is to make sure that people who have genuine need and there are people with genuine need that they get access to services. But actually we polled a bunch of folks who are experiencing homelessness. They recognize that there are tons of services here in New Hanover County. They just find them difficult to access. What I said was how about we figure out how to better just streamline our process so that we can get people access to the resources that we already have before we just write a blank check and I mean, it seems like common sense to me, but a lot of politicians the easiest thing in the world for them to do is just say write a bigger check, throw money at it.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, well, that's not going to fix it. I think that's where, locally and nationally, that we have a problem is it's throwing money at it and overspending and it's starting to catch up with us. It is and we can't afford it. We just can't afford it Right now with inflation, the way it's gone. It's difficult the way it's gone. We can't. It's difficult and thank God that I have different revenues, that I have. You know that I bring in for income, my girlfriend does and she makes well over there and we live conservatively and you have to, because if not, I mean it's going to be hard to feed your children.
Speaker 4:That's exactly right, and it's actually one of the things that the county has to lead by example. On Earlier this year, whenever we were talking about the budget what are we going to do with the budget? And inflation has crushed us just like anybody else, we're spending way more on things than we were before, and so staff originally came to us and said hey, in order to do this, we're going to have to spend some money here, maybe raise taxes. And I said how about we live within our means, just like everybody else is having to do in New Hanover County. If you're bringing in less and things cost more, then you're going to have to figure out what are my needs versus my wants, what are my core spending priorities and how am I going to make sure that I stay keyed in on those and let the other stuff that maybe are nice but aren't necessary go to the wayside.
Speaker 4:I've got to lead by example as county commissioner in telling my staff we're going to tighten our belt, and that's ultimately what we achieved because, quite frankly, I have the majority. I was able to put together the votes in order to do it, but New Hanover County is one of those places, fellas, where it switches back and forth all the time, and it could just as easily be another way. Right People don't get out and vote for the right candidates. I'm just one guy of five. I need some help.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And at the end of the day, it's just that easy. People, that would I mean they'd come in tell you how to run your business. No-transcript. I want to focus on the core stuff, do that really well and then leave the other stuff to the private sector. Well, a lot of people vote.
Speaker 2:just because you're a certain party, you don't vote. You don't stop and think about people's policies.
Speaker 3:You can't afford to do that anymore.
Speaker 2:No, it's not, and that's why we've had Jason Smith up here, hunter Ford, now we're having you yeah.
Speaker 4:I'm grateful to be here. Thank you, and.
Speaker 2:Jim Wahlberg, all these guests that we've had. It's because we all have the same mindset to where hey look, you know government y'all you know. Nobody trusts government Including me. Yeah, if you don't trust government, why are you going to let them keep spending your money and wasting it? So that's a real issue. That the reason why Chad wanted to create this podcast, and I'm happy that he did.
Speaker 4:I think that it's pretty cool. Let me tell you why I think that it's cool, pretty cool. Let me tell you why I think that's cool. Because it's great for normal people to just come on and talk about what they do for a living and how politics local, state, national impacts what you do every day, because it's a slice of life and people should see what us normal people look like, think like. This is a great way to get that message out to the public and I really commend you for taking the initiative to do it.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it, Dale. We appreciate that.
Speaker 3:It's been fun so far.
Speaker 2:I'm actually going to play for you guys.
Speaker 4:It's only a minute and a half Well yeah, the one is a blooper reel, the other one is my commercial. I don't know which one you're looking for this one right here. Yeah, that's my latest commercial.
Speaker 2:Let's see. Let's see if I can.
Speaker 4:There's a great Dane here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. So I'm going to switch this over real quick.
Speaker 4:Hang on, there's that dog again and he's wearing a Dane t-shirt. It's a great Dane for the Dane campaign. I think he's trying to tell me something. Sure, he is Dane. I need your help. What is it, boy? You want clean water, yeah, more green space, and they're trying to turn my doghouse into apartments. Wait a second, I think you just want this pizza. Oh, so good. I think he New Hanover. Squirrel, squirrel, there's a squirrel. I'm going to get the squirrel, don't you like that? Pretty good, captain, he's a much better actor than me.
Speaker 1:Fellas, it took about a million takes for me to do that.
Speaker 4:Even as bad as I was, in that it took about a million takes.
Speaker 2:The dog did much better than me Get an NFL Sunday ticket, and you oh, I don't know what's going on here.
Speaker 4:For some reason. We had fun making that though.
Speaker 2:It likes to do stuff on its own.
Speaker 4:I don't understand.
Speaker 2:Technology, I know.
Speaker 3:I mean, we're still trying to figure it out, still learning as we go here.
Speaker 2:So all right, Well, tell everybody at home a good reason to vote for you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, all right. So we talked a little bit about some of what I do as county commissioner. Let me give you a couple examples of what that looks like. One of the things that I think should resonate with everybody, irrespective of their politics, is last year there was an attempt by Chemours you know the chemical company that's up in Fayetteville Dumping chemicals in the water, yeah exactly. They've been poisoning our water for a really long time.
Speaker 2:Actually quick thing A few years ago. Was it the 16th election? Yeah, the 16th election. I ran for water and soil Right, and it was the first time, because I'm a big hunter and so does Chad he loves to fish.
Speaker 4:And that was a big thing for us and people haven't missed the set to. We had just basically found out about the extent to which we had a problem around that time frame, because for essentially 50 years Ken Moores had been dumping.
Speaker 4:PFAS Gen X into our river, been coming down the river, basically infecting everybody's soil water for a very long time, and we figured it out around that same time frame that you're talking about. Well, they reached an agreement with the local government that they were going to pay some settlement and they're doing that, but they really haven't been, in my estimation, keeping to the specificities of the agreement that they made and they've still been pushing the envelope. They were going to bring four million pounds of recycled Gen X material from their facility. In the envelope they were going to bring 4 million pounds of recycled Gen X material from their facility in the Netherlands. That's where they're based out of. By the way, this is not a US company. This is a company that's based in the Netherlands. They make all their money there but then they process their garbage material here in North Carolina, where we are, and they were going to bring 4 million pounds of recycled material through our port, up our rail, up our roads, deliver it to their Fayetteville facility so that they could reprocess it and push it back out, so they could eke out a little more profit out of this poison. And they received approval from the federal government, from the EPA, to do that. There's a guy named Michael Regan who's the secretary of the federal EPA. He actually used to be the head of the NCDEQ and then Joe Biden made him his leader of the EPA and he got approval from this guy to bring this.
Speaker 4:They got approval from this guy to bring this poison through the community and I basically said to myself I just can't stand this. I mean, we're going to get more of this garbage into our community. Surely, even though I'm just little old county commissioner, there's something that I can do. Well, something as simple as paying attention and then writing a letter is something that I can do. I wrote a letter and I basically said this is garbage. I don't want this. My commission, fellow commissioners, don't want this. You should stop this, mr Reagan.
Speaker 2:That's a bipartisan.
Speaker 4:And I took it to the other commissioners and they all signed off on it and we issued a resolution basically saying Mr Regan don't allow this for all the following reasons. So we issued it. Within five or six hours, the governor of North Carolina issued a very similar letter. Now, hilariously, his letter was backdated like eight days prior to our letter. He released it six hours after we did.
Speaker 3:Isn't that coincidental?
Speaker 4:Well, whatever so he jumped in, and then Rauser jumped in, and then Tom Tillis jumped in and a bunch of other political figures across North Carolina started writing letters that basically said don't bring this in, and we're going to investigate you, we're going to find out how this approval happened. Lo and behold, the approval got withdrawn and by virtue of me writing this letter simple as that me paying attention, writing a letter, getting a bunch of people involved.
Speaker 4:we were able to stop 4 million pounds of recycled material from coming through our ports up our rail. That's huge. That was a huge win. That's a bipartisan win and I was able to bring everybody together in order to do that.
Speaker 3:That's really cool.
Speaker 4:I'm really proud about doing that. Another specific example that I can point to is that in 2022, whenever there were just dollars flying all over the place from the American Rescue Plan Act, covid, you know they started just passing out checks to whoever wanted one, and that included local governments. One of the things that the county government and I was not then a part of it decided that it was going to do. It was going to do a program that was going to try to replicate. Do you remember that? There was that brewery, true Colors?
Speaker 4:And you know, I think that you could get into whether or not it was a good idea or a bad idea. I'm sure everybody was well-intentioned enough, but it's a bit of a dangerous proposition to say I'm going to essentially hire active gang members to reduce violence in our community. It's one thing for a private organization like True Colors to do it. It's quite another for the government to do it. But the government said in 2022, we're going to try this, we're going to take this money and we're going to create a program that is going to hire active gang members literal active gang members and we're going to ask them to help reduce violence in our community. And the idea just giving it the best possible interpretation is that these people who are in the community would be able to hear and see what was going on, and they could go to somebody if they heard that something was happening and they could say look, please don't do this. This is a bad idea. It's going to be a bad result for all of us. So let's just put it in the best possible terms. But unfortunately, that's not really the way that it worked.
Speaker 4:Our original director was somebody who got in a bunch of trouble because he was misusing county resources. He was offering county resources in exchange for personal favors. He was using county resources for his own personal gain and we had to let him go. He was fired. There was another employee who was fired because ultimately she got into some legal trouble for, I believe, some drug dealing. And then there was another situation where there was one of our top leaders, literally the number two guy in the organization this just happened earlier this year who was driving a county van on county time and he delivered a young man who was one of the people that we're looking out for, supposedly to Houston Moore, and that young man attempted to kill another young man and he then our employee drove this guy at the shooter away.
Speaker 3:So he's an accessory at this point.
Speaker 4:And ultimately, from what I understand, misled law enforcement about whether or not he had any role in it. Well, he, in fact, has been charged as an accessory to attempted murder. And this person not just some casual thing, this young person that got shot, is paralyzed for life. They were paralyzed for life. Do you realize the liability that the county is looking at here?
Speaker 4:as a consequence of our employee facilitating this attempted murder. And then, not long after that, another of our employees wearing a county badge was popped for dealing crack cocaine, and whenever they went to his house. Who are we hiring?
Speaker 4:Whenever they went to his house you want some crack what's coming in your head over, he had a bunch of unsecured firearms and he had children in the house, and so we had an organization that was expressly supposed to make the community safer, and by any metric, in my estimation, what it was doing was exactly the opposite.
Speaker 2:Putting the county at more liability.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but not to mention also like not achieving what we set out to achieve. So whenever the budget time came up and the two years of funding that we had through the Biden bucks, the ARPA dollars, were coming to an end and it was going to have to go on the regular rolls of county funding, I said no, I'm not going to support this, I'm not going to vote for a budget that supports this. And you can get mad at me, you can call me all kinds of mean names, and some people did. That's too bad. But I said I'm going to make sure that we bring this failed concept to an end. And ultimately I had to.
Speaker 4:Man, I went through some fire. I really did, really Because, well, people said you're not giving this a benefit of the doubt, you're not giving folks a chance, and just because somebody makes a mistake doesn't mean that you just end something, but that many mistakes, especially whenever it's coming from leadership at some point you just have to say this is not working and you have to be brave enough to say we're not going to do this anymore. I had to put together a coalition of other commissioners to say that we weren't going to include this in the budget and ultimately we succeeded. We succeeded in defunding an entire organization, which, I have to say, very rarely happens in government. Sometimes you can peel off a little bit, but to actually close a department, is something I bet you got a lot of hate for that I did.
Speaker 4:I got a lot of hate for that, but you know what Good for you sticking to it, though. I got a lot of concentrated hate from a very small number of people. The overwhelming majority of the public totally agrees that active gang members should not be members of local government.
Speaker 3:You will never be able to please everyone.
Speaker 4:I would say that it's probably an 85-15 issue.
Speaker 3:That's awesome.
Speaker 4:That's a great percentage.
Speaker 2:That's great numbers. Yeah, believe it or not, I used to work for the county. Yeah, back in 2000, 2005,. I worked for the fire department, yep Chief.
Speaker 4:Hall. Well, I'm a big fan of the fire department. Let me make one quick comment. Then I want to turn to some commentary about the fire department. I'm not going to reveal any names because I try to keep in confidence whenever people reach out to me in confidence.
Speaker 4:But I had, I believe, five different local Democrat politicians who reached out to me during that time frame and they said I could not do what you're doing, but thank you for doing it. That program does not make any sense. I would not be able to do what you're doing now to fight against this, but please stay the course. Please bring it to an end. That's the sort of thing that you sometimes have to realize, guys, is that whenever you're doing the right thing, you may get some heat from the media. You may get some heat from some people who have monetary interest, and that was a lot of the people. Who were upset with me were people that were employed by this organization or family members of people that were employed by the organization, but most people realized that it was a mistake.
Speaker 4:Turning to the fire department, one of my very happiest wins this year during the budget also was that I've been close to the fire guys for a long time. They know that they can reach out to me. They know that I will advocate for them in all the ways that I can. They came to me and they said hey look, our job is dangerous for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons that it's dangerous is because the fire protective equipment that we have to use has PFAS in it and it increases the likelihood of us having cancer, and that's a scary reality. And these are the folks that are on the front line fighting for us working for us, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Chief Hall has done an excellent job over 30 years. But he's done an excellent job taking the county and making it into what it is now. Because I remember back when I was with him there was county employee firemen and then there was volunteers and it was a mixture and it was a lot of button heads at the time but I left and then shortly after I left, a few years after that, they kind of like the volunteers had to get because the county has gotten so big.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we had a big fire department.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's huge, I stopped back by.
Speaker 4:They keep winning awards. I mean, it's pretty cool man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they've done a really good job. Now I got to give it to I don't know if anybody from the fire a captain when I was there, but now he's. He's left and gone to Brunswick County. His name is Max Smith. That man beat the education into my head of how to be a fireman. Right, he was the, he was. He was the best instructor I've ever had over there, plus Alex Stanlin. Alex Stanlin, he's retired chief from a city city, wilmington, but he also teaches at Cape Fear. Now, right, and he's been around forever.
Speaker 4:But there's a lot of good people that have done a really good job with the county fire. So many great people, including Steve Hunt. I don't know if you know Steve, he was the one that jumped in the river to go save a man a month or so ago.
Speaker 4:Anyway, they came to me and they said we're at risk. What we really want is not much. We understand that it goes along with the job. We'd rather it not be that way. But can we have some enhanced cancer screening? And I guess they've been asking for a few years for this and it just never came. And I went to our staff at the county and I basically said we're going to put this in there or I'm going to throw a fit, I'm going to make a big issue over the fact that we can't provide to the people that are on the front line for us a little bit of peace of mind, because at the end of the day, the sooner you find that you got cancer, if you have cancer, the better able you are to resolve it.
Speaker 1:So that was a big win.
Speaker 4:We were able to put this into the budget. These folks now have access to early cancer screening in a way that they didn't previously, and it's the least that I can do. That's what I talk about whenever I say I'm your commissioner. It's one of my things that I say.
Speaker 2:What are your?
Speaker 4:like for the people. Yeah, I am for the people, and not just am I for the people. The people can reach out to me and they can tell me what is sensible for me to go advocate for, and then I'm going to go do that, and I'm going to do it without fear, without hesitation, because, at the end of the day, it's my job to get these items across the line for the people. The people need somebody like me who is not in this position for any reason other than I want to make a meaningful, positive impact on our community, and I know that's what every politician says, but I would say no, just don't listen to my words, look at my deeds.
Speaker 2:But, we actually have seen you doing it. Thank you, brother, and I hope to keep seeing this in the future, and so does Chad. We live in Pender County, but we operate our small business here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, of course, and I'm looking out for you guys, the small business owners here in New Hanover, but this is also a regional issue. We've got to look out for one another because at the end of the day, we're all kind of tied in with one another.
Speaker 2:Small potatoes go up from there, that's right.
Speaker 3:So, guys, that's Did we do it already, that's 30. Well, I mean we're close, I mean we still got, we can still go for a minute, yeah, we can go for a couple minutes.
Speaker 2:So, dane, yeah, all right. So a big I guess everybody's talking about here lately is kind of the assassination.
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness, the second one it's horrible.
Speaker 4:World number two it is mind-blowing to me that we're 60 days out from a profoundly impactful event in American history and that it happens again, and it almost seems like nobody even cares. Now, of course we care, yeah, but it's almost an afterthought to the media. We have allowed our dialogue to become so toxic that we're at a place where people like this man apparently feel validated to take into his own hands his political disagreements in such a violent, horrible way. That is not the American way.
Speaker 2:No, not at all.
Speaker 3:No, but you know there's so much around this. This was the last minute thing that he went golfing that day. How did that man know? I don't know how did he know? It's deeply disturbing. There's a lot of inside things that I think are going on that are disturbing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would like to feel confidence that the investigations that are happening are going to be thorough. I feel a little bit better knowing that DeSantis is going to be running a parallel investigation into this particular event. Yeah, that's important and, honestly, if you want transparency, then it should be all eyes.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:All parties, all eyes on getting to the answer.
Speaker 2:Nobody wants it done. It doesn't matter what a party you're affiliated with, here, locally, with your commissioners. Nobody should be threatened, nobody should be hunted down?
Speaker 4:No, and the reason that we want to do this the right way is because of law and order. What we began with Law and order applies to everybody should equally Correct. It should not be playing favorites. Not regardless of you're a president or you're a busted out bum, or if you're a Republican or you're a Democrat or you're an unaffiliated. Everybody should get equal view under the law. And we have allowed again ourselves and I don't know how we got to this point to have our political disagreements be presented in such a way that it's not just that you're wrong, it's that you're immoral. That's not good. We've got to figure out how to do what we're doing right now Talk to each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of it. I see that now, this is my opinion. The big problem is is mental health? Yes, and I watched. You know, I've watched my girlfriend over there at um TPS and I see her and her. You know I don't get too involved over there because I don't want to. You know, I don't know how to say this, but I don't want to get involved. I got it, but I see them. They have to put up with a lot and to me it's due to mental health.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Well, COVID messed a lot of people up. A whole lot of people got messed up and people are already unwell, but COVID really messed people up. We've got a lot of mental health issues that are out there and I'm not sure how we get back to where we need to be, but it certainly isn't going to be from calling one another wicked and evil.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 4:Somebody has a policy that they want to advance for lower taxes and reasonable immigration policy.
Speaker 2:That's not wicked or evil, no, it's not Whatever happens to days of sitting down and discussing a plan together by partisan and coming up with something to help and protect the people.
Speaker 3:Well, one of the biggest things that I noticed that looks positive is is seeing Robert Kennedy Jr Right Leaving his his presidential run to side with Mr Trump because he believes in his values more. Even though he didn't see eye to eye with the man, he was man enough to say I like more of the things that you have done. And Tulsi Gabbard, tulsi Gabbard, yeah.
Speaker 4:I think that what we have lost sight of and I've learned about this over the course of my political and professional life, I've learned about this over the course of my political and professional life the 80-20 rule. If you've got 80% agreement with somebody and 20% disagreement, why don't you just set that 20% to the side and focus on the 80% that you do have? Commonality on and accomplish within that framework something meaningful together. You can't expect to have complete concentric overlap with anybody on any issues.
Speaker 4:We've got to better figure out how to do that piece where even if it's 20-80, how about you and I put aside 80% just for the purpose of this 20% for a little while, and we can go back to bickering with one another later on. But if you don't even try to get anything done, all you do is bicker with one another. All you do is assume the worst about one another. That is not the way that we're supposed to be.
Speaker 2:So, guys, I think we covered it all. Yeah, pretty much. This is awesome, man. I tell you what. We can sit here and go on, and on, and on, and on and on.
Speaker 3:But Dane, here, he's a great guy Dane, tell everybody how they can find you. Yes, okay, all the social media, if you would please go to electdanecom E-L-E-C-T-D-A-N-Ecom.
Speaker 4:That's my campaign website. You'll see everything that you need to see about me, my family, my policy positions I've got some funny dog videos that are on there Access to all of my social media. But if you want to go to me on social media, it doesn't matter what it is X, Facebook, Instagram, it's just Dane Scalise. That's my tag on everything.
Speaker 2:Awesome, and I just vote for Dane Scalise. November Good guy 11. Vote for this guy.
Speaker 4:11th month, the fifth day.
Speaker 2:I'm hoping, like if somebody listens to this podcast and they were like you know what, I didn't know that you know.
Speaker 3:right, you know, dan's, share it with somebody that wants to know more about you, know their politicians in their area.
Speaker 4:I appreciate you guys, I really do. Thank you, brother, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, that's, that's it for this episode. So, um, all right. Well, you can find us if you want to see us uh, talk. If you want to see us talk to this guy right here, if you want to see us on video, you can go to YouTube and see us at Off the Hook Podcast. We also stream on all streaming platforms Spotify, apple Podcast, many more and many more. So, until then, we love you and mean it. I'm Rob and I'm Chad. Hey, this is Dane.
Speaker 4:I love you and mean it too.
Speaker 1:All right, guys, we'll see y'all later. You've been listening to off the hook with chad and rob. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review, and be sure to follow us for notifications for another exciting episode. But in the meantime, you can go to our website at wwwoffthehookbillcom to see more. So until next time, stay out of trouble, or it'll be you that needs to get off the hook. See you soon.