Discord on the Massage Board

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Inside a neoclassically inspired office building, past marble columns and inside double glass doors, massage therapists gathered inside a crowded conference room. 

The North Carolina Board of Massage and Bodywork Therapy was holding its regular meeting in its attorney’s Raleigh office space, which the firm shares with other building tenants. The eight-member board, most of whom are massage therapists, regulates the practice across the state. But the chairs, the tables, the flat-screen television streaming the meeting–none of it belongs to the board. Not even a stapler.

It’s arranged via the law firm that both represents the board and doubles as its administrative staff–in an unusual setup some see as a convenience and others as a potential conflict. 

The massage board’s operations are so enmeshed with Broughton Wilkins Sugg & Thompson, which has represented it since 1999, that it’s hard to imagine how the state agency could exist without the law firm. Another peculiarity: The firm keeps 65% of the board’s revenue from licensing fees for the more than 10,460 therapists in North Carolina (excluding some categories like disciplinary and school-related fees). Since 2020, the firm has collected about $2.1 million from the board.

“I’ve been consulted by other attorneys, like myself, who find it, let’s say, unusual,” said Jeff Gray, who is considered the godfather of North Carolina licensing board law, having advised 13 boards, and is currently outside counsel for four. Gray considers board attorney Charles Wilkins a friend and said he did not want to disparage his character. But he’s perplexed by several aspects of the legal configurations. “You can’t profit-share with a client,” Gray said.

By all appearances, the massage board is unlike almost every other licensing board in the state.

Questions about the arrangement have embroiled the board in recent years. Concerns range from the seemingly benign, like office supplies, to worries about disciplinary proceedings. Many fear that an attorney with an incentive to increase or sustain a client’s revenue could provide clouded counsel. (Wilkins said it’s not possible for the board to increase revenue for its own benefit, as it can’t control how many licensees sign up.)

But when a minority of the board’s members made an attempt last year to untangle itself from the firm and explore competing legal proposals, they said Wilkins tried to dissuade them, and that the state agencies they have asked to intervene have rebuffed their concerns.

Critics also say the board could receive more bang for its buck by just hiring staff who answer to it directly. They also cite complaints from therapists that their calls and emails with questions for the agency often go unanswered. 

“We’re paying half a million dollars for part-time help,” said Kay Warren, the board’s former treasurer. “He has been riding a 65% gravy train to the tune of $400,000 to $500,000 a year, almost every year.”

In an interview with The Assembly, Wilkins was genteel and forthcoming. He approached thorny questions with ease, though he acknowledged he was “unpleasantly surprised” to hear people had raised complaints. Wilkins said critics of the setup often don’t understand the board’s history and are misinformed. 

“We do everything for the board,” he said. “It’s just basically a turnkey job for them so they can do the job of being a board member.”

No Money, No Problems

Rick Rosen helped establish North Carolina’s massage board in 1999, served as its first chair, and holds license No. 1 in the state. Therapists like Rosen hoped creating the board would help both legitimize and regulate an industry that some still viewed with skepticism.

Lawmakers passed a bill creating the board in 1998 and charged it with ensuring the “protection of the health, safety, and welfare” of people receiving massage and bodywork services. That included creating education and testing standards and mandatory licensure for practitioners.

“The problem was we had no money,” said Rosen, who is now based in Hawaii. They had little guidance from the state on how to establish basic administrative functions. “The state gave us no handbook.” 

After talking with a few lawyers, Rosen found a workaround with Wilkins, whose firm had set up a licensing board governing occupational therapy 15 years earlier. 

The 65% cut of revenue arrangement arose from the board’s lack of cash, Rosen explained, making the deal “basically a no-interest loan of legal services.” 

“Left to their own devices, massage therapists are good at caring for people but not being regulators or administrators,” he said. “So this is where our field really has been well served by having an experienced firm.”

In 2005, Rosen became the first executive director of the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards, a national nonprofit that provides support and guidance to 47 boards across the country (three states don’t regulate the practice). Rosen acknowledges that North Carolina’s setup is unique compared with the others but said he has been comfortable with Wilkins’ role.

Mai Lin Petrine, the current director of legal and regulatory affairs for the federation, has the opposite impression of the massage board. “It’s almost like it’s an open secret how messed up this is,” she said, noting that the way North Carolina handles all licensure boards is outside the national norm.

In most states, the government controls the licensing boards, staffs them with state employees, and provides legal services through the attorney general’s office. North Carolina has 55 licensure boards that oversee everything from dentistry to auctioneering; they are quasi-private entities–meaning they have little state oversight or assistance. (While the AG’s office will provide legal services to licensing boards upon request, it charges and often assigns inexperienced attorneys, Gray said; most boards opt to hire outside counsel.)

The state’s limited control is through appointees. The speaker of the House and Senate pro tempore each appoint two members to the massage board, while the governor appoints four. 

Beyond that, the state is hands-off–a setup Petrine finds odd. “I don’t understand why the governor, who appoints these people, doesn’t care more about the optics,” Petrine said. “It almost seems rogue.”

Representatives for House and Senate leaders did not respond to inquiries for this story. A spokesperson for Gov. Josh Stein also did not answer questions about the massage board. 

“It almost seems rogue.”

Mai Lin Petrine, Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards

Most governmental bodies, including cities, school boards, and state agencies, are subject to extensive rules that often require competitive bidding on projects or professional services. Because licensing boards are self-sustaining, they have broad discretion over how they engage with outside consultants.

Some massage board members think a competitive bidding process would be beneficial and reduce Wilkins’ outsized role. Last year, members realized the board had inadvertently allowed its previous eight-year contract with Wilkins’ firm to lapse and opted to enter a short-term extension as discussions around a potential bidding process continued. The board’s current contract with the firm expires at the end of this month. 

“The board is fully under the control of Charles Wilkins and his team,” said Laura Ford, a board member and massage therapist based in Cary. “Because he has been in charge for 25 years, appointees are typically swayed by Charles and his team’s displays of authoritative power.”

Wilkins said he supports the board pursuing a bidding process for legal services if it so chooses. He said he only recently realized the board was supposed to be issuing a request for proposals to select a financial auditor every few years and will in the future. Otherwise, soliciting bids for professional services is up to the board’s discretion.

The legality of the firm’s 65% revenue share is also in question. Critics, including both current board members and outside experts, point to a statute that says state agencies “may not enter into a contingency fee contract with a private attorney” unless the Attorney General determines it is “both cost‑effective and in the public interest.”

A spokesperson for Attorney General Jeff Jackson said the office wasn’t aware of any such massage board approvals. (After publication, Wilkins said the firm and board have requested an opinion from the attorney general’s office about the statute in question). Asked whether that specific statute applied, the attorney general’s spokesperson instead pointed to a different statute that grants agencies leeway to employ the professional help they need to function.

Wilkins said he wasn’t previously aware of the contingency fee preapproval rule but said he doesn’t believe the statute applies to administrative services. The legislature hasn’t increased licensing fees since the board was founded, he said.

Oversight

Those concerned about the massage board’s current setup have written letters to lawmakers, as well as the current and former governors. They’ve also filed complaints or sought assistance from at least seven state agencies or institutions, according to records obtained by The Assembly. 

Most complaints ask for an investigator to comb through the massage board’s legal structures for signs of impropriety. Some specifically accuse Wilkins of dissuading board members’ efforts to evaluate his contract. (Wilkins denies interfering with members’ attempts to review his firm’s arrangements and says he supports the efforts to review contracts.)

In most cases, the agencies redirected complaints to each other, generating an exhaustive shuffle. “There’s no one place to turn,” said Warren, the board’s former treasurer whose term expired in August.

To demonstrate the pingponging: The state Department of Justice rerouted board member Ford’s request for legal guidance and a formal review of Wilkins’ contract to the Purchase & Contract Division of the Department of Administration, but a representative from that department told Ford last month the issue didn’t fall under its purview. A representative from the division told The Assembly the same but said it asked the Department of Justice to weigh in.

“Boards with a big impact on a small number of people are more likely to have problems.”

Joe Coletti, staff director for the House Oversight and Reform Committee

Agencies often directed complaints to the auditor’s office or the Ethics Commission, a group that interprets and enforces rules for state government. “But when you go to talk to Ethics, Ethics says, ‘Well, you need to run this by your ethics liaison,’” Warren said. “Well, that person is [Wilkins].”

The auditor’s office hasn’t published any findings on the massage board since a 2014 review of all state licensing boards. (There were 57 at that time, but there are now 55, according to a spokesperson for Stein, who said the state does not maintain an official list of boards.) That audit concluded licensing boards “operate with ineffective oversight from state-level entities.” It found the massage board to be particularly cash-strapped, with the highest liability ratio by far–meaning its bills due were higher than cash on hand. The board has continued to carry a negative balance in recent years, according to its annual audits. 

“Boards with a big impact on a small number of people are more likely to have problems,” said Joe Coletti, the staff director for the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which investigates state agencies. Coletti declined to comment on the massage board specifically but said he redirected any complaints his office received to the auditor. A spokesperson for the auditor’s office confirmed it has received tips about the massage board but cannot disclose information about them due to confidentiality laws.

“Any time you have a board that is not in the limelight, and there are not as many people paying attention to it, and especially when that board has the ability to make decisions that affect somebody’s livelihood,” Coletti said, “those things in combination are going to increase the potential for conflict.” 

Wilkins said he was unaware of any of the complaints or requests for investigation. He said he wished those with concerns would just sit down with him to talk it out. Each year, the board submits its annual audits to five state agencies, Wilkins said, and none of them has ever raised questions about its legal contract.

Wilkins has the same setup with the Board of Occupational Therapy but said he hasn’t faced similar complaints. 

Pressure’s On

Warren had already spent years watchdogging the board as a licensee before former Gov. Roy Cooper appointed her to serve on it in 2018. Warren was frustrated by her impression of the board’s hands-off approach with Wilkins and was a regular at the lectern during the board’s public comment period. “I knew that issues would disappear into a black hole,” she said. 

A former tax examiner for the Internal Revenue Service, Warren delights in spreadsheets and digging. Becoming the board’s treasurer was a natural fit. Her concerns about Wilkins intensified after attending a national conference on regulatory licensure in 2022.

At the conference, she remembers an attorney looking at her incredulously and asking her to repeat herself when she described the massage board’s legal arrangements. In a different session, her ears perked when a speaker encouraged board members to talk with one another; in her board member orientation with Wilkins, Warren says he explicitly instructed members not to speak to each other about board matters outside of meetings. (Wilkins said as part of orientation, new members are told it’s important to discuss board matters with all board members at meetings so all views can be heard.) 

“I came back from that conference with a fire in my belly,” she said. 

What Warren saw as fire, others felt was unnecessary heat. Rosen, the first licensee who continues to keep tabs on the board and counsels Wilkins on various matters, felt Warren’s inquiries as a board member were often combative and irrelevant, derailing meetings for hours. “It was unfounded and counterproductive,” he said. 

Kim Turk joined the board in 2015 and was chair from 2020 until her term expired in 2023. Rumblings about the possibility that Wilkins and his firm were earning too much money predated her tenure, Turk said, but have never been substantiated. “There was nothing ever that they charged us for that we didn’t have complete knowledge of and voted to agree to,” she said.

“It was unfounded and counterproductive.”

Rick Rosen, former massage board member

The board has probably saved money with Wilkins, Turk said. “They were very conservative with what they charged us,” she said.

It was Warren, Turk felt, who was creating problems. “Kay was convinced something funny was happening with the money,” Turk said. “This perpetual sour grapes thing is not necessary.”

But for Petrine, the legal director for the national massage board group, Warren’s doggedness came as a relief. “She’s very detail-oriented,” Petrine said. “She’s like a little bulldog when she gets onto something; it’s like she is not going to let it go.”

Petrine said the national organization had repeatedly complained about the Raleigh-based American & European Massage Clinic, accusing it of issuing diplomas without adequate coursework. But Petrine said the state board didn’t take action until Warren intervened as part of her role in the school approval committee in 2021. “When Kay took over the school approval process, that’s when they actually did something, and the school was closed,” she said. (Wilkins said Warren wasn’t involved in the school’s closure.)

In 2022, Matthew Fecteau was the president of the North Carolina chapter of the American Massage Therapy Association, an industry group that represents therapists, when he wrote a letter to then-State Auditor Beth Wood seeking an investigation into the board’s legal arrangements. 

“This perpetual sour grapes thing is not necessary”

Former chair Kim Turk on Kay Warren’s inquiries

Wilkins would not allow the association to see a financial breakdown, Fecteau wrote, and was discouraging members from seeking alternative legal or professional services. “We do not think it is appropriate for the board’s attorney to provide space, manage operations, receive a cut of license fees, and be paid as the attorney,” Fecteau wrote. 

It took the auditor’s office more than a year to respond. Ultimately, the association said the auditor decided not to take action. “Although we were not provided with further details about the [auditor’s] decision,” a spokesperson for the association told The Assembly, “we appreciate the attention and consideration given to the matter.” Wilkins said the auditor’s office expressed no concerns about the board’s contracts during its review, and no other agency has ever raised similar issues.

Since last year, Wilkins’ critics have filed four complaints against him with the North Carolina State Bar, alleging a range of grievances, from interfering with board matters to improper prosecutorial conduct. The bar has dismissed two and hasn’t yet responded to the others. A spokesperson for the bar said its investigations are confidential and said it has not imposed any public discipline or complaint against Wilkins.

“We don’t have anything to hide,” Wilkins said of the complaints.

One of the outstanding bar complaints accuses Wilkins of commingling his legal roles. During disciplinary hearings, accusations against therapists accused of wrongdoing range from practicing without a license to improper touch or sexual assault. Wilkins has, according to multiple witnesses, both presented evidence in a case against a therapist defendant and provided counsel to the board during its deliberations over the therapist’s discipline. Wilkins denied that his firm performs both of these roles. He said he usually only speaks during board deliberations if a member asks him a clarifying question but added he doesn’t remember all the cases he’s worked on over the past two decades serving the board.

“We don’t have anything to hide.”

Charles Wilkins, massage board attorney

Gray, the licensing board legal expert, said while there is no law barring the kind of role-blurring Wilkins is accused of, he would like to see one established. “That is very irregular. That is not appropriate at all,” Gray said. “It’s a due process issue.” 

Wesley Tripp III, an attorney who has worked with three licensing boards and is currently lead counsel for the Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors, said he personally would never mix the two responsibilities but stopped short of making an ethical judgment. “I wouldn’t say it’s wrong or unethical or improper,” he said. “I just think there’s a better way to do it.”

Tripp was unaware of concerns about the massage board but was surprised to hear about the 65% contingency fee contract. “That’s interesting,” he said. “It would appear to make an incentive structure that would create conflicts.”

Yet another source of discomfort for the setup’s detractors is the contracts with Wilkins’ family members. In 2004, the board entered into a contract with Wilkins’ son-in-law, who operates the IT firm Conjure Solutions. That relationship continues, with the board paying the company between $9,000 and $18,000 annually. 

Early on, the board also contracted with a firm cofounded by Wilkins’ wife, Mary Lillie Wilkins, to administer school approvals. The firm oversees the inspections and licensure renewal process of the state’s 12 approved massage schools as they come due every three years, or more frequently if issues need rectifying. 

While Wilkins’ wife stepped back from the business in 2022 and has no ongoing ownership, the board continues to use M&M, paying it between $21,000 and $59,000 annually. 

Wilkins said the familial contracts were practical. His son-in-law already performed work for his law firm and for the Board of Occupational Therapy. “It gave the massage board a tremendous financial advantage because we didn’t have to go back and recreate infrastructure,” Wilkins said. 

He gave a similar explanation for M&M. After the agency was formed, it was unexpectedly saddled with the responsibility of accrediting massage therapy schools when the community college system punted the task. Though the agency wasn’t prepared to handle it, in 2000 the attorney general weighed in to say the job was up to the massage board. A board member attempted to take on the task but quit months later, Wilkins said, because the burden was too arduous. The board advertised the job for public bidding at the time, Wilkins said, but received no response. 

Wilkins’ wife and her friend both had backgrounds in education and formed M&M to help. “She didn’t like the criticism that came up every now and then about her being married to me,” he said. “She was always looking for a way to get out and quit, but nobody would let her.” 

Wilkins said he sought an opinion from the Ethics Commission in 2009 over the relationship, which he said concluded there was no actual conflict because oversight and evaluation of M&M’s services fell under the board and its school approval committees, which are “independent units,” he said. “In an abundance of caution, the potential conflict of interest was also resolved,” according to Wilkins, by paying his law firm a flat $10,000 for its work on school approvals, paid separately and in addition to its hourly litigation costs and administrative work. 

‘An Us vs. Them Thing’

For more than 25 years, a majority of the board has renewed or negotiated its contracts with Broughton Wilkins Sugg & Thompson six separate times and was satisfied with the firm’s services. A majority of the board still is, but the voices of skeptics have grown louder in recent years, and meetings are more acrimonious.

After the legislature allowed the massage board in 2018 to begin licensing establishments, it added a new seat to the board in 2019 to represent these massage therapy practices, appointed by the governor. This created opportunities for a 4-4 deadlock, which materialized last year when long-simmering tensions erupted as the faction of the board skeptical of Wilkins and his contract inched closer to a majority. 

Over three separate meetings spanning five months and at least 14 separate votes, the board finally settled at its December 2024 meeting on a new chair, Amy Swink, whom both sides deemed neutral enough to conduct business. 

“It was kind of like an us vs. them thing,” said Turk, the former chair, who observed but did not participate in the meeting. 

The other side felt the same. “Every step of the way, we just know we’re at war,” said Ford.

The next day, a new contract committee met for the first time. Aside from reviewing its current contracts, a key aim of the four-member committee was to explore whether to issue requests for proposals. The first item of business: the Broughton Wilkins Sugg & Thompson contract. 

This presented an awkward situation. 

They were sitting in a conference room the law office shares with other building tenants. Warren appeared agitated, and a little unnerved, to have to ask Wilkins and his staff to leave the room repeatedly, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Assembly. 

As a member attempted to call the meeting to order, Warren drew a line: “Charles, you should not be in the room. There are conflicts of interest here,” she said. Wilkins responded that he and his staff were at their disposal to ensure the committee followed laws and policies, and at that point in the meeting they were only electing a committee chair. 

“It’s up to the committee to determine whether we are in the room at any particular part, not you,” Wilkins said. 

“Do I need to take this to [the] Ethics [Commission]?” Warren shot back, her voice growing louder. “Do I need to take this to the bar?” 

“You can take it to Ethics; you can take it to the bar,” Wilkins said. “Doesn’t make a difference to me.”

Still, Wilkins and his staff left the room. Upon returning, Warren attempted to smooth things over and acknowledged she could be a “contentious person.” Wilkins told the group he is working for the public’s best interests and felt Warren was bullying him.

Warren and others view the exchange as evidence of Wilkins obstructing the attempt to review his contract. “You can’t have that frank discussion in front of one of the vendors,” said Petrine, the national massage group’s legal director.

After the dustup, the contract committee decided to operate confidentially, and its representatives have reported only high-level overviews of its activities during board meetings. Wilkins said he has no minutes from the contract committee meetings to share, though the committee members have kept them privately, according to records obtained by The Assembly. 

While Wilkins doesn’t think it’s appropriate for the committee to conduct its business privately, he said those meetings are not open because there is not a quorum of board members present. David McKenzie, an attorney who specializes in open government and has advised The Assembly on various matters, said they most certainly are.

“The committee cannot simply declare its discussions ‘confidential,’” McKenzie said. 

For those critical of Wilkins, the misunderstanding illustrates the bind the board is in: It needs outside legal assistance to avoid running afoul of Open Meetings Law while still reviewing its current contracts. 

Last spring, the committee got feedback from Dale Atkinson, a Utah-based attorney who specializes in licensing law and trains boards across the country, and shared some of the concerns about the relationship. “I think there’s a philosophical, moral, ethical question on the table that conflicts might surface enough where I might feel conflicted, and now I am ineffective as a lawyer for the board,” Atkinson told them, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Assembly. “This is so fraught with conflict principles, they’re almost hard to identify.” 

With Warren rolling off the board and contract committee in August, momentum to tackle the issue has faded. A majority of the board feels the ethical concerns are overblown and mostly theoretical: Why waste money and time trying to fix something that isn’t broken? 

At the board’s October meeting, current board chair Nancy Harrell shared an update on the committee’s latest decisions. “We don’t find it necessary to continue with the RFP process for legal services,” she said. (Harrell declined an interview request.)

At the board’s next meeting on December 11, Wilkins’ expiring contract will be up for discussion. The board is expected to renew it.

UPDATE: This article has been updated to clarify the law office’s tenancy and include additional information and responses.