Church job, ankle bracelet await Phipps after prison

RALEIGH -- Former N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps is expected to be released from federal prison April 23 and plans to quickly start a new job as director of Christian education at her Alamance County church, relatives said Tuesday.

"It's going to be living life again," said Phipps' husband, Robert. "We're looking forward to her being home with the kids."

Phipps, a daughter and granddaughter of North Carolina governors, was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to extortion, mail fraud and other charges in 2003. After her release, she will be confined to her Haw River home by an electronic ankle bracelet, except for going to work.

She is expected to stay in home confinement and wear the ankle bracelet through August, when her sentence officially ends, family members said. A few months were shaved off Phipps' sentence for good behavior, her husband said.

Phipps, 51, has been serving her sentence at the federal prison camp for women in Alderson, W.Va., a minimum-security facility along the Greenbrier River that counts Martha Stewart among its former inmates. Phipps has been teaching high school-level classes to other inmates as her job at the prison.

Upon her release, she'll begin working at Hawfields Presbyterian Church in Haw River, the Scott family church for generations. It recently lost its director of Christian education.

"The pastor put it in the church bulletin that the position was vacant and words to the effect that if you're interested let us know," former Gov. Bob Scott, Phipps' father, said.

Phipps, who regularly receives the bulletin by mail, applied.

A Democrat barred from seeking public office again, Phipps received a unanimous vote for the job from the church's leadership committee.

Phipps was elected agriculture commissioner in 2000, but the Scott political legacy ended quickly. Former campaign aides testified that she pressured state fair concessionaires and ride operators for political contributions, including illegal cash contributions. A Wake County jury convicted her on state charges; her plea in federal court followed.

Often a released prisoner goes to a halfway house before going home, but that is for prisoners with no job to go to or drug problems or both, said U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, a Republican who represents Phipps' district and helped arrange her home confinement. He visited her at Alderson in 2004.

"Halfway houses were not designed for people like Meg Scott Phipps. She's not going to have any trouble adjusting back into society," Coble said Tuesday, adding that other prisoners have gone directly to home confinement.

Coble said the Bureau of Prisons has handled other prisoners in similar fashion. "I don't think (the Bureau of Prisons) went out of their way to do a great turn for me or Meg."

Phipps' release has been a long time coming, her husband said. The couple have two high school-aged children.

"The last thing Meg or I want to be is bitter about this whole thing," he said. "I look forward to coffee at the kitchen table again."