NC Health News investigation found NC officials steered $40M in public funds to donor-founded mental health center amid clustered contributions

On July 29, 2026, an investigation by North Carolina Health News and The Charlotte Ledger reported that North Carolina officials had approved more than $40 million in state and local funding for the Katie Blessing Center, a pediatric mental-health facility in Charlotte founded by businessman Michael Estramonte, over the same three-year period in which Estramonte, his relatives, and associates of his company Starmount Healthcare Management contributed nearly $1 million to the campaigns of the officials who directed that funding.

Campaign-finance watchdog Bob Hall's analysis of state records, shared with the reporters, found that Estramonte and 19 relatives, business associates, and their relatives — most with no prior record of giving to a North Carolina campaign — gave a combined $931,308 to state and local candidates between 2023 and 2026. The giving arrived in clusters: on April 17, 2023, thirteen people connected to Estramonte each gave $6,400 to Gov. Josh Stein on the same day, and on March 21, 2024, six gave the same amount to then-Rep. Jason Saine, at the time senior chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Starmount Management's lobbying spending rose from $97,771 in 2023 to $142,508 in 2025. Over the same period, the General Assembly awarded the center $5 million in 2023-24, $12.5 million in 2024-25, and $17.7 million in the budget Stein signed into law on July 7, 2026, on top of $4.5 million from Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

Hall filed a complaint with the North Carolina State Board of Elections alleging that some of the listed donors may not have been the true source of the funds, a straw-donor arrangement Estramonte "strongly" denied, telling reporters that any such allegation is "not based in facts or evidence" and that contribution decisions were made independently by each donor. A Western Carolina University political scientist cautioned that campaign contributions rarely change how a lawmaker votes on their own, and one recipient, Rep. Carla Cunningham, said the funding reflected the state's genuine need for pediatric psychiatric beds rather than the contributions she received from Estramonte's circle.