Beaufort County Black Chamber ‘barely on life support.’ The board wants president fired
Essential funding for the struggling Beaufort County Black Chamber of Commerce is under threat because of financial mismanagement and the refusal of its president, Larry Holman, to follow orders of the board, court documents allege.
In records filed this month as part of its lawsuit against Holman, the chamber’s board said Holman had refused to turn over financial information. The group petitioned a judge to hold Holman in contempt of court, which can result in a fine and jail time.
In an affidavit, board chairman Bernard McIntyre also asked the court to grant the board the authority, already provided in its bylaws, “to discharge him.”
On Monday, Judge Marvin H. Dukes III, said it appears that Holman has violated the order requiring him to turn over financial information and obey the board. He ordered that Holman appear before him Jan. 11 to explain why he should not be held in contempt “for such disobedience.”
The unusual request by a not-for-profit board seeking a judge’s intervention to discipline its leader is the latest development in a year-old lawsuit that pits board members against Holman for control of the 22-year-old organization.
In support of the contempt motion, board members filed 52 exhibits in the Beaufort County Court of Common Pleas, including emails, tax records and affidavits, that paint an unflattering picture of Holman’s leadership.
Among the allegations are that Holman continues to ignore the board’s oversight, keeping it in the dark about finances while paying himself more than $125,000 a year — even after the board ordered that he provide more financial transparency and cut his pay by $45,000. The chamber relies on public and private funds to operate.
The current board is made up of McIntyre, the chairman; Wilma Holman; Treasurer Gary Littlejohn; Leroy GIlliard, Sheila Jenkins Ward and John T. McCoy. Wilma Holman, Holman’s wife, is not part of the petition.
In November 2020, three members of the chamber’s board of directors — McIntyre, McCoy and Gilliard — filed a lawsuit alleging Holman improperly fired them, appointed his own board — including his wife as chair — misused money and hid financial documents. The lawsuit has led to scrutiny of the chamber of commerce, whose mission is to promote economic empowerment of Black communities and small businesses.
In December 2020, Judge Dukes ordered Holman to dismantle his “improperly constituted” board of directors, reinstate the old board and provide board members with copies of the organization’s financial records within a week.
Holman has previously referred to the initial lawsuit, which still is pending, as frivolous and said it should have been dismissed a month after it was filed. Contacted Tuesday, Holman told The Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet that he had not seen the latest court filings, adding, “As far as I’m concerned, I did what the judge said.”
He questioned the legitimacy of the current board, calling members “the same perpetrators who are not really board members.”
McIntyre, in the petition for contempt of court, cited three examples in which Holman’s “intractable and noncompliant behaviors” have prevented or held up $2.6 million in funding, from public and private sources, for the chamber.
The group’s public funding includes grants from Beaufort County, the city of Beaufort, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the South Carolina Housing Authority.
McIntyre says Holman’s refusal to provide financial documents to the board has put the chamber in financial peril. His “deficient and irregular’’ record keeping has driven away funding sources, and has kept the board ”in the dark about the financial status and health of the chamber.”
Records show that the board ordered Holman to reduce his salary from $126,000 a year to $80,000, beginning in September, but Holman continues to pay himself the higher amount. Court documents also say that Wilma Holman, who also is employed by the chamber, earned at least $11,521 in 2020 and $75,651 in 2017. Holman’s son also works for the chamber.
“The chamber is barely on life support with hundred of thousands of dollars Holman is paying himself and family members,” McIntyre says, “and soon even a ventilator influx full of financial relief would not resuscitate the chamber with a recalcitrant and defiant Holman at the helm.”
Beaufort County Council has instructed County Administrator Eric Greenway to withhold state and local accommodation tax payments to the chamber until a few matters relating to invoices are cleared up, Chairmen Joe Passiment said in a statement to the newspapers.
For the fiscal year 2021, the county awarded the chamber $32,000 in state accommodations taxes. The chamber has received $20,214, but further payments have been suspended, said Chris Ophardt, a county spokesman.
The county paid the chamber $50,000 in local accommodation taxes in 2021 but suspended a $50,000 payment for fiscal year 2022, Ophardt said.
The city of Beaufort awarded the chamber $3,500 each in 2020 and 2021 for marketing purposes as part of its annual state accommodation tax awards to not-for-profits. The group did not apply to the city for 2022 accommodation tax funding.
What the latest filings allege
In the latest court documents, board members claim Holman is in contempt because he refuses to follow the board’s directives regarding financial record-keeping and operations of a not-for-profit cafe that ran afoul of the city and state. Violations of the order could lead to as much as a $1,500 fine or a year in jail, or both.
Here’s a sampling of the reasons cited in the petition asking to hold Holman in contempt:
▪ An email from board treasurer Gary Littlejohn, a former Marine Corps major and foreign service officer who once owned a large tax service, was titled The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and The Uglier.
The bad: Over 40 transactions of more than $500 were not submitted to Littlejohn for a signature. The transactions included payments for $10,000, $15,000 and $23,000. The board had directed Holman on July 6 to obtain the signature of Littlejohn on expenditures of more than $500.
The ugly: Littlejohn went to a bank with Holman to be added to the chamber account, but his authority was limited to signing next to Holman’s name, and he did not have the ability to view account balances. The bank manager, he noted, would not confirm whether Holman had a safe deposit box on behalf of the chamber.
Uglier: While at the bank, Littlejohn said, he discovered the chamber had five “ghost accounts” the board wasn’t aware of. “Are there others?” Littlejohn wrote.
▪ Holman has “attempted to purge” board members by claiming they haven’t paid their membership dues, board members say. Holman, for example, did not deposit Littlejohn’s $125 membership check and then claimed, in an unsigned letter supposedly written by the membership committee chairman, that his dues were not current so he wasn’t in good standing, court records say.
“At the next board meeting, I replaced the original check with another and had the translation record in the minutes,” Littlejohn said. “Mr. Holman reacted by snatching the check from the secretary and throwing it back towards me.”
▪ Littlejohn says he asked Holman for a “walk-through”of the chamber offices so he could inventory $45,785 of art and $8,204 in “hair assets” listed on the balance sheet, but those inspections were never arranged. “I’d like to know how we came to own this inventory?” Littlejohn wrote in an Oct. 8 email to Holman. Holman later provided a list of art, books and artifacts, which Littlejohn reported as “some progress.”
▪ Chairman McIntyre says in an affidavit that on Nov. 5, 2020, just before Holman created his own board, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) cited the chamber for permitting the consumption of liquor by non-members at the Gullah Jazz Cafe, which is not allowed under its not-for-profit club liquor license.
The cafe, which has since been closed, is attached to the chamber building on Bladen Street. The city of Beaufort then cited the cafe for not having a city business license April 1, 2021, after the club sold liquor to a city employee posing as a member. McIntyre said Holman was allowing the sale of alcohol to the public, member or not.
After the citation, board members asked whether alcohol was still being served to non-members, and Holman assured them that it wasn’t, McIntyre said. “In addition to that being a violation of the Chamber liquor license and in defiance of board directive, this activity is tantamount to the Chamber running an entertainment restaurant business against the Chamber’s goal of incubating and expanding opportunities for these kinds of businesses instead of competing against them,” McIntyre says in the affidavit.
The board then took over, negotiating with City Attorney Bill Harvey to shut down the cafe in exchange for the citation being dropped. A few days later, Harvey contacted the board saying Holman had not shut down the cafe, as the board had directed, and that the city would “not be made to look like stooges.”
Holman turned over the liquor license in August, four months after he was ordered to, but alcoholic beverages were sold for a high school reunion on Oct. 2, court records show. McIntyre says the repeated violations of board directions have sullied the chamber’s reputation and put it in constant peril of citations from the city and SLED.
▪ Littlejohn emailed Holman on Sept. 23 inquiring about a $1,599 delinquent chamber insurance premium that was paid late on a credit card that the board never authorized.
