Beaufort Co. school board member faces ethics charges after complaint from Bluffton mom

Beaufort County Board of Education member John Dowling has been charged with five state ethics commission violations after an investigation into allegations that he harassed a Bluffton mom for speaking out against him in a board meeting and lied on campaign finance disclosure forms.

While the ethics commission did not find any grounds to the harassment allegations, Dowling faces one count for failing to open a campaign account, one count for failing to disclose a personal contribution of more than $100 dollars and three counts for failing to disclose three campaign-related expenditures totaling $222.90.

The complaint was revealed at Tuesday night’s school board meeting when a member of the student advocacy group Stand for Children of Beaufort County, also known as STAND, brought up the matter during a public comment session.

Buffy Snider, who filed the ethics complaint with the South Carolina State Ethics Commission in early April, is affiliated with STAND, but said Friday she reported Dowling to the ethics commission merely as a concerned parent.

During his election, Dowling was endorsed by Citizens Advocating Responsible Education, another education advocacy group, commonly known as CARE, that often finds itself in opposition to STAND.

The two groups were formed during the controversial five-year tenure of former superintendent Jeff Moss, who was investigated and fined by the state ethics commission in 2016 for nepotism violations.

Members of both groups have accused the other of not working in the best interests of students or the community and of playing dirty politics for and against Moss.

The ethics complaint against Dowling was filed during a time of ever-increasing tension among board members, Moss and the two groups.

“This is about a mistake I made out of my own stupidity in filing my expenses in the campaign,” Dowling said Thursday. “But the people in this organization (STAND) would rather insist on ad hominem attacks on anyone who disagrees with them.”

In the complaint against Dowling, Snider alleges that:

• The school board member retaliated against Snider for speaking out against him.
• He directed an online attack toward Snider after she received a payment from the district.

• He lied on his pre-election financial campaign disclosure form.

“I hope you will consider these violations with the utmost scrutiny and protect our community from these horrific violations of ethics and candor,” Snider, whose children attend Beaufort County public schools, wrote in her complaint to the commission.

This not the first time Dowling has been at the center of controversy related to the school board.

• Dowling has been a vocal adversary of Moss, even before joining the board.
• In April 2017, Dowling, who was then a private citizen, was escorted out of a school board work session by a district administrator after he got into an argument with board member Mary Cordray. Dowling filed a restraining order against the administrator, but a magistrate judge found no grounds for that request.
• At a Feb. 3 work session, Dowling made a motion for the board to issue a press release about federal subpoenas received by the school district in connection to an FBI investigation into the construction of two Bluffton schools, which forced the board and district to acknowledge the issue publicly for the first time.
  
  
• Dowling voted against holding the district’s referendum in April, which would have provided the school district with millions to build and expand schools in Bluffton. The referendum, supported by parents in STAND and opposed by CARE, later failed by a historic margin.
• In March, Dowling filed a state ethics complaint against former school district attorney Drew Davis for allegedly deceiving the school board, but the case was dismissed the following month by the Supreme Court of South Carolina’s Commission on Lawyer Conduct.

Dowling said Snider’s ethics complaint against him was “pure retribution and political payback” for his stances on these and other issues.

“These people are just hell-bent on revenge, so it’s really sad because I didn’t talk 72 percent of the county into voting no (on the referendum),” he said.

Snider denies Dowling’s interpretation of her motives.

In her complaint, Snider says Dowling began to target her after a Feb. 6 school board public comment session in which Snider pointed out that Dowling left the meeting to give an interview to a local television station.

“When I spoke out at the meeting, it had nothing to do with the referendum,” Snider said. “I was frustrated with what I was seeing at my first (school board) meeting — the behavior of a board member — and that is what I spoke out against.”

Dowling attempted to interrupt Snider’s comments at that meeting, which she said impeded on her First Amendment rights, according to her complaint.

“It made me sad,” Snider said. “A parent should always feel they have an open door to get involved in their children’s education. I certainly think it discourages parents from getting involved.”

An inquiry about cake balls

About a month after attending her first school board meeting in February, Snider began to notice “odd questions and comments made online” against her about an $850 payment she had received in January from the Beaufort County School District, she stated in the complaint.

The payment was awarded as a reimbursment for cake balls that Snider had made as holiday gifts for Pritchardville Elementary School staff, which she did at the request of the school’s principal, she said Friday.

After a member of CARE asked Dowling about the payment listed on a school district transparency report, Dowling said, he filed a request for more information through the Freedom for Information Act.

In the complaint, Snider alleges that Dowling shared information obtained through the status of his position with others outside the school board and district and “may have directed them to harass (her) online.”

Snider alleges in her complaint that the people who harassed her online “would have no knowledge of this information had Mr. Dowling not given it to them.”

However, the school district makes its financial transactions public each month on the district’s website. Snider’s transaction was listed in January’s transparency report, and it included her name, the amount of money she had received and noted the payment had been made for “cake balls for staff.”

In his rebuttal to the state ethics commission, Dowling wrote that Snider was confusing his “fiduciary responsibility and oversight with harassment” and that she has “an uninformed vision of a (board of education) member’s responsibilities and duties.”

Snider said she originally filed a report with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office regarding the online attacks, but deputies told her that it was a civil matter rather than criminal.

After speaking with an attorney, Snider said, she realized she didn’t want to collect any monetary damages.

Although she knew that pursuing harassment charges might not be part of the ethics commission responsibilities, she decided to go forward with the complaint anyway, she said.

“I just want ethical people on the school board, so I decided to pursue the ethics route,” she said.

Campaign finance errors nothing new for school board members

Dowling is not the first school board member to make a mistake on his financial disclosure filings with the State Ethics Commission.

In 2016, a review by The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette found that seven of the 10 Beaufort County school board members at that time failed to consistently and accurately report their board income for multiple years, even though state law requires disclosure.

Board members told the newspapers at that time that their errors were due to a complicated filing process and a misunderstanding of the law. The board members amended their forms and were not fined for the discrepancies.

Dowling amended his 2017 form to include his annual income on April 22 — 13 days after Snider filed her complaint against the board member.

Dowling, who did not originally report any campaign contributions, added three contributions, including $192.90 of his own money and $30 from a donor.

“This is something I have to take very seriously, but the fact of the matter is (The State Ethics Commission) didn’t find me guilty of anything aside from screwing up my filing, which I’ve corrected,” Dowling said Tuesday.

Complaints made to the State Ethics Commission can be resolved either through a formal hearing or a mutual agreement between the commission and the individual, which may include a fine. As of Friday, a formal hearing had not been scheduled, according to the commission.

This story was originally published October 19, 2018 at 6:05 PM.