‘It’s about winning’: Beaufort Co. Council members respond to chairman’s “manipulation”
Last year, Beaufort County Council Chairman Stu Rodman, using his personal email account, orchestrated a meticulous plan to hire the next county administrator. Although his scheme to hire Josh Gruber ultimately failed, his emails showed an elected official conducting government business privately to thwart a public voting process.
Though some council members say they oppose using private communications to gather support for county issues, others say it’s simply the way local government works. The back-door plan to hire Gruber happened during a previous administration, they say. It’s time to move on under the leadership of new Administrator Ashley Jacobs.
On Monday, Island Packet columnist Liz Farrell published an opinion piece about Rodman’s emails, showing Rodman’s outline on July 18, 2018 for how the July 23 meeting and vote for the administrator should happen. Rodman’s emails to council members Jerry Stewart, Alice Howard and then-Chairman Paul Sommerville were a line-by-line “strategy” to quell council “dissenters” and get Gruber, who wasn’t a finalist, the top job.
The emails were not sent to seven councilmembers. Several council members said last week that they didn’t know about the emails until they read Farrell’s column, and that the emails confirmed their suspicions about what went on behind the scenes before the July 2018 meeting.
“That whole episode makes me think that sometimes it’s not about what’s best for the county, it’s about winning,” Council member Brian Flewelling said. “That’s not the game I want to play.”
Council member Mike Covert said he will include a prohibition against elected officials using their personal emails to privately discuss government business when he presents to the council the recommendations of its recently formed Communications and Transparency Committee. The draft report, which the committee will discuss on Monday, also recommends hiring a public information officer for the county, making public comment opportunities at meetings uniform, and adding policies for council members’ conduct on social media.
“We shouldn’t be using personal emails to conduct county business,” said Covert, who is running for Congress in 2020. “Politics is a silly game, and it’s unfortunate that this is going on without everybody knowing about it.”
Covert said he’s heard about private meetings in which multiple council members have discussed county business but said he hasn’t been part of those meetings.
“You can ask every member, ‘If you disagree with it, why haven’t you said anything?’” he said. “I’m the only one who has the [guts], who has spoken out or up. I’m the one that has been speaking up.”
However, Covert said he hasn’t confronted Rodman, the council chair, about his use of personal emails.
Rodman did not return a call for comment. Multiple other council members did not return calls and emails.
The emails
In a meeting July 23, 2018 that some council members described as “bizarre,” Beaufort County Council voted to hire interim administrator Josh Gruber as permanent administrator, then rescinded that vote. Gruber had already left county employment to become the Town of Hilton Head Island’s assistant town manager.
Ultimately, the council offered the position to Glynn County, Georgia’s administrator, Alan Ours, who rejected the offer two hours later.
Five days before the “bizarre” meeting, Rodman emailed three council members his strategy for hiring Gruber.
The strategy involved four specific actions that Rodman planned to follow during the meeting. According to the email: Rodman planned to call for votes on the two finalists and, assuming they weren’t selected, would call for a vote on Gruber, who hadn’t been a finalist. Then he would call on a parliamentarian County Attorney Tom Keaveny had hired for the meeting to confirm that the addition of Gruber as a candidate was legal.
The meeting somewhat followed as Rodman had planned. But council members convened in closed session, and when they returned, rescinded the vote to hire Gruber.
Even then, Rodman continued trying to get Gruber hired, emailing Sommerville and Stewart suggesting they offer Gruber a $100,000 “stay bonus.”
“With Alan turning down our offer, we need to reconvene Council this week being sensitive to Jerry’s travel. Jerry, are you here or back in NC?” Rodman emailed Stewart and Sommerville on July 25, 2018.
The S.C. Law Enforcement Division has opened a criminal investigation into Stewart’s residency following The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette’s report that Stewart, while serving on Beaufort County Council and voting for Gruber to be county administrator, was living in North Carolina.
On July 24, 2018, the day after he wasn’t offered the top job by council, Gruber wrote — and Keaveny approved — a $24,000 consulting contract for Gruber to advise the interim county administrator. A lawyer hired to investigate the contract found the county likely broke state law by not adhering to a “cooling off period” that prevents county officials, including Gruber, from working for the county for a year after leaving their job.
In September, the S.C. Ethics Commission dismissed a complaint that Gruber broke state law, saying Gruber, a lawyer, had not been told he could obtain legal counsel. The commission said the complaint can be refiled.
“It’s about winning”
After The Island Packet & Beaufort Gazette published Farrell’s column about Rodman’s intricate plan, several council members said they were concerned about his use of personal emails to undermine the will of the council majority.
Council vice chairman Paul Sommerville, who was chairman at the time, said that despite receiving Rodman’s email with strategies for the July 23 vote, he wasn’t involved in any behind-the-scenes orchestrating.
“I’ve always felt that if you’ve got something to say, you can say it at an open meeting,” he said. “I receive a lot of emails. I don’t send emails like that to anybody. If I receive them, I click them off. I think it’s inappropriate.”
Flewelling said he was “disappointed that it was so meticulously orchestrated.” But he acknowledged that he often tries to keep track of how certain council members feel about issues and “will subtly push people to say a certain thing or back them into a corner to defend their position.”
“Yes it’s manipulation,” he said, “and that’s how the game gets played.”
Flewelling said Rodman’s emails could “damage the reputation of county council.”
“The public’s perception of their government is tarnished,” he said. “I wish the public didn’t have to know how the sausage is made.”
Council member York Glover said that after reading Rodman’s emails in The Packet, he will be more vigilant in paying attention to how certain members are voting for particular issues and why.
The publication of Rodman’s emails came after months of controversy over the chairman’s lack of transparency.
- In May, just weeks after the county refused to make public the findings of an investigation into a $24,000 consulting contract with Gruber, Rodman emailed his council colleagues, recommending that transparency be removed as a council priority.
- In June, Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette columnist Liz Farrell described the community’s frustrations with council in an opinions piece, prompting Rodman to tell the newspapers that he would no longer speak to their reporters.
- In October, the chairman emailed council that he would no longer allow citizens to speak at the beginning of council meetings, saying that the 3-minute public comment section “is being abused. It is not required by statute. It is a privilege we extend to the public.”
“One of the concerns I have with the chairman is that his hands are in too many things,” Glover said.
Glover said he had worried about Rodman’s possible conflicts of interest and had previously told him to “back off” the Beaufort County Economic Development Commission.
He said he also disagrees with Rodman’s decision to not allow citizens to speak at the beginning of council meetings, as well as Rodman’s claim that public comments are a privilege.
“We all agree that the policy is there that public comment should be conducted before and after a meeting, but the chair moved it,” Glover said. “It’s critical to have both public comment sections.”
Change of leadership
Several council members say they are happy with the direction the county is headed under the leadership of Jacobs, the new administrator, who started work in April.
“A lot of the mistrust that we may have had for other members is starting to diminish,” Flewelling said.
Glover agreed and said he supports what Jacobs has done. “I don’t want to lose a person like Ashley Jacobs, who’s been doing a marvelous job behind the scenes,” he said.
Deputy County Administrator Chris Inglese said that many of the controversies recently made public, like the county’s use of consulting contracts to pay former government employees, were during “stormy” times when the county was void of leadership.
“The last two years have been hard on staff who have struggled in the absence of leadership,” Inglese said. “Ms. Jacobs has helped to turn that around.”
He said Jacobs has implemented several changes to raise morale among staff members and increase the public’s trust in their government. Among the changes: Jacobs created a sick-leave policy and waived public record fees for media requests.
During the county’s search for an administrator, before Jacobs arrived, Inglese said council members were becoming involved in too many issues.
“We need council to really focus on the policy debates that they, as elected officials, are there for,” he said. “Ms. Jacobs is doing a good job of bringing council policy matters that are debatable. My hope is they will let Ms. Jacobs and me and others do our jobs and trust us to make good decisions and allow us the freedom and the trust to continue to do the things Ms. Jacobs is already doing.
“Council needs to get back to substantive policy debate and let administration administer.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2019 at 4:00 AM.
