‘Against the law’: Beaufort Co. Chair privately emailed director on U.S. 278 road project
Last fall, Beaufort County Council Chairman Stu Rodman circumvented the county administrator, communicating privately to a department leader his recommendations for the controversial Jenkins Island road project on Hilton Head Island and stressing that the conversation be kept between “the two of us,” according to emails obtained by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
The emails show that Rodman intentionally tried to keep the conversation hidden from County Administrator Ashley Jacobs, skirted a public process, insulted some of the residents affected most by the road project and indicated that other one-on-one exchanges with the county staff director could exist.
S.C. law is clear that it is illegal for a council member to give orders or instructions to county employees. It is the administrator’s job to direct staff, the law says.
The emails are important not just because they show Rodman bypassing the chain of command but also because they appear to show an elected official privately pushing to derail the original Jenkins Island roads project, which has been publicly delayed for years and bogged down in bureaucracy in recent months.
Rodman, who chairs the county executive committee, responded that inquiring about the email was “nitpicking” and that it’s typical for committee chairs to have discussions with county staff. He said the email was merely a discussion between two engineers and emphasized that the engineering study conducted on the project could save the county $8 million.
He also said he doesn’t remember if he was ever told not to contact county staff without Jacobs’ approval.
“I basically bend over backwards to run everything by Ashley,” he said.
The emails
On Oct. 24, Rodman emailed Jacobs, praising Rob McFee, the county’s director of Construction, Engineering & Facilities, for his work on the planned Jenkins Island road project. That email CC’d McFee.
In the same email, Rodman called the residents of Windmill Harbour, who have waited years for a traffic solution along U.S. 278, “rude, argumentative, disruptive” and “counterproductive.”
A day later, Jacobs emailed McFee, telling him not to take orders from Rodman.
“I trust that is not the case, as it would be inappropriate for Council members to direct employees who report to the County Administrator, and I would consider it insubordination,” Jacobs wrote to McFee on Oct. 25.
According to S.C. law Section 4-9-660, “the council shall deal with county officers and employees who are subject to the direction and supervision of the county administrator solely through the administrator, and neither the council nor its members shall give orders or instructions to any such officers or employees.”
McFee emailed back that he agreed and said he asked all council members to copy Jacobs on any emails to him.
However, a month later, Rodman emailed McFee with his own line-by-line plans for the Jenkins Island project, including a construction timeline, recommendations for requests to the S.C. Department of Transportation, and Rodman’s preferred outcome of the project.
The email begins and ends with Rodman stating his expectations of privacy.
“Just the two of us for merging the engineering and political,” Rodman’s Nov. 20 email to McFee begins.
The chairman ends by saying he looks forward to “our continuing one on one discussion.”
Jacobs said Friday that she was not copied on, or even aware of, the email. She said she found out about it on Wednesday. She declined to comment further, saying the issue was a personnel matter.
‘The train to Crazyville continues’
Two council members said they also obtained copies of the emails last week.
“According to state statute, that’s against the law,” Council member Mike Covert said.
Covert, who’s running for Congress, said if the email is indicative of a “culture that is being driven by the chairman, that is not how a council works.”
“It’s a continual swing of shock that this has continued to go on,” Covert said. “This isn’t the first time we’ve seen it. The train to Crazyville continues to pick up faster,” Covert said.
He said that when the council hired Jacobs as administrator, she told members that if they had questions for her staff, they should contact her first.
“It’s about respect as well,” Covert said. “We hired her to run the day-to-day operations with the county, and we need to let her do her job properly.”
Council member Chris Hervochon agreed that the emails were “inconsistent with our form of government.”
In the council-administrator form of county government, Hervochon said, council “is not supposed to be directing staff directly without Ashley being copied or Ashley knowing.”
The roads project
The Jenkins Island road project — which would lessen traffic congestion and eliminate dangerous left-hand turns onto U.S. 278 from the foot of J. Wilton Graves Bridge to the causeway that leads onto Hilton Head Island — has been discussed since 2009, according to county documents.
The county has earmarked $9 million for the work.
The project, however, has long been delayed, and the residents of Windmill Harbour say the plan, in its original form, is effectively dead.
Last summer, Rodman lobbied to lump the funding for the Jenkins Island project with the U.S. 278 corridor budget, urging leaders to “take a deep breath” on the work, which he said is at risk of being obsolete because of the larger corridor project.
In November, the county council passed on second reading an ordinance to appropriate $2.5 million from the county’s general fund to cover costs associated with the Jenkins Island project.
However, the third and final vote has been tabled.
In October, the county’s U.S. 278 task force hired J. Bragg Consulting Inc. for $15,600 to conduct a third-party engineering study on the Jenkins Island project and the larger U.S. 278 corridor project.
That contract was then extended by $6,400 due to extra work on the study.
The study, presented to the council this month, discussed several alternatives to the Jenkins Island Project and examined the stretch of road from Jenkins Island to Squire Pope.
“We think the US 278 safety project that has been designed and funded up to its third reading is effectively dead,” Windmill Harbour resident Nick Akers said. “The interim solution as presently recommended by Bragg Consulting fails our community. If the interim solution is not modified, we feel the only solution available to us is the status quo which puts us back at square one.”
