‘Shadow government’: Top Beaufort Co. official uses private cell, hides docs, FOIA shows
Beaufort County Council Chairman Stu Rodman has said he tries not to use his personal email account for public business. In January, when a group of neighbors filed a public records request to see Rodman’s emails related to a controversial road project, Rodman said he had none from his personal email address.
But emails obtained by the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette show that Rodman regularly used the account to discuss the Jenkins Island road project and other Beaufort County business.
Rodman also regularly uses his personal cell phone for government business, though he has refused to give the public access to his call logs.
Rodman said Friday that he didn’t provide the email records because he had already deleted them from his account. He said he isn’t convinced the law requires him to divulge calls from his personal phone.
However, South Carolina’s public records laws make clear the importance of the public’s ability to see the work elected leaders are doing on their behalf — the factors they use to make decisions on roads, schools and public land, for example, and how they spend taxpayers’ money.
Rodman’s refusal to allow access to calls and emails that have a direct impact on public projects shows the limits of South Carolina’s open records laws. It relies on an honor system. The public has to trust that the people they elected to make decisions about their government aren’t hiding their work by communicating privately.
“It’s a real problem when people use their private emails for public business and cut the public out from seeing them,” S.C. Press Association Executive Director Bill Rogers said. “Legally they have to turn it over.
“He’s making it very hard for the public to know what he’s doing,” Rogers said. “There’s a shadow government being conducted.”
Beaufort County Administrator Ashley Jacobs said if the county does not have an elected official’s call logs or emails used for government business, it’s up to the official to turn them over.
She said she sought advice from the South Carolina Association of Counties on what to do if an elected official is declining to turn over public records. The association told her, “public officials should conduct county business on county-owned devices and county email addresses, and they should comply with FOIA requests,” Jacobs said.
“It appears that we do not have full cooperation from certain individuals,” she said.
‘None from my private account’
In October and then again in December, several residents of Windmill Harbour, a community that has been pushing the county to act on the long-delayed Jenkins Island road project near Hilton Head Island, submitted public records requests for emails from Rodman, other elected officials and county staff members.
The request was specific and asked for personal and government emails related to:
C. Windmill Harbour and U.S. 278 Safety Project
D. Beaufort County and U.S. 278 Safety Project
E. The Town of Hilton Head and the U.S. 278 Safety Project
F. U.S. 278 Safety Project and Squire Pope Road
G. U.S. 278 Safety Project Value Engineering Study
Asked to provide emails from his personal account that pertained to those issues, Rodman replied on Jan. 2 that he had none from his personal account. He said he had sent emails from his county account, and “I have none [from] my private account.”
However, the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette have obtained multiple emails that show the chairman using his personal account to discuss the project.
Rodman said that when he received the request, he had already deleted the emails on his account.
“The only way I can keep up with [emails] is to erase them,” he said. “I’m sure a lot of people do that.”
Throughout the last year, Rodman said he “very conscientiously tries” not to send government emails from his personal account. However, emails from 2020 show he still regularly uses it for government business.
Windmill Harbour resident Nick Akers, who requested records from other government officials through the Freedom of Information Act, said he found numerous cases in which Rodman’s personal account was used.
“Chairman Rodman has stalled our efforts, misled us and shown a certain amount of disrespect for quite a while,” Akers said. “This is just business as usual for the chairman. The real question is what is being hidden and what might be revealed if we were able to examine all of the private emails now that we know they exist.”
‘Shadow government’
On Feb. 2, the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette detailed how Rodman had privately discussed plans for the Jenkins Island road safety project with a county employee, stressing that the conversation be kept between “the two of us.”
The next day, the newspapers requested the phone call logs for several county staff members and elected officials, including Jacobs and Rodman, to find out how often elected officials spoke to staff members about county business. The call logs are public record.
The county records department responded in an email that Rodman’s call logs were not available because he does not have a county-issued cell phone. County Attorney Kurt Taylor and Deputy County Attorney Tom Keaveny also did not have county-issued phones, the email said.
Phone call logs obtained from other elected officials and staff show regular calls from Rodman’s personal phone. Rodman said he’s used his personal phone for government business for 15 years.
On Feb. 13, the newspapers requested the personal call logs from Rodman and Vice Chairman Paul Sommerville.
Beaufort County Clerk of Council Sarah Brock emailed Bill Lisbon, FOIA specialist for records management, that Rodman and Sommerville “have declined turning over their personal cell phone logs.”
Two days later, Lisbon emailed the newspapers that the “phone numbers listed in your request are not administered by Beaufort County Government. Beaufort County Government is not in possession of the requested records.”
Asked Friday why he denied the request, Rodman told the newspapers that he’s “not sure about the legality of it. I don’t know if that’s legitimate.”
According to S.C. media law attorney Jay Bender, the call logs should be public record.
Rodman said that he’s been offered a government-issued phone in the past and has declined it. Now, he said, he “will think about carrying two phones.”
This story was originally published March 8, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
