Top Hilton Head leaders, Rodman met in secret to discuss US 278 project
Between sips of iced tea and hot coffee at a high end Sea Pines Resort restaurant Tuesday afternoon, five top Hilton Head and Beaufort County leaders spoke in private.
The view from their table on the covered porch outside Fraser’s Tavern was of clear skies, sunshine and the driving range of a nearby golf course.
Though their words were muffled, their mannerisms were animated as they rifled through pages of documents.
The government leaders — Hilton Head Mayor John McCann, Assistant Town Manager Josh Gruber, Town Council members Tom Lennox and Bill Harkins and Beaufort County Council member Stu Rodman — were there to talk business with prominent Hilton Head resident Tom Sharp.
Sharp, a Sea Pines resident who frequently advocates for bicycle facilities on the island and who helped form the town’s Circle-to-Circle committee regarding Pope Avenue, told a reporter Tuesday he invited the government officials to the meeting. He’s also a former commissioner of the Indiana Department of Transportation.
The papers strewn across the table suggested the group was discussing the planned $272-million U.S. 278 corridor project. One of the leaders who attended the meeting later confirmed that.
If that’s what they were talking about, some of the attendees were breaking the law, legal experts said.
‘Illegal’ meeting?
With Lennox and Harkins in attendance, the meeting included two of the three members of the town’s intergovernmental committee and constituted a quorum.
According to S.C. law, such a meeting should have been held in open session, with the public’s knowledge.
Media law attorney Jay Bender said the requirements for public meetings are clearly defined in state law. There is, he said, no ambiguity.
Those requirements were not followed Tuesday afternoon.
“That meeting was illegal,” Bender said. “They should’ve provided public notice. This is just another case of people in Beaufort County thinking they can avoid the law.”
Gruber, however, disagrees that a quorum was present.
He said because the intergovernmental committee does not have “supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power” over what was discussed at the meeting, it was allowed to be held out of the public eye.
Bill Rogers, executive director of the S.C. Press Association, said it was “clearly a public meeting.”
“There was a quorum and public business was discussed,” he said. “It matters not whether they have purview over it. They should know that. Whats the big deal? Why is the public being held out?”
County Council Chair Joe Passiment said he couldn’t remember if Rodman told him he would be at the meeting, but said Rodman was not there as a representative of County Council.
“If in fact they had a quorum of a bonafide committee, then that is very problematic,” he said.
Told about the meeting on Wednesday, County Council member Mike Covert said he was “extremely concerned.”
“I believe that meeting was illegal because a quorum was obviously present and they should be held accountable,” he said.
That intergovernmental committee — made up of Harkins, Lennox and David Ames — handles negotiations of town projects with other government entities.
Its mission is to “build relationships” with local, county, state and federal governments and departments, and “formulate positions” for Town Council review and possible adoption.
Ames, who was not invited to the meeting, said the town has inconsistently interpreted situations where a majority of committee members meet on a subject that “has nothing to do with committee business.”
“As soon as I got on council I saw this being an issue,” he said. “It’s a policy that hasn’t been consistently and evenly interpreted.”
The town and county are currently negotiating an independent review of the U.S. 278 project.
Those negotiations would be appropriate for Harkins and Lennox’s committee to discuss in public meetings before sending a recommendation to the full Town Council.
In a July 6 news release about state funding for the project, Rodman thanked Sharp, among others, saying he led the Greater Island Task Force that “proposed the corridor approach, rather than just replacing bridges.”
Rodman confirmed Wednesday that the group met Tuesday to “catch up on the 278 piece.”
‘A meeting among friends’
A little after 3 p.m., the six men sat down at the table.
One notable absence, however, was the general public. Or any public notice of the meeting of some of the most powerful leaders on Hilton Head and in the county.
When an Island Packet reporter asked to listen in on the meeting, several of those at the table told him to leave.
They said the meeting “isn’t public” and there “isn’t a quorum.”
“I’m just a citizen talking to my friends,” Sharp said. “Can you leave now?”
Asked why the meeting was not public, Gruber, one of two finalists for the retiring Hilton Head town manager’s job, said: “At this point in time I’m not going to answer any more questions.”
He called the reporter’s question “ambush journalism” and “unprofessional.”
Asked about the meeting on Wednesday, McCann said it was “just a meeting among friends.”
Asked if he knew there was a quorum, he said “I have no idea” and referred the question to Harkins and Lennox.
Neither council member returned follow up calls for comment Wednesday.
Rodman said Wednesday he’s usually a “big fan” of doing the public’s business in public.
But, there are cases “where we do it privately,” he said. “It will be public in due time.”
‘Hide in backrooms’
Tuesday’s secret meeting comes at a time when many residents on Hilton Head are concerned about where the planning process for the U.S. 278 project stands and how the town is handling its executive search for its new town manager.
They fear that much of the discussion on both issues is happening behind closed doors.
Just after the state gave the project $120 million to overhaul the bridges leading to Hilton Head Island, the county decided this month to move forward with an independent review of the project.
Diedrik Advocaat, a Hilton Head resident and member of the community organization Residents for a Better U.S. 278 Corridor, said his group has worked with another group - the Coalition of Island Neighbors - to address some potential issues with the project’s plans.
A petition to “reject and rethink SCDOT plans” started by former Beaufort County Council member Steve Baer has already gathered over 4,000 signatures.
Advocaat, who later found out about the meeting, said he thinks “it’s a bit weird” that it didn’t happen in public.
He said, based on who was at the meeting, that he assumed the group was discussing “issues surrounding the 278 corridor.”
“It’s a bit of a closed door,” he said. “I wish they would turn the page and be transparent rather than hide in backrooms.”
This isn’t the first time the public’s business has been conducted in secret.
In March, Rodman was forced to step down as County Council chair after weeks of reporting in The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette that detailed his repeated circumvention of rules, unilateral decisions and backdoor conversations with employees — despite the council’s job to set policy, not manage employees.
A month before Rodman stepped down, the newspapers reported he was communicating privately to a department leader his recommendations for the controversial Jenkins Island road project on Hilton Head.
During those communications, he twice stressed that the conversation be kept between “the two of us.”
Empty chairs
On Tuesday, after almost two hours and several refills of iced tea, McCann, Lennox and Harkins got up to leave.
Rodman, Gruber and Sharp stuck around to chat for another 15 minutes before scooping up their documents and heading to the parking lot.
Gruber said goodbye and veered off toward his car on the left, while Rodman and Sharp spoke for awhile longer.
Left behind at the table on the covered porch were six empty chairs and a number of unanswered questions about how the public’s business is being conducted in Beaufort County.
This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 2:16 PM.
