Beaufort County Council gives spending report to law enforcement. When can public see it?
In a unanimous vote of 11-0, Beaufort County’s elusive spending report will be sent by the council to law enforcement agencies for review and a more thorough assessment if any laws were broken.
The council also promised that if the report’s finding of “no evidence of criminal activity” is corroborated, its release to the public will be next.
Over a month ago, Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner made public his interest and obligation to see the full, unabridged, and unredacted report into questionable and possibly illegal spending by county employees during 2023. Tanner shared with The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette in July that he and/or his office had requested the document three separate times only to be stonewalled by the county.
Monday night, in their first meeting since Tanner publicly spoke on the report, the Beaufort County Council voted unanimously to release the report to both local and state law enforcement agencies. This means that both Tanner’s office and Attorney General Alan Wilson, who took over the case in December, will get the 30-plus page document. They’ll be the first non-county officials to review it.
After a months-long investigation that ended in the spring of 2024, Greenville-based law firm Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd, who looked into the county’s spending practices, only offered an oral report to county council. Then, at some point before mid-June, a written report was requested by the council and created and subsequently delivered to county leadership. Confirmation of its existence and details of the contents were shrouded in secrecy from the public, despite the filing Freedom of Information Act requests by The Island Packet.
When will the public get to review the report?
In what’s perhaps a more notable development, the council told the public that if the law enforcement agencies came to the same conclusion as HSB that there was no criminal activity, then the report could be released to the public.
“If state and county law enforcement determine that there is no evidence of criminal activity and that no criminal investigations will arise from the report’s findings, the report will be released pursuant to any proper freedom of information request,” Vice Chair Larry McElynn read from a prepared statement.
“Attorney General Alan Wilson always preaches the importance of transparency,” said the AG’s spokesperson Robert Kittle.
“This is the right move,” he added.
Council members share their thoughts
Before voting, each council members were given the opportunity to comment on the document’s release to law enforcement. In many cases, this was their first public comment following the sheriff’s request.
“I support us releasing the report to law enforcement,” said council member Gerald Dawson. “We should have done that initially when the request was made because it gives the appearance as if we were hiding something or protecting some people.”
Dawson was part of an six-member block that voted against discussing the report in public session before releasing the summary at the July 23 meeting. Cunningham was not present for that meeting. Dawson was also one of seven council members who refused to answer questions regarding the release of the report last month.
During the July 23 meeting and before the council went into executive session to discuss potentially releasing the summary, council members Tom Reitz and Paula Brown pushed to have the discussion in public. Council member David Bartholomew voted in favor but the remaining six council members present voted the motion down.
“Trust is not established by words, it’s established by actions and I think this is an action in the right direction,” said Bartholomew Monday night about release the report to the sheriff.
Council member Logan Cunningham defended the time taken to release the report, stressing that there was a process needed to be followed. He also pointed out that the sheriff’s office did not share information with the council when the investigation into Greenway began.
“We found out something in the papers before it even came to us when the whole thing started. That was in the papers before we knew about it because law enforcement didn’t release it to us,” he said.
What’s known so far
As of Tuesday morning, only a handful of people have read the report. According to multiple council members, the county took the extraordinary step of forcing members to “view” the report in a place so that it could not be copied.
The 30-plus page report has eluded the public eye since it was first delivered to the county in mid-June. Since then, the only indication of its contents was a nine-page summary where only the first page and a half shared details of the findings, stating “there was no evidence of criminal activity.”
Tanner has previously questioned the validity of that conclusion, asking who was qualified within the county to determine if something was criminal or not. Pointing to the mysterious purchase of $36,000 of weighted blankets from a company owned by the husband of a former member of the county administrative team as a known incident that should be present in the audit, Tanner asked: “How can you suggest there’s no wrongdoing, when you know good and well there is.”
Looking back to the oral report delivered to council at the end of March, Boyd Nicholson Jr., managing director of HSB, painted a different picture of the problem. He told the public there was “laxity within Beaufort County government” that resulted in “flagrant violations” of the procurement code.
“In 2023, several individuals with Beaufort County failed to properly follow, and in certain circumstances blatantly disregarded, the county’s procurement code,” he said.
The summary report carried an adjusted tone conveying opaque language parsing the difference between “malfeasance” and “misfeasance” as differing categories of wrongdoing.
This story was originally published August 27, 2024 at 11:18 AM.
