Stop it! Beaufort County Council’s silent majority must stop Stu Rodman | Editorial

Beaufort County Council has a massive problem, and it is Chairman Stu Rodman.

Today, unless a strong majority of County Council stands up to Rodman and removes him from control, it will have a worse problem. The county administrator he is running roughshod over could leave, and the bullies will have won.

Rodman, we know from a lot of new reporting, is undermining county administrator Ashley Jacobs, he has zero regard for the public’s right to know. He conducts a shadow government, often relying on his personal email and cell phone; he is micro-managing county employees and holding weekly meetings with staff; he tried to strong-arm hiring former interim administrator Josh Gruber as county administrator even as six of the 11 County Council members opposed it; he has personally killed a U.S. 278 roads project on Jenkins Island behind the scenes. And he thinks the chain of command begins and ends with him.

Despite this, Rodman is unrepentant. He is incorrigible.

Worse, County Council is allowing it to happen.

Several current council members and at least two former members have been vocal in trying to remove Rodman as chairman. Council members Mike Covert and Brian Flewelling have been clear in opposing his sham government. But they need help. Now.

Council members Mark Lawson, Chris Hervochon, York Glover, Gerald Dawson and Joseph Passiment must publicly demand new leadership on the council. Council members Alice Howard and Lawrence McElynn, who side with Rodman, must work for the full county for a change and quit enabling Rodman. Vice chairman Paul Sommerville is part of the problem and also needs to be stripped of his leadership role.

An effort to remove Rodman as chairman last month failed on a 5-5 vote, with Rodman voting for himself.

After that came an illegal executive session meeting by the council, with a committee set up to hear complaints among themselves and supposedly come to some means of addressing the problem. That secretive, do-nothing approach is wrong in the eyes of the law, and it does nothing but dig a deeper hole for the county.

Jacobs, who arrived a year ago, has been trying to clean up a county government that has been so out of control that Gruber wrote himself a $24,000 contract immediately before leaving the county staff to join the Town of Hilton Head Island’s administration in 2018.

Jacobs, in stark contrast, has tried to make county government transparent.

But Rodman either bullies her or undermines her authority by working with county staff behind her back.

Rodman needs to allow Jacobs to do her job. He needs to stop holding staff meetings, manipulating the council agenda and making public policy decisions alone and/or in secret.

But he won’t. We know he won’t because public disclosure of his tactics has resulted in no change.

If we lose our county administrator over this lunacy, the full County Council will have endorsed Rodman’s behind-the-scenes, secret, manipulative government. We cannot let that happen.

Now — today — the silent County Council majority must openly support Jacobs, remove Rodman as chairman and publicly turn control of county government administration over to the county administrator, where it belongs.

This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 10:44 AM.