A new town manager, a shameful hiring process. Hilton Head taxpayers deserved better

Choosing the person who will guide a town, manage its development and ensure its financial well being is the most important decision a town council can make. Hilton Head Island typically gets this opportunity once every decade or two.

Last week, the town council blew it. Badly.

The council agreed to hire Bluffton Town Manager Marc Orlando as Hilton Head town manager. No notice to the public that he was being considered. No other candidates. No chance for anyone to weigh in on whether Orlando is the right fit.

Town leaders thumbed their noses at their constituents and significantly handicapped Orlando, who now must convince a skeptical, distrustful public that he is the best person to lead the town through the coming controversies: the U.S. 278 construction, efforts to establish workforce housing, decisions on how much Hilton Head will spend to prop up the arts and how best to preserve the Gullah-Geechee culture, and how to establish accountability for the millions of tourism dollars doled to the chamber of commerce and other organizations.

So much is wrong with the town’s handling of its search for and selection of its chief executive, and it is typical of Mayor John McCann and this council.

Over the past few weeks, separately and secretly, the mayor and every council member interviewed Orlando, who had not previously applied for the town manager job — the subject of a failed national search months ago.

In July, Hilton Head, heeding the request of residents who asked for an open, transparent process to find a successor for retiring longtime manager Steve Riley, hired a professional search firm for $26,500 to come up with the best candidates. With the choices winnowed to three, council members sabotaged the search by adding a fourth: Assistant Town Manager Josh Gruber, a controversial figure who had previously been considered for Beaufort County administrator in 2018.

The town correctly planned receptions to introduce the finalists to the public, giving residents a chance to meet them, talk about issues and provide feedback before the council made a decision. But before the receptions could happen, two finalists and the alternate dropped out, and the search firm quit.

Council members put the search on hold, hired Gruber as interim administrator after Riley’s departure, and said they would restart the search in late January.

Instead, quietly, without telling the public, they went behind closed doors to talk to Bluffton’s manager, who was not among the finalists in the previous search. The first inkling Hilton Head had of movement on the town manager position was Tuesday afternoon, when the council was required by law to give 24 hours’ notice of a special meeting.

Council members were unapologetic about their secretive process. “This is not an election,” Ward 6 representative Glenn Stafford said during the Wednesday evening meeting. “This is a selection to be made by public officials.”

They seem to believe their constituents gave up their right to have any voice in town decisions when they cast their ballots. These officials showed disdain for the public they’re elected to represent and serve by doing their most important job without any input from citizens.

In fact, South Carolina law demands that information be made public when a government has three or fewer finalists for a public position.

Sadly, the secrecy is business as usual on the island. A year ago, McCann unilaterally stripped $3.6 million from the town’s payment to Beaufort County for law enforcement services, reasoning that Hilton Head taxpayers were already paying property taxes to the county and shouldn’t have to pay more for police services than other areas the Sheriff’s Office policed.

The county protested, saying the services actually cost much more than $3.6 million, and then imposed an annual fee on Hilton Head property owners — including $101 for owners of single-family homes — to cover the cost of law enforcement services. The McCann tax is now in court.

Last December, town leaders announced they’d been privately discussing for months the possibility of holding a referendum to raise $65 million over 25 years for parks, recreation and the arts. They wanted the vote held in a few months, despite the public having had little time to digest the ramifications. In February, McCann announced the referendum had been postponed.

This isn’t how public policy is supposed to be made. These weighty decisions should give every resident and property owner on Hilton Head Island pause.

Here’s what should have happened with the search for a town manager:

A national search, resumed this month. Finalists announced publicly, with opportunities for the public to meet them and weigh in. Orlando, who has led Bluffton for six years, could have been vetted by people in the town across the water.

Orlando could have made the case for his hiring. He could’ve explained how shepherding Bluffton — a town whose population has increased 83% in his time managing it — would translate to success at the helm in Hilton Head, which has gained a few hundred people in that same six years.

Orlando could have explained how his leadership style — requiring all questions about the town to go through him — would work on Hilton Head.

This community knows Marc Orlando. It deserved an opportunity to talk about his strengths and weaknesses, to assess whether he offers what Hilton Head needs.

Orlando is not blameless in this. He should have shown the leadership to insist on community involvement. Now, rather than start his new job with the public’s approval and blessing, Orlando must prove the town council’s once-in-a-decade hiring decision was the right one.

This story was originally published January 3, 2021 at 7:00 AM.