Beaufort County Council pours kerosene on the fire in complaint against administrator

Beaufort County Administrator Eric Greenway has been accused of wrongdoing.

This is a big problem. But it’s a bigger problem that his bosses, the Beaufort County Council, claim to know nothing about the case.

It is their job to know all about it. They have no choice. And they have to act upon that knowledge.

It is their job to put safeguards in place if necessary, depending on what the complaint involves.

It is their job to assure the public they are doing what they were elected to do. They were elected to lead the county, not act as uninformed extraterrestrials.

They have to be part of the solution, not the ones pouring kerosene on the fire.

They should be saying, “We have a problem. This is the nature of the problem. As a result, we have done this, this and this.

“And to assure public trust in their county government, we have suspended the accused until this matter is resolved.”

The complaint against Greenway was filed with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office on May 11. That fact was revealed on July 3 when Sheriff P.J. Tanner and 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone concluded the criminal complaint merited investigation by a third party.

The public deserves to know what the complaint is and who made the complaint.

When elected leaders go silent in tough times, here’s what happens: We get Murdaughed.

That is, we envision big-wigs setting the rules to their own advantage. We see a system manipulated to hear nothing, see nothing and know nothing when a big-wig is accused of wrongdoing.

It’s so typical of South Carolina, which has been Murdaughed since its inception.

Try finding out what happens to complaints filed against state judges.

When ProPublica and The (Charleston) Post and Courier looked into that cesspool in 2019, they dug up 1,000 ethics complaints over the previous two decades and found that the number of judges punished publicly as a result of all that was a big fat zero.

We have found in the past that public information on complaints — and what was done about them — also is scarce regarding doctors and lawyers.

This is a state where legislators want to judge themselves on ethics complaints.

It is a state that just released a killer from jail 16 years early following a secret meeting between a legislator/lawyer and a state judge on the judge’s last day of duty prior to retirement.

And now Beaufort County Council is stoking public distrust by pleading ignorance about the one employee it is most counted on to supervise.

It doesn’t pass the smell test. It defies common sense. County Council is creating a vacuum, which will be filled by gossip and theory.

That is unfair to Greenway, who says he heard about the investigation at the same time the public did and knows of nothing he has done to merit it.

We can all understand that nothing at all could come of the complaint after it is investigated. And we understand that Greenway has layer after layer of due process coming to him, if it comes to that.

But, meanwhile, the council’s plea of ignorance also is unfair to the institution of county government, which already has earned enough distrust.

County Council needs to understand that the county administrator is not a regular citizen, and his job demands greater public disclosure.

This is much more than a secretive “personnel matter,” as County Council Chairman Joe Passiment called it.

Failure on the council’s part to know what the complaint is — if that is true — goes beyond irresponsibility. It is negligent.

And they need to know, if nothing else, that people around here are sick and tired of being Murdaughed.

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.

This story was originally published July 13, 2023 at 8:30 AM.