How long must Beaufort County Council be the Poor Judgment Capital, or worse?

Well, that didn’t help us much.

Last week, the Beaufort County Council finally stated publicly why it fired its county administrator back in July. But most of the egregious complaints against Eric Greenway had already been reported, despite the county’s silence.

And remember, the only reason the public hearing happened on Sept. 11 is that Greenway requested it.

The council did what it should have done by unanimously voting to uphold the firing. But it failed to address the bigger problem: Why they have allowed Beaufort County to become the Animal House of governance. They said nothing about how they will change either the culture or procedures to become a responsible government.

The Greenway case, according to reporting and the County Council’s statement, has shown us that a single county employee can create a new six-figure position for a friend after already rewarding that friend with a consulting gig of $275 per hour, and can go so far as to get an invoice for 587 weighted blankets — Did you hear me? WEIGHTED BLANKETS — being sold by the deputy county administrator’s husband.

When it came out in early July that the sheriff’s office was looking into a complaint against Greenway, County Council assured us they knew nothing, but nevertheless there was nothing to see, so just move along.

Then when some of the accusations began to surface, they suspended Greenway with pay. And only when a key player publicly aired damning specifics did the council fire Greenway.

You can see why, despite the unanimous vote last week to stand by that decision, we’re still in deep trouble.

The real problem

Where are the checks and balances?

Who knew a new county department was created, that the county declared war on opioid addiction with the help of the administrator’s friend’s brand new consulting company, and that we needed weighted blankets?

County Council cited statutes that Greenway allegedly violated, but that’s not good enough. What good are statutes and regulations when there’s no system or culture in place to enforce them?

That is the real problem.

Apparently, there is absolutely no fear that anyone is paying attention or that they will care.

County Council sets the tone, and the tone they’re setting so far is not good enough. They said they’d hire outside experts to examine county procedures for procurements and other matters. But we’ve seen this movie before.

Deja vu

In 2019, a county attorney from elsewhere in the state was asked to poke around in our county’s closets after the outgoing interim county administrator was given a $12,000-per-month consulting contract as he walked out the door — a deal most council members knew nothing about.

The visiting attorney’s report said state law was likely violated, that the state Ethics Commission needed to intervene, and that it was apparently “business as usual” for the county to dole out lucrative consulting contracts to departing staffers “some of which appear to be open-ended to date.”

Yet, here we are, four years down the road, with the consultant slush fund still rocking and rolling.

“At this point, there is considerable clean-up from this entire transaction since it would appear that there was no one without fault,” the outside attorney’s report concluded back then. “While I don’t believe that there is any criminal intent, there certainly was some poor judgment and hasty decisions.”

Whether anything criminal will be alleged in the current Greenway case remains to be seen because it is still under investigation by two solicitor’s offices.

But we’re still cleaning up the frat house. And the question for the new County Council and the new administrators is this: How long do you want Beaufort County to be the Poor Judgment Capital?

Or, have we earned that distinction by design?

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

This story was originally published September 17, 2023 at 5:00 AM.