$100K ‘stay bonus’ for a Beaufort Co. employee? Emails reveal brazen, secret plans | Opinion
What’s that saying?
“If you like laws and sausage, you should never watch either one being made”?
In Beaufort County, a more apt aphorism would be, “If you like not knowing that one of your elected leaders thinks it’s OK to give a beleaguered, former county employee a $100,000 ‘stay bonus’ and a $225,000 salary to come back, you should never read council member Stu Rodman’s emails.”
Conversely, if you like the idea of a plot that could be described as “’Real Housewives of New Jersey’ meets ‘House of Cards’,” absolutely read them.
Because in these emails — more specifically, in five of them from 2018 — you will find:
— Rodman gave three Council members and the county attorney a “four-action” play-by-play script to fake out the rest of Council with two failed votes that would result in a person referred to as “JG” being the last man standing for the long-vacant county administrator position. This was to happen at Council’s July 23, 2018, meeting, where it considered two finalists for the job — neither of whom had the initials “JG.”
Pssst. You know who did have the initials JG, though? Josh Gruber, the then-interim county administrator whom Rodman and then-chairman Paul Sommerville were lobbying hard to hire and whom Council had already twice rejected as an option.
Yes. This again.
Also in the emails, which were obtained and verified by The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette:
— After a contentious and comically disastrous execution of that plan at the July 23 meeting — during which Council hired, then unhired Gruber, who had already left the county for a job with the Town of Hilton Head Island — Rodman gave the full board what he termed “observations.”
I was the then-editor of the reporter who interviewed Council about this meeting. I have to say, those “observations” sound a lot more like neutered talking points that offered breezy explanations for the chaos, in an attempt to recast what actually happened.
Reminder: What “actually happened” was Rodman and at least three other Council members had plotted to casually get Gruber, not a finalist for the job at the time, voted into the job that night.
Here are some samples from that evening, just to give you the flavor of how obvious this plot was: Council members Brian Flewelling and Mike Covert and then-Council member Rick Caporale expressed repeated dismay that Sommerville had put the discussion on the agenda in the first place because they hadn’t expected to vote on finalists Bill Shanahan and Alan Ours until August. Surprise!
Both Rodman and Sommerville mispronounced Ours’ last name.
Sommerville referred to Shanahan as “Mr. What’s His First Name?”
Rodman, Stewart and Sommerville pointed out that, uh oh, Ours can’t really be considered anyway because he did not have the master’s degree Council had previously decided was a requirement.
How did Ours make it that far in this second (expensive) search if he didn’t have the requisite degree?
Better question: Why?
After Council rejected Ours and Shanahan, Rodman then made the motion to hire Gruber.
Then-Council member Tabor Vaux produced a piece of paper he happened to have with him that contained a list of all of the people and groups in the county who were endorsing Gruber (including two vocal citizens who liked Gruber, Vaux said, not “because he gives them what they want,” as well as many agencies that relied on county funding).
After dissenting Council members questioned whether the five votes in Gruber’s favor and the one abstention counted as the six votes needed to hire Gruber, the county attorney introduced someone who might be able to help.
Now, the attorney didn’t scream, “Help! The motion to hire Gruber is dying! Is there a professional parliamentarian registered with the National Association of Parliamentarians who served as official parliamentarian for the Democratic National Committee in the house?!?!”
But he might as well have because, in fact, there was.
I’m not sure who hired her, but Helen T. McFadden popped right up from the audience ready to save the day and settle the matter.
Then Flewelling yanked this superhero right out of the sky.
“We don’t know this person,” Flewelling said, stating the obvious.
At the end of his “observations” email, Rodman suggested the board “wish Josh well” and “welcome Alan,” referring to Ours, whom Council ultimately voted to hire that night.
Rodman clearly didn’t know that Ours declined the position almost as soon as it was offered.
Once Rodman found out, though, he returned a day later with another email and another plan to make Gruber happen.
In this plan — sent only to Somerville and then-Council member slash “apparent North Carolina resident” Jerry Stewart — Rodman suggests immediately reconvening Council, “being sensitive to Jerry’s travel,” of course. “Jerry, are you here or back in NC?”
“It is hard to imagine we can’t get one vote for Josh,” Rodman lamented about the single vote needed to get a majority, not realizing he didn’t need to “imagine” it one bit because it was real. At that point, “one vote for Josh” had repeatedly eluded him, as well as Sommerville, Stewart and Council member Alice Howard for about a year.
“Failing that,” Rodman writes, “an option that might be acceptable (for the good of the County) to Josh, HHI and Council would be pay Josh a $100,000 stay bonus until the next Council completes a search, which would probably lead to Josh anyway with Steve and Rick out of the way.”
“Steve and Rick” would be then-Council members Steve Fobes and Rick Caporale, who weren’t seeking re-election.
At the July 23 meeting, Caporale outed Sommerville as having “dominated” executive sessions for over a year with his lobbying for Gruber and he turned to the citizens in the chamber, saying “What you’re hearing here is a very strange version of the truth.”
Re: that $100,000 bonus idea. Very interesting, right?
Particularly because the day before Rodman suggested it, Gruber had already given himself $24,000 with a $12,000-a-month renewal rate by signing a contract, which he had written before leaving, for professional services he was to give the county while also working full-time as assistant town manager of Hilton Head.
“Cheers.”
“Stu.”
— In an email sent to Sommerville and Stewart in September 2018, three days after the Packet and the Gazette revealed the existence of Gruber’s $24,000 contract, which Sommerville said Council was not aware of because it qualified as “minutiae,” Rodman suggested yet another plan to get Gruber back as administrator.
This time he said Gruber would return to the county for “say $225K” when the new council — sans those pesky dissenters — is seated in January.
Note that current administrator Ashley Jacobs makes about $190K a year, and former administrator Gary Kubic made about $183K. When Gruber left the county, he was making about $150K. The job he took on Hilton Head paid about $152K.
“Jerry and I are both capable of running the county,” Rodman wrote, referring perhaps to North Carolina’s own Stewart?
“The best short-term solution,” Rodman continued, “is Gary who can orchestrate bringing Josh back and is a master with the press and the public.”
More than a year after Gary Kubic’s retirement as administrator and a year and a half after the search for Kubic’s replacement, now-Council chairman Rodman was still trying to get Gruber, Kubic’s heir apparent, hired for the role.
Still.
And the question is why?
Gruber’s contract was later investigated by an outside attorney. Sommerville had originally assigned Rodman to investigate it, by the way, until the public and other County council members balked at that.
The investigator’s report painted the picture of a county that has been loosely managed with questionable control over finances and equipment.
So again, why?
Why did two longtime Council members fight so hard not only to hire Gruber but to get him back using an absurd amount of taxpayer money to entice him?
