Beaufort Co. sheriff stands strong against councils’ efforts to arrest critics | Opinion
The height of a door is 6 feet, 8 inches.
The height of irony is getting shown that door after you’ve attempted to attend a meeting about kicking people out of meetings.
Allow me to reiterate for emphasis and my own delight.
On Wednesday, Hilton Head Island assistant town manager Josh Gruber — nee Josh Gruber, Beaufort County interim administrator and lucrative self-county-contract-giver — kicked me out of a meeting at Hilton Head Town Hall that had been called for the purpose of discussing who has the authority to eject people from public meetings in this county.
Is it the mayor or council chairperson? Do they get to define what “disorderly conduct” is and then order a deputy or police officer to “remove the plebian” from chambers?
As one might expect, their answer to that is, “Oh yes, we sure do have that power.”
But the Beaufort County sheriff is stepping in and saying, “Uh no, you sure don’t have that authority. We’re not your henchmen or your bouncers. We are sworn officers of the law. P.S. This is real life, not Greek life. You can’t just have someone arrested because you don’t want them at your party.”
Incidentally, the height of smugness is the inevitable shape your lips make when you try your very hardest not to smile in Gruber’s direction after you’ve appealed your expulsion, the decision gets overturned by Hilton Head Island Mayor John McCann — with the support of Hilton Head town manager Steve Riley, Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka and Sheriff P.J. Tanner — and you’ve been allowed back in the room.
I tell you all this because the incident perfectly illustrates a core problem in this county, which is this: The concept of public service is not immediately embraced or understood by many of the public servants who need to embrace and understand it.
Instead, we have an awful lot of leaders who seem unable to tolerate expressions of dissent, criticism or demands for transparency and who regard it all as personal attacks from problem employees, in the same way a floor manager at Boeing might.
Democracy, as we know it, love it, hate it and will lay down our lives for it, is loud and messy.
The loudness and messiness are the very best parts of it because it means it’s working. And when the public is allowed to see the loudness and messiness, it means we can trust it. It means we can see how decisions are being made, who’s influencing those decisions and whether our money is being spent wisely.
In South Carolina, public employees and elected officials repeatedly have been instructed by the courts and the legislature to “err on the side” of open governance.
But too often, we are presented with a window designed by a lawyer and are told by elected officials, “See? This proves we’re transparent” only for us to later discover that the action has been happening out of sight.
The meeting on Wednesday was about decorum in public meetings and law enforcement’s role in the matter.
The mayors in Bluffton and on Hilton Head have given themselves — through ordinances — the authority to order a law enforcement officer to remove someone they have determined to be unruly.
Beaufort County Council is currently considering an ordinance that would give this same power to their chairperson.
With the prying eyes of the media now present, however, the meeting instead was steered toward a more diffuse and already much-discussed topic: “safety.”
When it came Tanner’s turn to contribute to the thoughts being shared in the room — which were along the lines of “I always check where the exits are” and “It’s scary” — he instead blew the spores off their dandelions.
“I’m just waiting to get past the fluff,” he said, noting the documents in front of him about controlling disruption in meetings.
“I thought that was the real reason we were here.”
Then Tanner said the name no one wanted him to say: “We might as well call this the Skip Hoagland ordinance.”
Hoagland is the tail that has been wagging this dog.
In the recent past, Tanner and his deputies have refused “orders” to remove Hoagland from meetings because Hoagland has not broken any laws.
So, like the municipalities, the county appears to have written a law for Hoagland to break.
But this is not about one person, they’ll say.
The rules on decorum, they’ll say, aren’t designed to make it harder for Hoagland, a frequent and animated public commenter, to speak up during meetings.
Which is why Sulka and McCann reacted to the mention of Hoagland’s name as though Tanner were a toddler heading toward an open oven door — the open oven door being a portal to a hellish courtroom of their futures.
They said “oh no no no” and “nope,” which, roughly translated from politico speak, is, “It looks like we’re targeting a citizen and we know that’s bad so shhhh.”
Hoagland, who has several active lawsuits with Hilton Head and Bluffton, including with Sulka specifically, is known for using unflattering nicknames for those he believes have been enabling what he and others see as a corrupt relationship between the public entities and the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce.
On Wednesday, Tanner told the room, “I’ve been called just about every name there is. You have to be thick-skinned.”
His deputies and Bluffton Police Chief Chris Chapmond’s officers are already at these meetings to keep the peace, he said. If an individual’s behavior violates a particular statute, and therefore warrants an arrest, these officers are well-trained to make that determination.
Tanner said his deputies are not going to be used to silence people at will because the leaders on the dais don’t like what they’re hearing.
Chapmond made it clear that, barring threats of violence, it’s what happens after a person speaks that’s relevant to officers.
“Their three minutes are their three minutes,” he said, referring to time limits on public comment.
Tanner advised the leaders to aim for consistency and fairness in public comment. If one person is held to three minutes because what he’s saying is disagreeable to council members, Tanner said, then another person can’t then be allowed to go on for 3 1/2 minutes because that other person is full of compliments for council.
Everyone seemed to agree that de-escalation is the preferred route to go if a citizen won’t return to his or her seat after speaking.
But it isn’t clear what happens now.
The county is smart to devise rules for decorum, which it currently does not have.
However, if Tanner pulls his deputies from public meetings over the sections of the ordinance that take away the authority of those trained to make arrest assessments, who will replace them?
It’s a question that needs a good answer.
Too much time and money has already been wasted looking for ways to keep the public out of its own business and to punish those who don’t fall in line.
And, though the media expulsion was reversed Wednesday, I’m not hopeful that things will get better, particularly on Hilton Head.
When Packet reporter Katherine Kokal and I told Gruber — who is the presumed front-runner to replace Riley when Riley retires — that, though he was not legally required to allow members of the media or public into what he was calling a “private” meeting in Town Council chambers, he was also not legally prohibited from doing so.
In other words, we told him, you are choosing to keep us out.
“Yes,” he said with a smile, “I’m choosing to do that.”
