The Beaufort County Council will have its first discussion on releasing the results of its procurement and contracts investigation to the Beaufort County Sheriff Monday night.
It’s been nearly a month since Sheriff PJ Tanner made public his interest and obligation to see the full, unabridged and unredacted report into questionable and possibly illegal spending by county employees. Tanner shared with The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette in July that he and/or his office have requested the document three separate times only to be stonewalled by the county.
“The county has never provided us anything. They circled the wagons early on and it’s been like that for a year,” Tanner said at the time.
Now, the council will discuss releasing the report to state and county law enforcement at its next scheduled meeting. It’s the council member’s first opportunity to do so after canceling their Aug. 11 meeting.
The 30-plus page report has eluded the public eye since it was first delivered to the county in mid-June. Since then, the only indication of its contents was a nine-page summary where only the first page and a half shared details of the findings, stating “there was no evidence of criminal activity.”
Tanner has previously questioned the validity of that conclusion, asking who was qualified within the county to determine if something was criminal or not. Pointing to the mysterious purchase of $36,000 of weighted blankets from a company owned by the husband of a former member of the county administrative team as a known incident that should be present in the audit, Tanner asked: “How can you suggest there’s no wrongdoing, when you know good and well there is.”
As of Friday afternoon, it was unclear if the council will vote to release the report in addition to its discussion. The action item on Monday night’s agenda simply reads “ discussion of providing the Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd report and all supporting documents prepared by Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd to state and county law enforcement.”
Council Chair Joe Passiment did not answer the question about whether there would be a vote with the discussion.
Previously, the council has claimed they would need a unanimous vote to waive its attorney-client privilege over the document. This means that if only one council member decides they’d like the report to remain under lock and key, they could single-handedly prevent its release.
But one legal expert isn’t sure that’s the case.
“If they claim the attorney-client privilege, the privilege goes to the county, and decisions in the county are made by a majority vote of council,” Bender said. “So all it takes is a majority. I think they either misheard that or their attorney is confused.”
Bender added that he wasn’t aware of any action that would require a unanimous vote from the council.
What’s been shared so far
After a months-long investigation that ended in the spring of 2024, Greenville-based law firm Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd only offered an oral report to county council. Then, at some point before mid-June, a written report was requested by council and created and subsequently delivered to county leadership. Confirmation of its existence and details of the contents were shrouded in secrecy from the pubic, despite the filing Freedom of Information Act requests by The Island Packet.
Looking back to the oral report delivered to council at the end of March, Boyd Nicholson Jr., managing director of HSB, painted a different picture of the problem. He told the public there was “laxity within Beaufort County government” that resulted in “flagrant violations” of the procurement code.
“In 2023, several individuals with Beaufort County failed to properly follow, and in certain circumstances blatantly disregarded, the county’s procurement code,” he said.
The summary report carried an adjusted tone conveying opaque language parsing the difference between “malfeasance” and “misfeasance” as differing categories of wrongdoing.
Passiment said that the county received the full 30-plus page report in mid-June. According to multiple council members, the county took the extraordinary step of forcing members to “view” the report in a place so that it could not be copied.
Most Popular
Comments / 0