Last month, The Sun News submitted public records requests for personnel files for the top employee in the following municipalities: Town of Surfside Beach, City of Myrtle Beach, City of North Myrtle Beach and the City of Conway.
The timelines and costs of each file were different with each municipality.
All of the municipalities completed the request, except for the City of North Myrtle Beach, who sent their denial 10 business days after the initial Freedom of Information Act request was sent.
The costs ranged from free due to not completing the request from North Myrtle Beach to over one hundred dollars from Conway.
The Sun News received the file from Conway in 12 business days, Surfside Beach in 16 business days and Myrtle Beach in 25 business days.
“The information requested is exempt from disclosure pursuant to section 30-4-40(a)(2) of the Code of Laws of South Carolina because the information is of a personal nature where the public disclosure thereof would constitute an unreasonable invasion of personal privacy,” North Myrtle Beach’s email denying the request said.
South Carolina Press Association’s legal counsel, Taylor Smith, said denying the request in full doesn’t follow the privacy statute the email cites.
“Arguably, in the governance of a city, is no more important a figure to learn about concerning the performance of their public duties than that of a manager,” he said over the phone on Monday. “Consequently, the public’s interest in the right to learn those public activities is highly frustrating when efforts to get records of their job performance are denied by the city. It is a bastardization of the understanding of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to think that it would be an unreasonable invasion of personal privacy to understand what a public employee does in the performance of their public duties.”
A few weeks earlier, North Myrtle Beach sent a similar email to MyHorryNews when they requested the same documents.
They then reported that the decision was breaking the state’s open records laws.
Mahaney’s current $253,000 paycheck is funded by taxpayers.
As a result, denying his personnel file is an obstruction of transparency, according to state statutes.
The Town of Surfside Beach’s Town Administrator, Gerry Vincent’s file brought into question whether Vincent had lied on his job application about why he left previous roles.
According to records in his personnel file, Vincent was hired to town’s top job, which currently pays $141,750, on May 15, 2023. He came to Surfside Beach with more than three decades of work in local government offices, including town manager positions in two different North Carolina communities, his personnel record shows.
When asked about his arrest in Jan. 2018, Vincent told reporters that it was a family issue. He said that he had informed Surfside Town Council about the incident during the hiring process.
A few years later, when working for another town in North Carolina, Vincent faced backlash for his alleged involvement in inappropriate messages with staff, according to a lawsuit filed by the town’s former police chief.
Vincent said those allegations are completely false, and that he had no plans of reading the suit. He was not individually listed as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Obtaining Conway’s City Administrator Adam Emrick’s file was the fastest of the four requests, and also the most expensive at $126.30. One of the reasons for the high expense was due to Emrick’s tenure with the city, and how large the file was as a result, Conway’s Public Information Officer June Wood said at the time the request was fulfilled.
As of July 1, 2024, Emrick makes $210,062.56 a year for his job, according to his file. He’s consistently earned scores consisting of 8s and 9s out of 10 points in categories on his recent annual performance evaluations by council members.
Some council member’s critiques against Emrick was that he’s a fast talker, the evaluations said.
Part of Emrick’s employment with the City of Conway includes a sedan or SUV-type vehicle that the city provides him with, his contract said.
In the City of Myrtle Beach, City Manager Jonathan “Fox” Simons received a monthly $850 car allowance from the city as part of his job, according to documents from his file.
As of July 1, 2024 this year, Simon’s annual salary is $278,250, an addendum for his 2024-25 contract said. Last year, his salary was $265,000, according to the same document.
Prior to working for the City of Myrtle Beach first as the assistant city manager and then the city manager, Simons worked as the City Administrator for Easley, South Carolina and, prior to that, in four different roles for Greenville, South Carolina, his resume said.
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