Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce answers records request

The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce has given The Sun News access to more than 50 boxes of documents in response to a state Freedom of Information Act request filed in February seeking specifics on how the chamber has spent the proceeds from nearly $25.9 million in public tax funds.

The chamber files quarterly "accountability reports" on its website, but those reports do not specify which payments are made from private funds and which expenditures are from public money, including funds from a 1 percent sales tax increase approved in 2009 by the Myrtle Beach City Council.

It is so far unclear how many of the hundreds of thousands of pages the chamber has provided are relevant to the specific records requested by The Sun News, which asked to review the documents to provide residents with a clearer understanding of how vendors are billing the chamber and specifically what the public money is buying.

It is also unclear why the chamber made paper copies of the documents, which are digital and could have been reviewed via computer or portable hard drive. The newspaper's FOIA letter asked to review invoices, billing statements, requests for bids and proposals, canceled checks and correspondence with vendors that received public money in 2010.

A written response from chamber lawyer David Slough on Feb. 25 noted that although the chamber is not legally considered a public body under S.C. law, it would provide "certain information relating to the various requests." letter said the chamber would make the documents available for review and copying, if necessary, in March and proposed charging as much as $2.95 to copy one document.

Slough's letter also noted that the requests are "extremely voluminous and will take extensive time from chamber staff, temporary labor services and outside parties to retrieve and organize the information you have requested and have it arranged for your review and possible copying."

When Slough gave The Sun News access to the material on June 24, he said the documents were randomly placed in the boxes, which were stored in no apparent order by either date, category or topic.

Three hours of review in the chamber's un-air-conditioned warehouse, undertaken as a forklift operator moved boxes within a few feet of the documents and three different songs played continuously on separate speakers, produced no information relevant to the request.

Chamber President Brad Dean has not responded to a request for comment.

Greg McCollum, a Myrtle Beach lawyer and a member of the chamber's board of directors, said The Sun News and the public has a right to see documents related to how public money is being spent.

"I would think that if you're asking to see documents, it's a reasonable request," McCollum said. "It shouldn't be adversarial. It shouldn't be a document dump to try and make you wade through it."

The review

Included among the documents found during the three-hour review were blank pieces of paper; emails in which Horry County officials are being offered free tickets to the chamber's annual customer service awards banquet; county news releases about a public hearing on fireworks and the selection of a county veterinarian; an internal email about the chamber's South Strand office having telephone voice mail problems; and pages with partial addresses of purported individuals.

"Achy Breaky Heart," the Chipmunk's Christmas song and another unidentified song were broadcast repeatedly at high volume on the loudspeakers as at least two chamber employees also worked in the warehouse. One employee was operating the forklift while the other videotaped The Sun News' review of documents.

It is unclear whether the music regularly plays in the warehouse area.

The Sun News sent questions to Dean and Myrtle Beach spokesman Mark Kruea about the storage of the documents, the irrelevant documents that were provided and the conditions in the warehouse. In response, Cherie Blackburn, a lawyer representing the chamber, sent The Sun News a cease-and-desist letter on Thursday, threatening legal action over what she termed an "unlawful campaign against the chamber."

The chamber has canceled two other scheduled reviews within the past two weeks.

Jay Bender, a lawyer representing The Sun News and an expert in the state's Freedom of Information Act, told Blackburn in a letter Thursday that her accusations of a "smear campaign" are false.

"The manner in which the chamber responded to the FOIA request suggests a deliberate attempt to impede the newspaper's examination of how public money transferred to the chamber is expended," Bender said in the letter to Blackburn. "I would hope that you could explain to your client that its actions would cause reasonable citizens to wonder if public money is being misspent."

Kruea said some of the seemingly irrelevant documents - such as the county news releases - might have been included because the chamber works closely with area governments and might consider Horry County to be one of its vendors.

Horry County is not on the chamber's list of vendors for 2010.

Although the documents are in random order, Kruea said the boxes of paperwork represent "advanced" recordkeeping on the chamber's part.

"The chamber's recordkeeping appears advanced enough that it could locate, produce and copy what appear to be hundreds of thousands of pages of records in response to The Sun News' request," Kruea said.

The response

The chamber has been collecting documents since at least March, according to an email Dean sent to Kruea and others.

"We have tried to be accommodating to their requests and are currently evaluating a FOIA request from [The Sun News] that we estimate will be in the neighborhood of 40,000-plus pages of documents," Dean said in the March 3 email to Kruea.

"All because a couple of malcontents who are still angry about the city's efforts related to the month of May," Dean said in the email.

Myrtle Beach in recent years passed a series of laws designed to discourage a pair of motorcycle rallies that typically were held along the Grand Strand during May.

The Sun News obtained that email as part of a separate Freedom of Information Act request for copies of all email correspondence by Myrtle Beach City Council members and City Manager Tom Leath.

Bender said the chamber "appears to be playing a game that calls into question whether the chamber is a good steward of public funds."

"If somebody is spending public money carefully and conscientiously, they should have no hesitation demonstrating how they are spending that money," he said.

The aftermath

Dean said in the chamber's July newsletter that the organization copied 621,775 pages of documents in response to a Freedom of Information request. The chamber spent $50,757 of private money copying the documents, according to the article.

Dean also said the chamber spent nearly 3,000 hours copying the documents. That is the equivalent of one person working 40 hours per week for nearly 11/2 years without a vacation.

Dean did not mention The Sun News by name in the newsletter article, referring instead to "a local media organization."

Slough told Pamela J. Browning, president and publisher of The Sun News, that the newspaper could review original documents and no copies would be made unless The Sun News requested them, she said.

He initially told Browning that the documents would total about 30,000 pages and Dean told city officials in March that they would total about 40,000 pages. It is not clear how the number of documents grew by more than 20-fold over the succeeding months.

Dean said in the newsletter article that much of the information requested already is included on the chamber's website, where it files quarterly accountability reports that are supposed to show how public money is being spent. Those reports include each vendor's name, the dollar amount paid to that vendor and a general description of the type of marketing purchased - for example, "magazine advertising" or "television advertising."

"Anyone can put anything online," Bender said. "There are sheriff's deputies pretending to be 13-year-old girls online [to catch child predators]. You want to see the chamber's backup documentation. Would something the city puts online be adequate documentation for an auditor coming in to audit the city's finances?"

Dean, in the newsletter article, apologized to the chamber's membership for what he called an unjustified "cost of time, supplies and effort that we have wasted" responding to The Sun News' request.

"We could have simply rejected the request," Dean said in the article. "But if we had said, 'No,' can you imagine the negative publicity that would have resulted? Immediately, the requestor could blame us for withholding information and conspiracy theorists would spring into action."

Dean, in the newsletter article, asked whether a media outlet - such as The Sun News - would have been as accommodating as the chamber in providing information.

"What's fair for one should be fair for all, no?" Dean said in the newsletter. "Would they provide anything at all? Would they share documentation and recordkeeping?"

Browning said Dean's comments are disingenuous and the chamber's finances deserve more scrutiny than other private businesses because it is receiving millions of dollars in public money each year.

"Unlike the chamber, The Sun News does not receive public money such as the revenue from a local-option sales tax," Browning said.