Here’s what Horry County Council decided to do with the administrator’s employment
Horry County Administrator Chris Eldridge will keep his job for now after a contentious vote during a two-hour meeting of the Horry County Council.
A packed house, clearly favoring Eldridge’s dismissal, was disappointed when a vote to terminate his contract ended in a 6-6 tie allowing him to keep his job.
“The house is burning and we need to put out the fire,” Council Member Al Allen said, calling for Eldridge’s termination.
The meeting came a week after the 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson said Council Chairman Johnny Gardner would not faces charges for an alleged extortion attempt. The investigation started after Eldridge contacted the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to look into the matter in December.
When council member Johnny Vaught asked Gardner if he could continue to work with Eldridge, the council chairman bluntly responded that he could not.
That moment drew a large applause from the crowd. As the council debated on the appropriate time to vote on Eldridge’s status, Allen pushed forward with an immediate vote. The vote ended 6-6 with council members Tyler Servant, Gary Loftus, Dennis DiSabato, Bill Howard, Harold Worley and Cam Crawford voting against terminating his employment.
DiSabato was the first member of the council to say he would vote to keep Eldridge. He said the county administrator was acting on orders from council members when he reported it to SLED.
“I’m not overly enamored about what I’ve heard about your leadership style,” DiSabato said. “But in my opinion, I can’t fire Chris now.”
DiSabato said what he heard on the tapes was concerning. While it was not extortion, DiSabato said it sounded like “pay-for-play” politics.
In the tapes, DiSabato said, Gardner’s associate Luke Barefoot proposed two representatives from the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corporation hire political consultant Donald Smith to help “work” council votes.
After the meeting, DiSabato said he doesn’t think the chairman is unethical or necessarily did anything wrong, he just thought what he heard on the tape was questionable. He added he would call out any member of council he saw as acting improperly.
“What I heard on that tape is a pay-top-play scheme, and I’m not sure the chairman was aware of it, but that’s what I heard,” he said. “I can’t blame Chris for hearing those alarm bells.”
Smith is not a registered lobbyist and worked on the Gardner campaign. Barefoot said before the meeting that “working” council is not an uncommon practice.
Vaught agreed the conversation was inappropriate, but he was unsure if it was enough to contact SLED over.
“I don’t agree with it, but I don’t see it as illegal,” Vaught said.
Gardner said there was no pay-to-play.
Allen, who previously worked as a law officer, said when he read the report, everyone’s testimony lined up except for Eldridge’s. All other testimonies insisted no one felt threatened during the lunch meeting on Nov. 30 that sparked the whole affair.
“The one thing that stands out to me in this investigation -- I have read, every witness and their testimony -- their testimony collaborates each other,” Allen said.
Gardner said Eldridge and DiSabato heard what he wanted to hear.
“If you go into something with an agenda, you’re going to hear what you want to hear,” he said.
Allen said his trust in Eldridge had suffered too much over the result, and if he really wanted to help Horry County, he should resign. Eldridge responded his job isn’t to be liked, but to lead the county.
“I don’t think I was hired to be popular, I wasn’t hired to be in the graces of each council member,” Eldridge said during the meeting. “I don’t dance around it. My job is to run the county to the best of my ability.”
It also was revealed in the meeting that officials offered Eldridge a “package” for him to avoid a vote on his termination. He declined the offer, and also refused to resign when several council members mentioned it during the meeting. Details of the package were not released during the meeting.
Even before the SLED report was released, there were calls to fire Eldridge, and an attempt was made to suspend him on Jan. 4. Once the report was released last week, however, demands for the county council to terminate his contract intensified on Facebook.
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, and I wish we could have avoided today,” Worley said in the meeting. “I don’t want to do anything that will tarnish you or your family.”
Eldridge said council members Worley, Loftus and Servant asked him to pass the information regarding the alleged extortion attempt onto SLED. Worley said when he called Eldridge, he had not heard the tape but he was concerned with what he read in the memo written by county attorney Arrigo Carotti that detailed the allegation.
Allen asked Eldridge who informed the media that SLED was investigating. The Sun News called SLED before the swearing-in ceremony, and the law enforcement agency confirmed Eldridge asked for the investigation.
At the end of the meeting, Carotti said he still has the support of council members who privately told him they still believed in him.
Eldridge declined to comment after the meeting.
DiSabato said after the meeting he thinks Council needs to learn how to work together again moving forward to the next meetings.
“I’ve been accused of having a vendetta against Chairman Gardner,” DiSabato said. “In a gesture of trying to be magnanimous, I sat in front of my colleagues and said I am willing to let ‘bygones be bygones’ and bury the hatchet. For the betterment of this community, for this county, we need to work together.”
Tuesday’s vote does not mean Eldridge’s employment is safe moving forward with Horry County. His contract expires at the end of April, but has an automatic renewal for one year. Council could revisit his contract at that time. Vaught said he can see the topic coming up again, and he isn’t alone.
“You have to think about that, too,” Allen said to Eldridge
This story was originally published March 5, 2019 at 5:34 PM.
