Horry councilman wants to put ‘power back into the people’s hands’ with council overhaul
Fed up with what he sees as inappropriate votes taken by council members who won’t feel the consequences of their decisions, Horry County Council member Harold Worley has a drastic plan up his sleeve: He wants to change the way voters pick county council members altogether.
Rather than Horry County having 11 council members who all run and are elected by voters within those 11 districts, Worley says he is pursuing a ballot referendum for the November 2022 election that would have all 11 members elected at-large, or county wide.
That would mean that, rather than voting for one representative for the County Council district they live in, voters would vote for all 11 council members — though one from each district — plus the council chairman, who already is elected county-wide.
“The good ol’ boys have taken over Horry County Council,” Worley said, arguing that developers and others in the real estate industry have gained undue influence over County Council members. “We’ve got to get the power back into the peoples hands.”
Worley said he’s pursuing the ballot referendum because he’s seen the council make several key votes in recent months that he thinks would have turned out differently if members had voted with affected residents in mind. He cited council’s near elimination of local regulations for sand, clay, limestone and coquina mines in Horry County, arguing that if council members had cast votes thinking of the residents who may have to live near mines, rather than the threat of additional lawsuits from miners, the county wouldn’t have eliminated the local regulations.
Worley also cited a recent vote in which county council members approved a land rezoning that would allow developers to build a condominium highrise in Little River. That’s a project that both residents and he himself opposed, Worley said, and he argued that his fellow council members would have voted the rezoning down if they hadn’t been voting with developers’ threats of a lawsuit against the county in mind.
“The development community is calling the shots on Horry County Council,” he said. “Mining is another one, how in the world can you strip the mining approval away from County Council?”
To get such a referendum passed, a ballot question would be placed on each voter’s ballot on election day, asking whether or not the council should change how its members are elected. South Carolina state law outlines that either the County Council can vote to put that question on the ballot, or 10% of registered voters in the county can sign a petition to have the question included.
Worley said he’s looking to pursue the latter option, and several County Council members said they wouldn’t support such a ballot question, signaling that the council-approval route may be untenable.
According to the Horry County Voter Registration and Elections department, the county currently has 219,820 registered voters, meaning that Worley’s petition would need nearly 22,000 signatures to appear on the ballot.
If Worley’s ballot measure were to pass, it would make Horry County unique in South Carolina. While some municipalities, like North Myrtle Beach, have at-large elected council members, such form of government doesn’t exist at the county level.
Worley said he’s currently working out the legal issues with the ballot referendum process — a ballot question can’t be edited or changed once people begin signing petitions, meaning that there’s a lot of review work to do up front — and said he’s planning to begin a campaign to get the question on ballots in coming months. Worley believes that approximately $50,000 in funding, which he said he’s willing to pay, will be needed to pay coordinators helping to gather signatures on petitions, as well as for signs and Facebook ads to inform voters.
“It’d just be like running a senate campaign, it’d be more like a chairman’s campaign,” Worley said of the work ahead of him.
Why Worley says change is needed
Worley, who’s served on County Council since 2002, said that in recent years he’s seen his fellow council members vote to approve certain policies and building projects that he says wouldn’t have passed if members were accountable to voters county-wide.
“I think for too long special interests have controlled County Council and it’s time that the voters and the taxpayers had more control and that’s why I’m doing it,” he said. “I’m doing it to me too, I’d have to run countywide, too.”
Worley said he’s open to the possibility of losing his seat if county-wide voters disapprove of his performance. He added that if he voted for a building project in the Western part of Horry County that residents there didn’t want, he should expect to be held accountable by those people.
“I think those folks should have a chance to vote for me or against me based on my performance,” he said.
Other council members disagree
Several of Worleys’ colleagues on council, though, disagree. Council member Johnny Vaught, who represents part of the Conway and Carolina Forest areas, put it bluntly:
“It’s just a bad idea all around,” he said.
Vaught, along with Council member Cam Crawford, who represents the Socastee area, argued that because Horry County is so diverse — with small, rural towns to the West and busy beach cities to the East — council districts are needed to ensure all residents have at least some representation.
Worley, Vaught said, “doesn’t know a thing in the world in my district. Why should my people and my district not be able to choose their council member?”
Vaught also questioned the timing of Worley’s ballot measure, which Worley began talking about after condominium highrise project in Little River was in front of council. Though there’s been public opposition to that project, developers have pointed to a consent agreement past landowners signed with the county, that would allow the project to be built in the area. Vaught and others on council have said they believe the consent order is still in effect for the property, while Worley has argued that the consent order expired when the property changed hands. At recent county council meetings, Worley has disagreed sharply with council members who voted to approve the project because of the consent order and has said that those who voted to approve the project should be able to be held accountable by the residents who opposed it.
Crawford added that council members being elected only by people who live in a certain district makes sense because those council members can then directly serve the needs of the people who elected them, rather than all residents across the county.
Crawford also argued that electing council members county-wide could reduce the voting power of Black residents in Conway, Bucksport and other places, as well as other voters of color. Because Horry County is more than 80% white, non-white voters may have a tougher time electing the candidates they want to see in office. In addition, Crawford said, more populated areas could exert greater influence on the county than less populated areas, weakening the representation of those communities.
“I’m afraid what’s going to happen under his plan is Conway and the large places along the coast like North Myrtle Beach and Myrtle Beach, maybe Carolina Forest...will have a greater say than other areas where they share no interest,” Crawford said. “I don’t know if that lends itself to a better form of representation.”
He also raised a logistical concern: If council members are elected county-wide, would he be responsible for responding to constituent concerns in Aynor, Loris and other Western parts of the county? And could that, in turn, mean the council members need higher pay or higher stipends for travel?
Johnny Gardner, the chairman of County Council and the only member currently elected county-wide, didn’t immediately dismiss Worley’s idea but said he’d have to think about the “pros and cons” of the idea before he could support or oppose the proposition. Gardner said he could see the arguments that council members elected at-large could pose representation problems for the Western part of the county, but also that such a system could make members more accountable to voters.
“I’d have to think about that, that would be a big deal,” Gardner said. “I think we should look at it, it’s something that has some merit…people would have something to answer to. (But) I can see it both ways.”
This story was originally published July 15, 2021 at 11:00 AM.
