Horry County Auditor-elect fired months before taking office following sheriff’s report

Horry County Auditor-elect Beth Calhoun was fired on Wednesday from her position as assistant deputy auditor. Another senior employee in the Auditor’s office, Deputy Auditor Judy Clardy, said she resigned on Monday after learning her firing was imminent.

Why the two women — who worked as second and third in command to Horry County Auditor Lois Eargle — were pushed out is not fully clear. However, Calhoun and Clardy said they believe they were pushed out as a consequence of the 2020 primary election and run-off election that Calhoun won.

In that race, Eargle endorsed Horry County Deputy Treasurer R.A. Johnson to replace her instead of Calhoun. When Calhoun won, she said, her relationship with Eargel soured. An Horry County Sheriff Office’s investigation — sparked by Clardy — into a treasurer’s office employee further deteriorated Eargle’s relationship with the two, multiple people said, and Clardy at one point said she feared being fired.

Angie Jones, the Horry County Treasurer, said the two women may have been pushed out after Eargle learned of the investigation in which Clardy accused a treasurer office employee of stealing items from her locked office. Calhoun was named in that report because she accompanied Clardy to the sheriff’s office when Clardy made the initial complaint.

Jones said she and Eargle were first able to read the sheriff’s investigation Nov. 10. Eargle’s moves to fire the two women came shortly after, Calhoun and Clardy said. Calhoun was initially placed on leave and was allowed to retain some pay and benefits despite not being able to work. Clardy chose to resign than be fired, she said.

Jones said the two going to the Sheriff, as well as another incident in which a county employee filed a complaint with the state Department of Revenue, constituted “insubordination.”

“I would fire for that,” she said. “If I had an employee who jumped over the chain of command…without a shred of proof…I wouldn’t allow for that. I wouldn’t be having my people going and doing things like that. It’s insubordination.”

Eargle declined to comment about the departures of Calhoun and Clardy and refused to answer any questions Wednesday afternoon.

Calhoun won a runoff election June 23 to replace Eargle, who didn’t seek reelection due to health reasons. Calhoun is set to take office in July. Calhoun was not involved in the DOR incident and said Wednesday that she did not do anything wrong when she accompanied Clardy to the sheriff’s office. She said she wants to “move forward in a positive way.”

“I believe I was put on leave because Ms. Eargle is very bitter that I won,” Calhoun said. “I won without her help. I won with her against me. I think she was working with others to make plans for that office that are not going to come to fruition now.”

The situation amounts to a fallout between Horry County’s longtime auditor, Eargle, and her two top employees who she’s worked with for decades, just months before one of the women is set to replace her.

For taxpayers, the situation raises questions of how two of the three county tax offices have operated in recent months, and if the bad blood will lead to future conflicts between departments that are supposed to work closely together.

Jones said the fallout won’t affect her relationship with the auditor’s office, from her point of view. She said she is looking forward to working with Calhoun, and recently extended an invitation to her to meet so Calhoun could learn the workings of the treasurer’s office.

In Horry County, the auditor’s office and treasurer’s office are led by elected officials — and the assessor’s office is led by an appointed official — and all work to assess the value of real and personal property, collect taxes and process any refunds.

“I don’t have an issue with Beth,” Jones said. “I don’t have a beef with her at all. I don’t want this to effect me and Beth.”

The election

According to Calhoun, she didn’t choose to run for county auditor “on a whim,” but rather came to the decision after years of consideration. After having worked under Eargle for years, Calhoun said the two talked about her running to replace Eargle one day, and when that day came, Eargle would support her.

As Calhoun was debating on whether or not to run, Eargle said she would support if her if she ran, and Johnson, the deputy treasurer, if she didn’t run. The two met several times at Eargle’s home about the matter, and Calhoun eventually decided to run.

“She said she would support me,” Calhoun said. “She said I could put that in my campaign letter.”

But then, Eargle endorsed Johnson. Calhoun said she went ahead with her race without the endorsement.

“I proceeded on with the race and I just did the very best I could,” she said. “I ran a good clean race, I won the primary and then I won the run off.”

The Sheriff’s report

Several weeks after the runoff election, on July 7, Clardy asked Calhoun to accompany her to file a complaint with the sheriff’s office. In the complaint, Clardy alleged that an employee of the treasurer’s office entered her locked office after business hours and took several of her belongings. According to the Sheriff’s investigation report — which The Sun News obtained a copy of — Clardy accuses Sandra Beckwith of stealing several letters, a copy of her will, a title for an unnamed item and a clothing outfit from her desk. Clardy said in an interview that both her office and desk have locks on them.

Beckwith, in an email, declined to comment for this story.

Immediately following the runoff election, and prior to Clardy going to the Sheriff, Beckwith was transferred from working in the auditor’s office to the treasurer’s office. Several weeks later, another auditor’s office employee was transferred to the treasurer’s office. Horry County spokesperson Kelly Moore confirmed the transfers. Jones said such transfers were common and were not related to the alleged theft or Calhoun’s firing.

According to the report, investigators reviewed surveillance footage of the county government building on July 8 and 9 but did not find any footage showing “Beckwith entering the Auditor’s Suite during non-business hours.”

After informing Clardy of that fact, Clardy then asked investigators to see if Eargle’s magnetic access card — which acts as a key in parts of the county office building — was used to enter the suite, saying that it was possible Beckwith used Eargle’s card.

According to the report, investigators didn’t find any uses of Eargle’s access card between June and July, and found that Beckwith’s access card was first granted to her on June 30. Beckwith used her card 38 times between July 2 and 17, but always within business hours, the investigation found.

After investigators told her this, Clardy then asked investigators to interview staff members of the Myrtle Beach Auditor’s office, where Beckwith previously worked as office manager. Clardy said Beckwith had a history of taking items from other employees desks, according to the report. Upon interviewing those employees, one told investigator that Beckwith had twice removed items from her desk, but later returned them.

However, the report concluded, that employee, “would not have any right to privacy in a work environment where items taken by a superior were not securely stored in a locked compartment.”

Because of that, the investigator wrote, the Sheriff’s office could not make a connection between the past incident and Clardy’s allegations. Further, the report concluded, the Sheriff’s office could not prosecute any charges against Beckwith or anyone else.

Then, on Saturday Aug. 8 the investigator reported receiving a text message from Clardy.

“Things are so very bad in the Auditor’s office,” she wrote. “Did you find enough information about [Beckwith] going through employee’s desk? I desperately need to know this.”

The investigator responded that he and Chief Deputy Tom Fox would meet with her on Monday.

Clardy replied: “I have received word that I may be terminated on Monday. Could we meet today somewhere or tomorrow?”

On August 13, while meeting with Fox, Clardy said she had received an email from Eargle the previous day that included, among other attachments, an insurance policy document with Clardy and her husband’s name on it. Clardy told Fox that the document matched the one that she believed was taken from her desk.

However, the investigator and county IT staff could not trace the source of the emailed insurance file nor could determine if Eargle had a copy of the document and sent it. The technology staff later found a matching document on Clardy’s hard drive, the report said.

“In this, a reasonable suspicion arises that the paper document that Clardy claims was taken from her office was potentially printed out by Clardy and provided as evidence that someone else stole the document, scanned it and emailed it to her,” the report said.

Sheriff Phillip Thompson on Wednesday said the investigation didn’t find any evidence of wrongdoing.

“What I can tell you is that through our investigation there was nothing found that warranted probable cause or any arrests,” he said.

Despite that conclusion, Clardy said Wednesday that she didn’t do anything wrong by going to the Sheriff’s office.

“All I was trying to do was find out what happened,” she said. “The problem has escalated from that.”

According to Jones, she and Eargle were able to review the investigation in its entirely on Nov. 10.

Dept. of Revenue letter

Added to the controversy is the South Carolina Department of Revenue.

In August, the DOR sent a letter to the auditor’s office and treasurer’s office after receiving a complaint from an employee. The letter was also seemingly sent after an employee raised concerns that one office was performing the duties of another, which would violate state law.

But Jones said the real issue was not a blurring of duties between the offices, but rather the fact that the auditor’s office was attempting to process tax refunds without approval of either the treasurer’s office or the assessor’s office. Because the auditor, treasurer and assessor all work separately on tax issues in Horry County, two of the three departments must agree to a refund before the county can cut a check.

The letter, sent Aug. 26 and obtained by The Sun News, outlined how the departments should be operating with regard to specific duties, and notified Eargle and Jones of their statutory requirements.

Jones balked at the letter and replied saying the DOR was raising the wrong issue.

“The entering of the refund is not being done with my knowledge nor the Assessor’s knowledge and conflicts with State law, she wrote in an email on Aug. 27. “Will you be preparing another letter in this regard to the Auditor’s Office?”

Jones said the employee who made the complaint was out of line and misread a concern brought up in an early August meeting. Jones said she thought Clardy was the one who contacted the revenue department and that her doing so angered herself and Eargle.

“Lois did not appreciate that,” Jones said. “Me and Lois were on the same page.”

Clardy denied that she contacted the DOR: “No I did not (contact. them),” she said.

What happens now

Clardy said she hoped that after the election, attitudes in the office would settle down, but it didn’t.

“I thought things would have been totally different once the election was over, I never thought things would get as hostile and unbearable as they did,” she said.

While Clardy is able to draw her pension, and will now settle into retired life, she said its unfortunate that her time with Horry County government ended the way it did. She said she “can’t believe” that her good relationship with Eargle for nearly three decades wound up like this.

“For 27 years I thought of her as a sister and I’ve always respected her but this has just really broken my heart that this has happened and gone on,” she said. “I can’t believe it, I really can’t.”

For Calhoun’s part, she said she’s “trying to keep my head above water” as she waits to get sworn in.

“I want to move forward in a positive way. I don’t want to hurt anyone. That’s not who I am,” she said. “But at the same time I can’t sacrifice myself and this office.”

She added: “I don’t know why Ms. Eargle is so angry. All I did was run a race, I tried to run as clean of a race as I could and I’m proud of that.”

Like Clardy, Calhoun said she’s sorry to see her relationship with Eargle sour as of late.

“I’ve cared about her for 20 years,” she said. “I’ve tried to be there for her and her family.”

But, she said, she felt the need to speak up for herself before she takes public office.

“I cannot standby and wait for them to discredit me.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect that the County Assessor is appointed, not elected.

This story was originally published November 18, 2020 at 8:25 PM.