Following an internal fight, county council is now moving on to ‘serious work’
The Horry County Council in recent weeks has found itself embroiled in a spate of harsh bickering among members — leading at one point to some members forcing a council meeting to end early and at another to a member pushing for an ordinance that would target the business of another — but members say now they’re ready to move on.
After all, some said, the council has only a few weeks left to pass next year’s budget, a more than $500 million spending plan that could include tax increases. Those budget talks also include impact fees, a new charge the county could implement on new building to help pay for infrastructure and other large projects.
“I believe it’s fair to say that all 12 members are focusing on important matters like the budget and impact fees,” Council Chairman Johnny Gardner said Thursday. Council member Al Allen, who has been at the center of the infighting, echoed that sentiment.
That council members are willing to put recent conflicts behind them now is significant because, some members hope, it means that the council could finally vote to implement impact fees, which have been discussed for years but never enacted. As Horry County faces a rapid influx of new residents, impact fees could help pay for roads, fire stations and other essentials as growth pushes West and the county is tasked with serving more and more people.
“I think we as a council have agreed to focus on the business of the county rather than bicker about ideological things,” Dennis DiSabato, who’s also been at the center of the bickering, said Thursday.
Why the fighting began
This most recent conflict among council members began several weeks ago, Allen has said, when some local attorneys approached him to ask how they might win contracts to do legal work for the county. Allen said he didn’t know how that would work, and began seeking information from county administrators. Through his query, Allen said, he learned the county had spent more than $1.2 million on outside attorneys and law firms in recent years. After learning that, he said, he asked for a list of all the firms the county had paid that money to, and how much each had been paid.
That’s where things got messy.
County staff compiled that information for Allen, but the county attorney, Arrigo Carotti, worried that releasing that information outright could give away parts of the county’s legal strategy in certain cases. Council member Johnny Vaught said that Carotti asked for his opinion and, after asking other council members what they thought, Vaught said he felt the best course of action was to have council members review the information privately and then vote on whether or not to make it public.
Allen disagreed with that method, and declined to attend private meetings to review that information, he and others have said. Feeling like the information was being kept from him — even though other council members said that wasn’t so — Allen asked Gardner to place an item on council’s May 4 agenda to discuss the attorney fee information publicly. Gardner obliged.
However, fearing that Allen might use that agenda item to publicly raise concerns about the county’s legal strategies — or about the county attorney himself — without having reviewed the information, a group of council members, led by DiSabato, moved to end the meeting early, before that discussion item came up. After some back-and-forth that evening, the May 4 council meeting ultimately ended early.
Incensed by DiSabato’s move to end the meeting early, Gardner rebuked him in an email, which began a series of insult-laden missives among several council members. In one email, DiSabato said he had instructed county staff to begin working on an ordinance that would make it illegal for county council members, county officials or their immediate family members from having paid contracts with the county. Among council members, only Allen has a contract with the county — a multi-year, $77,000 contract for mosquito spraying.
County staff are continuing to work on the ordinance and DiSabato said Thursday that he’d move the ordinance through the council’s regular legislative process. However, it’s unclear at this point if a majority of council members would support the ordinance.
Then, ahead of the council’s meeting Tuesday, it appeared that the fight begun May 4 and continued through email could come to a head: Discussions of both county attorney fees and Allen’s contract were placed on the agenda.
That never happened. At Tuesday’s meeting, both items were pulled from the agenda and “deferred indefinitely.”
So what happened?
Peace brokered
Though he’s been sick lately, Council member Harold Worley — currently the longest-serving member of council — said he got himself involved in the bickering and attempted to broker peace, particularly between Allen and DiSabato. He had conversations with both of them about what happened, he said, and each agreed to let the conflict simmer down, leading to the agenda items being pulled.
“They let their personal feelings toward each other get involved in the people’s business,” Worley said Thursday. “They just got caught up in ‘you said I said they said, everyone else said’ and eventually they get mad and they don’t make good decisions.”
Worley said he doesn’t blame them — he’s been in similar situations in the past and has had to take long drives in his truck to calm down. However, he said, it was best for the county that the bickering end.
“You’ll notice the council meeting went just fine,” he said. “I try to deescalate rather than escalate.”
During the call, DiSabato said, Worley asked him that if Allen was willing to pull his discussion item if he would be, too. Content to follow council’s regular legislative process, DiSabato said he was.
“If Al was willing to stop throwing fuel on the fire I didn’t see any sense in continuing,” DiSabato said Thursday.
Allen said he was willing to pull his discussion item from Tuesday’s agenda because the information about the attorneys fees has since been made public, and council didn’t need to talk about it more.
“My request was finally answered and it’s time for us to be about the people’s business,” he said in an email Thursday.
Worley, Vaught and others said Thursday they were glad Tuesday’s meeting didn’t include any bickering, as the council has a budget and other matters to focus on.
“I was glad it all happened because we needed to heal those things,” Vaught said. “Let’s get on to some serious work.”
The work ahead
In the coming weeks, county council will have to decide whether or not to raise taxes next year, as well as whether or not to impose impact fees on new development. To date, budget proposals have included raising property taxes by 3 mills to help pay for waste hauling, and by an additional 4.8 mills to help pay for more police, firefighters and other public safety employees. A proposal to raise stormwater fees by $45 is also on the table.
On Tuesday, council members debated those issues for nearly half of their two-hour meeting with some saying the tax increases were desperately needed and others arguing that they wouldn’t vote for a tax increase unless the county imposed impact fees to help offset larger costs first. At one point, council members discussed having voters decided on a tax increase for public safety spending in a special election.
But, according to Worley, the council will be able to successfully settle those matters now that the infighting is over: “I think at the end of the day you’ll see us come out with a good budget.”
