I think it's time South Carolina had a prize for the FOI violation of the month, to recognize the most galling or bizarre or audacious effort by public officials to hide the public's business from the public.
Truth be told, we’ve got plenty of material to crown a weekly winner, but that might get monotonous.
How many times, after all, does anyone want to read about another school board that comes out of executive session and votes to take action on something it never told us it was even discussing?
Cindi Ross Scoppe
Or a police department that writes “see supplemental report” on the otherwise blank incident report, and withholds the supplemental report because it involves an “ongoing investigation”?
Or a county council that kicks out the public so it can receive unspecified “legal advice” on an unspecified topic — which turns out to have been a topic for which no legal advice was necessary or appropriate?
Or a state agency whose board members meet illegally to write a script for how to fire a director they could have fired without the cloak and dagger? OK, yeah; the bizarre machinations of the Disabilities and Special Needs board never get old. But while the latest audit revealed how routinely the board has illegal secret discussions, as far as I can tell that decoder-ring stuff is totally atypical.
Once a month would ensure we maintain a high quality of honorees.
Double-super-secret
Like my current April favorite: the Charleston County Housing Authority’s double-super-secret meeting to fire the director. And by double-super-secret, I don’t mean simply that the board retreated into one of those soundproof meeting rooms like Disabilities and Special Needs was having built, and discussed what it told us was some unspecified personnel matter, which would be too vague a description to comply with the law. I mean “Didn’t bother to tell anybody it was even meeting.”
It was four days after the fact — on Good Friday — before board chairman Sandino Moses admitted to The Post and Courier’s Jocelyn Grzeszczak that the unanimous board had met and fired Franklin Scott.
There's a loophole in S.C. law that says in emergency situations, boards don’t have to give the public 24 hours’ notice that they’re meeting or what they’re discussing. That’s sensible for those cases where, say, there’s a hurricane headed your way and the city council has to vote to impose a curfew. Or a judge orders a county to pay a daily fine until it stops violating the Freedom of Information Act, and the county council has to take a vote to hire a competent attorney who can explain how it would obey the law.
Even then, there’s a moral if not legal obligation to get the word out as soon as possible before the meeting starts. Yet nearly two weeks after the April 3 vote, there was still nothing on the Housing Authority’s website Friday that even acknowledged the meeting had occurred.
And what was the “emergency”? Had Mr. Scott done something that was putting the lives of the residents of the authority's troubled Joseph Floyd Manor in immediate danger? Was he embezzling? Threatening violence against employees?
Apparently none of that.
Rather, Mr. Moses told Ms. Grzeszczak, the board, upset with the lack of progress, had placed Mr. Scott on probation — last fall. He failed to perform any of the six actions the board ordered him to complete — by March 2. Which was 32 days before his firing became so urgent that the board couldn’t wait 24 hours to let the public know it was meeting.
The board had identified a replacement director sometime in March and apparently freaked out when it learned she had submitted her resignation for her current job. Instead of calling her up to let her know it was meeting 24 hours later and hoped to offer her the job then, the board called its "emergency" meeting.
Mr. Moses said the board didn’t tell anybody about the double-super-secret meeting even after the fact because it wanted to "get through the week" and "ask some questions." Which, to be clear, are not reasons public bodies are allowed to conduct government in secret. I guess when it comes to violating the law, it’s in for a dime, in for a dollar.
Yep; fertile ground for award winners.
We just need to find someone to sponsor the awards.
The perfect prize
The S.C. Press Association awards an annual prize for the best editorial or column in support of freedom of information and open government. Maybe it could add one for the best action in opposition to freedom of information and open government. But monthly, since it would be too difficult to pick just one a year. That could have the added benefit of encouraging journalists to expose more violations.
Or maybe a legislator looking to get some name recognition could take on the task. You know, like U.S. Sen. William Proxmire did with his Golden Fleece Award for federal officials who squandered tax money in particularly mockable ways.
Better still, what about Alan Wilson? The attorney general's office, after all, has always been the primary governmental enforcer of the Freedom of Information Act, and Mr. Wilson has demonstrated how easy it is to whip governments into compliance by the mere threat of a lawsuit. He could even offer a lawsuit as the “prize” if the monthly winner doesn’t immediately act to reverse its illegal action.
This could reduce the entertainment value of the prize, because having to sue the winner would mitigate against the bizarre and toward the easiest to win — not that governments tend to win when someone sues them for violating this law. But it also should elicit a lot of solid nominations. Which could be irresistible lawsuit targets. Which would be an even bigger win for the public.
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