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County Administrator claims “hostile work environment”: threatens lawsuit web posted July 7, 2010 EDGEFIELD – The Edgefield County Council meeting Tuesday night was full of surprises over the entire two hours the meeting drug onward. Though much of the business was simple reading on ordinances drawing unanimous votes, a third reading on the Planned Development ordinance failed for a lack of motion and the proposed ordinance to create business licenses for all business in Edgefield County was accepted only as information. However, the real fireworks did not start to go off until late in the meeting with County Administrator Alton Brown making accusations of a “hostile work environment” and announcing plans to seek other avenues of employment for his future. The first statements by Brown came an hour into the meeting saying Councilman Rodney Ashcraft had sent him a list of questions regarding the process that had been undertaken on the Calliham project and Brown felt the need to answer them publicly, rather than privately to all members of the council. Brown stated that ordinarily he would respond to the question emailed to him to all council members in like form, but due to his not responding in time, he wanted to do so at the meeting. Administrator Brown made several assertions during his replies and directed them at Councilman Ashcraft mainly including a question as to if the administrator or the council chairman can take individual action without a vote of the council. Brown referred to Robert’s Rules of Order, which the council has recently codified in ordinance form, and stated that a directive did not have to come in the form of a vote citing Article 8 Section 46 on voting. Brown stated that “general consent” states, “that the chair may take action under the rule of general unanimous or silent consent, this means, and I’m paraphrasing now, that the chair may assume the general or unanimous consent of a decision, directive, ect, by the council’s silence or lack of timely objection.” Brown said Chairman Kneece could give directive where there is no disagreement among members. “So if the chairman says, ‘Alton, do this, and nobody objects or the remaining council is silent we assume (he and staff) that is a directive of the council.” However, the questions sent privately to Administrator Brown in an email, were issues that have never been addressed by the county council in an open meeting and Mr. Brown did not receive any such “directive” by Chairman Kneece on any of the matters contained in the questions by Councilman Ashcraft. “The council decided to forego the hiring of a contractor to save money,” Mr. Brown stated. However, no such statement, conversation, or directive was given by Chairman Kneece in any meeting prior to Mr. Ashcraft submitting his questions to Mr. Brown or afterwards. Brown stated the council did vote on the replacement of the roof, but never recalled any discussion as to what Building and Planning Director Mike Reed’s title was in connection to the project that has been the topic of much discussion in the public realm. “The council simply approved it,” Brown said. Councilman Ashcraft interrupted Mr. Brown to state that twice he mentioned “kickbacks” were alleged to being made to Mr. Reed and asked for clarification of the accusations. Brown ignored the question and continued in his reading of the questions submitted to him by Councilman Ashcraft. The question arose again by Councilman Norman Dorn later in which Administrator Brown stated, “Well, it was in twice. First in the Daily Edge (Edgefield Daily presumably) um, he was quoted, uh, that it was, that, uh that, uh, Mr. Reed, and then you questioned him about it on the 25th,” Brown said. Brown then asked if Councilman Ashcraft questioned Mr. Reed on the matter of receiving “kickbacks” on June 25 and Ashcraft answered, “No”. No such quote by Councilman Ashcraft exists in any report by Edgefield Daily or any other media provider and we are unaware of any confidential exchanges between Councilman Ashcraft, Mr. Reed and Administrator Brown concerning such allegations. Building and Planning Director Mike Reed then rose to speak and was told by Administrator Brown that he “did not have to defend himself”. Reed took to the podium to state that Councilman Ashcraft never accused him of taking kickbacks and that during a discussion Councilman Ashcraft asked him about something constituents had asked him about the possibility that kickbacks could be involved. Councilman Ashcraft stated he did not recall any such conversation and said he was only asking questions to Administrator Brown to receive answers posed to him by his constituents. Mr. Reed agreed and stated that he never said Ashcraft made the allegations and it was just a friendly conversation. Councilwoman Genia Blackwell then interjected that she did not believe anyone had any question about Reed’s integrity, “I think you are an outstanding person and very honest. My concern is your overload. You know, how much you can take on in a 35 to 40 hour work week.” Mr. Reed responded by saying that the project has drawn out for too long and due to the procurement processes it is taking even longer than it should for a remodel of a 4,000 square foot building. “As far as overworked, it just makes the day go by faster,” Reed said. “If it wouldn’t be this it would be something else,” he said. Chairman Kneece spoke up saying that if Councilman Ashcraft did not agree with the Calliham project he should just “step aside” and then turned his comments towards Edgefield Daily Editor Roy Blackwell. “You just need to stay out of it.” Blackwell responded, “All I do is ask questions and I will continue to do so.” Kneece shot back that Blackwell needed to ask questions and “not invent questions.” County Councilman Norman Dorn interjected, “yeah, and get a job”. Mr. Blackwell responded, “I ask questions and quote you accurately, what else am I to do?” Chairman Kneece stated everyone is making a “mountain out of a mole hill”. Vice-chairman Willie Bright then interjected that he wanted to apologize to Mr. Reed for being accuse of being a thief. “I don’t think a man ought to call a man a thief unless he can prove it,” Bright said. This drew the ire of Councilman Ashcraft. “Mr. Bright, are you accusing me of calling Mr. Reed a thief?” Ashcraft shot back. Chairman Kneece gaveled down the discussion and stated he was “taking control” only to be interrupted by Councilman Ashcraft. “Those questions, a few of them came from me, but a lot of them came from people in the community. Now, if I’m going to be accused and sacrificed tonight for asking those questions, then I will be accused and sacrificed every night.” Ashcraft said he apologized to Mr. Reed if the questions were misdirected as accusations by others, but he never insinuated that Mr. Reed was taking kickbacks. Mr. Reed confirmed again that Mr. Ashcraft never made the accusations that were leveled previously. “All of a sudden what you’re telling me is different from what’s coming from both sides of me (Brown, Kneece, and Bright) which is I’m being accused of calling you a thief,” Ashcraft said. “But that’s not the case at all.” Ashcraft continued, “If I’m going to ask questions that my constituents have, and I’m going to be in trouble for it, I will be in trouble every thirty days.” As the meeting moved forward Mr. Reed began discussing the floor plan the current bids were being accepted on which drew a comment by Councilman Ashcraft stating that he did not recall a vote in any vote by the council to approve the plans. Mr. Reed stated that the initial plans supplied to the council were only preliminary and that the current plan was just recently submitted. Chairman Kneece stated that the plans were approved by the Building and Planning Department and Voter Registration. Councilman Ashcraft interjected saying, “Like Mr. Brown said, if the Chairman says for you to do something, and we concede and not object, then I guess it’s unwritten law, semantics, as he (Administrator Brown) says, but I don’t recall even verbally agreeing to these plans. Chairman Kneece interjected that Building and department heads in Planning as well as Voter Registration are the ones who “accepted this plan”. Ashcraft continued to say that the county council has never voted to accept the floor plan and never voted to accept it as the final plan to accept bids. Subsequently Mr. Reed read off several bids for work on the new building saying that bids submitted by bidders outside the county had to be “increased” under a new formula to make local contractors more competitive. One woman in the audience questioned why other bids were being increased over their submitted bids in order to favor a local contractor. Reed stated that there was “an adjustment” that is allowed under a new ordinance designed to give local contractors an even playing field with outside bidders to help keep the contracts being awarded to local contractors. In the new ordinance, it applies a percentage depending on the dollar amount of the local bidder, you increase the bid of the competitor to try to compensate, uh, to put a dollar amount into that uh bid to (inaudible) for a local bidder.” “So you increase the (bids) others,” Reed said. The county council approved the acceptance of a plumbing contract, however, other bids were discussed but were unambiguous as to if the bids were awarded or not. The discussion turned to the removal of Railroad Street from the state road system that runs from the corner of the Calliham building to Jeter Street. Chairman Kneece stated that the Sheriff has requested the street be closed for several years. Councilwoman Blackwell questioned the Sheriff’s claimed need to close the street. County Administrator Alton Brown stated it was due to more space needed to park “more junk cars”, something he claimed was made in jest. The vote to request the removal of the road from the state system was approved with the understanding that it could be withdrawn at a later date. At the closing of the meeting Administrator Brown made the statement that he said needed to be made due to a “hostile work environment” concerning his job. Mr. Brown made accusations that due to comments in opinion postings by the Editor of Edgefield Daily, which he misquoted and took out of context, and subsequently referred to members of council, who have no editorial control over Edgefield Daily, which he considered them to infer he was being placed in a “hostile work environment” and constituted grounds for legal action against the county. He informed the council that he would be seeking other employment opportunities and was not ruling out legal action against the county, going so far as to place the county on notice of his intentions. “I am not resigning”, Brown said. However, he alleged that Edgefield Daily had implied “corruption” and illegal “kickbacks” (which have never been mentioned or reported by Edgefield Daily), “without offering any documentation.” Since no such articles have been published it is unclear what Mr. Brown was referring to in his complaint. All documented and sourced reports on the hostile work environment reported concerned the lawsuit filed by Edgefield County Building and Planning Director Mike Reed against Aiken County as reported by the Aiken Standard, not Administrator Brown, against the county of Aiken, not Edgefield. Mr. Brown went on to misquote an opinion by the Editor in an effort to imply that there was collusion between sitting council members and a current county council candidate (which could be construed as a political attack on one of his future employers as well as two sitting council members re-elected to their current positions) by the employee (ie: Alton Brown). Edgefield Daily stands by the opinion of the Editor on the outcome of the coming elections and what that could mean for Mr. Brown and other positions directly related to their “at will” hiring’s. Opinions of an independent new organization have no bearing on his job, his employment status, or his professional standing. © Copyright 2010 EdgefieldDaily.com All original
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