We’ve been here before. The head of a government agency resigned without giving an explanation, the snipers hiding behind a hole in the state’s Freedom of Information Act that allows them to have private discussions about dismissing employees.
This time, he is the director of the state’s Disability and Special Needs Department, an entirely unglamorous agency that you may not have heard of unless you have a loved one who needs your help; in this case, it is a vital resource.
The agency, which serves South Carolina residents with brain and spinal injuries, autism and other intellectual disabilities, has had more than its share of problems. But in addition to an outbreak of COVID at a regional facility it operates and a federal audit that apparently precedes its hiring, it looked to the outside world as if things had been calming since Mary Poole became director, 19 months ago.
So, apparently out of nowhere – despite the objection of the council president and to the surprise of the state senator who works most closely with him – the part-time council voted 5 to 1 last week to fire Poole.
Perhaps she needed to be dismissed. Maybe she hasn’t. In addition to board member David Thomas telling the Post and Seanna Adcox of the Courier that it was moving but necessary, and Poole told WCSC-TV in Charleston that she did nothing wrong and refused an invitation to resign rather than be fired, nobody is talking.
Almost as if no one was talking, a year later, about why the Charleston County Council paid county administrator Jennifer Miller nearly a quarter of a million dollars to leave. It is as if no one speaks so often when local authorities and even state agency directors suddenly disappear.
What is routinely ignored by the officers who are firing is that state law does not require them to have these discussions about removing employees in particular; this allows them to do. And in no way prevents them from explaining their reasoning after a secret discussion. But what is underestimated by the public is that even when there is no executive session, there is also nothing in state law that requires them to explain their actions.
We understand why the boards and councils do not want to tell us why they dismiss people.
Just look at what happened when Governor Henry McMaster told us that he fired the executive director of the State Accident Fund, Amy Cofield, because of a contract her agency made with her husband: In a few days, she hired a lawyer who wrote to the governor threatening to sue if she was not reinstated.
It is a bizarre requirement, which either misunderstands or intentionally tries to deceive about the law which, appropriately, allows him to remove the director of the agency for any reason or for no reason. And we mean it literally: a governor can fire the heads of most state agencies simply because he doesn’t like the way they are doing their job. Technically, he could fire them because, say, he didn’t like the way they dressed.
But it is still a potential lawsuit, which the governor’s office will have to spend public resources defending in court. This is something that part-time board members are not eager to do, not just because they don’t want to incur this type of expense – especially when they supervise an agency that is struggling to stretch the dollars to do the important work it needs to do – but also because most decent people don’t like confrontation.
Government transparency is not just about holding meetings in public and delivering records when requested. It means explaining to the public what you are doing and why you are doing it.
What members of the disability agency’s board ignore – what many elected and appointed officials ignore – is that, while the law allows them to discuss confidential information in private, they still have an obligation to be frank with the public. It is that each secret further erodes public confidence in your government. Is that the secret raises suspicions: did they have a legitimate reason to fire the director, or was she resisting the reckless, selfish or even illegal things that the board was pressing her to do? We have no information that would lead us to believe that such harmful motivations came into play, but as long as the board remains silent, we cannot discard it.
Another overlooked fact is that with some exceptions – some of which make sense, others absolutely not (see: Santee Cooper) – the governor can also fire the thousands of people he appoints for part-time boards of directors, including the board of the Department of Finance. Disabilities and Special Needs. This means that the governor is – appropriately – responsible for these agencies.
Mr. McMaster has spent his entire public career as an advocate for open government. He can and should instruct board members that they need to tell the public why they acted. He can and should make it clear to everyone that he indicates to boards of directors that he expects them to be frank with the public about what they are doing and why. And when people refuse to do that, he needs to replace them – and make sure everyone knows that this is why he replaced them.