By Delayna Earley
The Island News
An audit of the procurement code and P-Card system in Beaufort County government has found a long list of violations of its spending guidelines.
The investigation lead by the law firm Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd, which took several months to conclude, found that members of Beaufort County’s staff and elected officials failed to adhere to the county’s procurement code and P-Card manual.
Boyd Nicholson Jr., managing director of the law firm that was hired by the county in late 2023, spoke to Beaufort County Council on March 25, although the council members had been briefed on the findings before the meeting.
“They are not good,” Council Chairman Joseph Passiment said in a statement before Nicholson spoke. “We did not expect them to be good.”
The report that was presented during the council meeting was abridged into less than three pages despite an investigation that required hundreds of hours of work, according to Passiment.
The investigation was requested following the firing of former Beaufort County Administrator Eric Greenway in July 2023.
Purchases made through the county’s procurement system and using the P-Card system were the focus of the investigation.
The firm reviewed procurement purchases made in 2023 and P-Card system purchases from 2019-2023, and they were tasked with finding transactions that did not meet county guidelines.
Greenway was the only person who was mentioned in the report by name, although procurement code violations that were identified in the report included ones that have been covered extensively in the media.
The report identified three instances of procurement code violations which have been covered previously by The Island News – a contract executed by Greenway for consulting services with Elementzal LLC; the near $36,000 purchase of weighted blankets from a business co-owned by the former Deputy County Administrator Whitney Richland; and the unauthorized purchase of an inclusive playground costing $800,000 by former Parks and Recreation Director Shannon Loper.
Richland resigned from her job in August 2023, and Loper was fired in October 2023 for her treatment of an employee.
The firm reviewed thousands of documents and conducted interviews with former and current county employees to collect the necessary information to form their report and assessment of the procurement code and P-Card system.
Not included in the report was information giving any idea as to how much of the taxpayers’ money was spent inappropriately due to the “flagrant violations” of the procurement code.
The purchases made on county P-Cards since 2019 were described as “excessive, personal, frivolous, not business driven and often in violation of the county’s P-Card manual,” said Nicholson.
Violating purchases included things like an Apple watch, earbuds, cellphone cases, meals, office decorations and “inappropriate books.”
Interim County Administrator John Robinson addressed council following Nicholson’s report and spoke to the steps that Beaufort County has taken since Greenway’s firing in July 2023 to rectify some of the issues with the county staff’s understanding of the procurement code and P-Card system.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
