By Lolita Huckaby
BEAUFORT
Beaufort County Council started off the new year with a major shake-up, selecting two of its three female members to elect this governing body of 11 for the next two years.
As has been widely reported, Alice Howard, a 10-year veteran of the county council and Anna Maria “Tab” Tabernick, still serving her first four-year term on the council, were elected by their colleagues to serve as chair and vice-chair.
Howard was elected by a 6-5 vote over incumbent Chairman Joe Passiment and Tabernick’s vote to replace Vice-Chair Larry McElynn was unanimous. Passiment, as has been reported, had irritated enough council members with his recent efforts to conduct a private meeting between Sen. Tom Davis, County and Hilton Head Island elected officials and staff members to discuss the U.S. 278 bridge project budget deficient, that the swing vote, Tom Reitz of Hilton Head, made it clear his support for Howard was a vote for government transparency.
Not only was the election historic in that it’s the first time two women have held the top two leadership seats on the county governing board, but it also returned to the north-south balance which had traditionally comprised the council. That balance, shifting the leadership role to two South-of-the-Broad members, was done in 2020 when Passiment and McElynn were elected to the leadership positions.
(Howard, for information only, is not the first female to serve as County Council Chairman. That title belongs to the late Martha Baumberger of Hilton Head who served as chairman in 1985 before leaving the County Council to serve as the mayor of Hilton Head Island.)
Both Howard and Tabernick, during last week’s council reorganization meeting, commended the former leadership, noting the extremely difficult times the council experienced with the firing of former Administrator Eric Greenway and accompanying investigations.
They also both made pledges to increase “transparency” in county operations, a pledge they seem determined to carry out since it was publicized in The Island Packet over the weekend that County Administrator Michael Moore has hired yet another “outside” law firm — Bettis Law Firm, labor law specialists based in Columbia — to conduct an investigation of county employees and possible violations of the employee handbook “dealing with the release of confidential information to the public.”
While one council member told an Island Packet reporter the investigation was not a “witch hunt” – defined in the Britannica Dictionary as “an intensive inquiry to discover and expose wrongdoing, often harming innocent persons through reliance on hearsay or circumstantial evidence” – it certainly could be perceived as one since much of the information that lead to Greenway’s dismissal and a separate, unresolved, investigation by the S.C. Attorney General, was obtained by “whistleblowers” – defined also in the Britannica Dictionary as “an individual who … reveals private or classified information about an organization, usually related to wrongdoing or misconduct.”
While various council members told the Packet they would cooperate with the new investigative team (they must be getting tired of all these attorneys’ questions), it’s not the elected officials who would be nervous about who’s talking to whom, it’s the employees who — even those who have “nothing to hide”– are probably tired of such a suspicious work environment.
Sen. Davis steps out with another US 278 plan
HILTON HEAD ISLAND – Speaking of that “secret” meeting held last month to discuss the U.S. 278 bridge corridor project with county and town officials, plus staff, state Sen. Tom Davis was present for that discussion.
And the veteran statesman, who now calls southern Beaufort County home, pulled another proverbial rabbit out of his hat this past week during another meeting designed to discuss what to do about the $300 million bridge project since the county’s $190 million share of funding for the work was rejected by voters in the November transportation sales tax referendum.
The publicized work session conducted by the Hilton Head Island Town Council, with everyone invited, saw Davis outline a plan that would redirect state funds from other county projects and use the money to replace the structurally deficient three-lanes east-bound part of the bridge.
The county is looking at a March 31 deadline from the State Infrastructure Bank to come up with a plan or risk using the $120 million designated by SIB for the project.
County and town officials will be having additional meetings to discuss the proposal and try to reach a consensus.
Davis pulled something similar to a rabbit-out-of-the hat in 2022 when he successfully proposed the county consider a 1-cent sales tax referendum to be used for the purchase of “green space,” to limit lands subject to development. The Green Space sales tax, which was approved by the voters, will expire in May 2025 with a projected budget of $100 million.
Davis sponsored the Green Space program through the state legislature and Beaufort County was the first to pass the sales tax.
Living the life: Robinson remembered
PORT ROYAL – Former Mayor Henry “Luck” Robinson was laid to rest Saturday at Beaufort Memorial Gardens on a clear, winter day after a celebration of his life and service to the community.
Robinson, who served this once seaport town as the first African American elected town official, was first a councilman and then mayor for a combined 36 years.
He and his wife, Linda, were recognized for their work with foster children, which included taking dozens of children into their home over the years.
Former Beaufort City Councilman, and Robert Smalls High School alumni, Fred Washington Jr. spoke of Robinson’s political heritage and the days of the “two Henrys,” referring to Robinson in Port Royal and the late Henry Chambers, who was mayor of Beaufort at the same time.
Washington noted how the two had a different style of “getting things done,” Chambers using his connections in Washington, which included Sen. Strom Thurmond and in Columbia, with Sen. James Waddell. Robinson, on the other hand, built his connections through work with regional groups like the Lowcountry Council of Governments.
The comments about service were not unlike the remarks made earlier in the week by friends and associates of another Southern politician, former President Jimmy Carter, who was laid to rest only days earlier in Plains, Ga.
“The life he led speaks for him,” one speaker said.
Lolita Huckaby Watson is a community volunteer and newspaper columnist. In her former role as a reporter with The Beaufort Gazette, The Savannah Morning News, Bluffton Today and Beaufort Today, she prided herself in trying to stay neutral and unbiased. As a columnist, these are her opinions. Her goal is to be factual but opinionated, based on her own observations. Feel free to contact her at bftbay@gmail.com.
