Beaufort Co. clerk reported sexual harassment and quit. Then the county paid her $24K
Beaufort County paid its former clerk of council over $24,000 through a consulting contract after she accused a council member of sexual harassment and resigned, according to documents obtained by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
The contract with the former clerk, Ashley Bennett, is almost identical to the “secret” consulting contract the county gave former interim Administrator Josh Gruber after he wasn’t chosen for the permanent job. Those two contracts are among 37 cases in which Beaufort County gave independent services contracts to government employees after they left their jobs — a practice that an outside investigation said is likely against state law.
The county’s contracts with Bennett and Gruber — each totaling about $24,000 and crafted within two months of each other — fall just below the $24,999 threshold that requires the county to choose the lowest bidder from at least three qualified vendors. Gruber authorized both contracts.
In addition, because both contracts were less than $50,000, county policy allowed the administrator to authorize them without approval from the entire council.
According to documents recently obtained by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette, the county has paid nearly $364,000 to 37 current or former government employees through independent professional service agreements since 2009.
Administrator Ashley Jacobs, who started her job in April, said the county would no longer authorize independent service contracts with former government employees as they’re leaving their jobs.
In May, Bennett sued the county and the county council for sexual harassment and discrimination. The lawsuit is still pending.
The contracts
Records show that on May 18, 2018, her final day with the county, Bennett entered into a three-month independent services contract with the county to create meeting minutes — at $100 per hour. Gruber, who is now assistant town manager of Hilton Head Island, signed Bennett’s contract a month after Bennett told Gruber she was quitting due to sexual harassment by District 1 County Council member Gerald Dawson, according to Bennett’s lawsuit.
Bennett lists her home in Haslet, Texas, on the contract, and she appears to have lived there through the contract period.
On July 23, 2018, the county hired Connie Schroyer as Bennett’s replacement. However, three weeks later, on Aug. 17, 2018, interim County Administrator Tom Keaveny extended Bennett’s $100-per-hour contract to create meeting minutes through Dec. 31. That was the same day the county paid Gruber $24,000 for “consultation services, advice, guidance and support” under his independent services contract.
The county’s contract with Gruber angered some on council who felt it was done in secret and allowed Gruber to be paid by both the Town of Hilton Head and the county.
On Nov. 5, 2018, council narrowly approved spending up to $10,000 for outside legal counsel to investigate Gruber’s contract.
Joanie Winters, the lawyer council hired for the investigation, found that some council members considered his contract “a payoff of some sort” when Gruber was not given the county administrator job. After her investigation, Winters said the county likely broke state law by not adhering to a “cooling off period” that prevents county employees, like Gruber and Bennett, from working for the county for a year after leaving their job.
The county paid Bennett $23,750 through Dec. 31, 2018. On Jan. 2, 2019, Bennett was paid $536.77, bringing the total to $24,286.77 — $712.23 shy of the “small purchases” threshold that requires the county to have multiple vendors.
Like Gruber, Bennett was allowed to keep her county laptop with access to county records during the contract period.
Bennett was paid using 14 invoices ranging from $250 to $4,450 for transcriptions of meeting minutes and additions to the county’s website, according to records obtained by the newspaper.
On May 24, 2019, five months after receiving her last documented payment by the county, Bennett filed a lawsuit against the county and council for sexual harassment and discrimination. She accuses Dawson of “unwelcomed touching” and “harassing comments.”
Some current and former county officials have called the contract with Bennett “bad management” and “suspicious” due to its timing.
These contracts, Winters said in her investigation, appear to be “business as usual” for Beaufort County.
“Suspicious at best”
Bennett was first employed by the county in 2007 as an administrative assistant. On Sept. 1, 2016, she took over as clerk of council. Around that time, according to the lawsuit, she says council member Dawson made “repeated unwelcome sexual comments” toward her and touched her “inappropriately on multiple occasions.”
According to the lawsuit, “the harassment became too much for [Bennett] to bear,” and, on April 5, 2018, she informed Gruber she was resigning due to Dawson’s harassment. An investigation into Bennett’s complaint found that “nothing could be done about Dawson because he was an elected official,” according to the lawsuit.
Several attempts to contact Bennett and her lawyers over multiple weeks were unsuccessful.
Dawson did not return three calls for comment over two days. When Bennett’s lawsuit first became public in May, Dawson denied the allegations.
“Being as an investigation is ongoing, I would only say that the allegations are not true,” he told The Island Packet. “There are fabrications, and it’s all for monetary gain.”
Earlier this year, The Island Packet submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for any documents or correspondence regarding an investigation into Bennett’s claims. The county’s records management responded: “any documentation which Beaufort County might have regarding any such incident would involve matters of personal nature which Beaufort County would exclude from disclosure.”
Former County Council member Rick Caporale said the Bennett contract, coupled with Gruber’s contract, “might raise some suspicions” about motives that led to the consulting agreements.
Council member Mike Covert, who said he just recently learned about Bennett’s contract, said he was shocked to hear how much money the county paid Bennett.
“I thought we just went through this with the Gruber contract,” he said. “How could you give a contract to another former government employee within the 12-month cooling-off period? I’m shaking my head. I would say it’s suspicious at best.”
He also said the county is wrong to make some contracts available online, while not publishing others that should be public record.
“We’ve got to stop the way business has been done,” he said. “If people can’t stop, we need to make some changes and find some people that can.”
Gruber, called for comment, said there was no relation between Bennett’s $100-per-hour consulting contract and her reports of sexual harassment against the county.
“At that point in time, I realized that we wouldn’t have a replacement prior to her departure,” Gruber said about the contract. “She provided a service the county needed to fulfill.”
Gruber’s name is mentioned six times in Bennett’s lawsuit, including a notion that Dawson was unhealthily curious about the county’s hiring process for the next administrator and, according to the lawsuit, asked her for detailed personal information about the council chair Paul Sommerville and Gruber.
Gruber said he hadn’t read Bennett’s lawsuit.
The lawsuit will be mediated by May 11, 2020 — almost two years after Bennett resigned and entered into the contract with the county.
This story was originally published December 1, 2019 at 5:10 AM with the headline "Beaufort Co. clerk reported sexual harassment and quit. Then the county paid her $24K."
