Pope-Flynn Billed City of Aiken $700 to Redact Publicly Disclosed Invoices that Remain Publicly Available.
By Don Moniak
Feburary 17, 2023
One month ago, City of Aiken Economic Development Director Tim O’Briant and Finance Director Kim Rooks co-signed check number 9016 from the Aiken Municipal Development Commission (AMDC) checking account. At the time the commission was reduced to two voting members and unable to conduct official business.
The check was for two hours of work for the Pope-Flynn law firm for “redaction discussion with Laura Jordan. Review invoices and redactions. provide comments to Laura.” (1)
The comments provided are unknown at this time. But one persistent redaction was the phrase “Project Pascalis” from the subject of each invoice—-even though it was common knowledge that Pope-Flynn was under contract with the commission to provide legal counsel on the project.
Unredacted versions of Pope-Flynn’s invoices have been a matter of public record since March 31, 2022, following the first Freedom of Information Act request pertaining to the commission’s Project Pascalis. Five Pope-Flynn invoices were publicly released in the first response, and more than a half dozen were added following a later request.
Nearly every Pope-Flynn invoice remains a matter of public record, located on pages 154-172 in a file titled AMDC Financial Binder on the AMDC’s disingenuous “Freedom of Information: Review Project Pascalis Public Records” webpage (2). (Page 173 features the locally infamous $600 whiskey and steaks Prime Steakhouse dinner and drinks tab.)
For example, when compared to the unredacted version of Pope-Flynn’s April 2022 invoice (Figure 1), the redacted version (Figure 2) shows that vague phrases such as “open items,” “community meeting,” “deal points necessary to resolve,” and “Relocation Assistance Agreements” were suddenly considered “attorney-client privileged information;” even though not a single invoice is labeled “attorney-client privilege.”
Yet, in response to a FOIA request submitted for “all legal department invoices” for Calendar Years 2021 and 2022, City of Aiken Manager and custodian of records Stuart Bedenbaugh approved the redaction of information of all legal invoices under the pretense of “attorney-client privilege”—even though in this case the information was publicly released four to eight months previously, remains publicly available in unredacted form, and was never marked as “attorney-client” privilege by the attorney or the client.
More importantly, Mr. Bedenbaugh, Ms. Jordan, and City Attorney Gary Smith, whose invoices were also heavily redacted, seem to forget the client at the top on the city’s organizational chart, Citizens of Aiken, have a right to unvarnished, unsanitized, and unredacted information pertaining to operation of their city.
Footnotes
(1) Pope-Flynn invoice billing the City of Aiken to redact portions of publicly disclosed Pope-Flynn invoices that remain publicly available in unredacted form.
(2) Nearly every record on the webpage were posted there due to a FOIA request, which is a recommended method for government bodies to reduce FOIA costs. The most important records pertaining to the process, such as the AMDC’s Purchase and Sale Agreement with RPM Development Partners, LLC, are deliberately omitted. The AMDC also refuses to release any other procurement records.
I’m reviewing the situation
If you want to eat, you’ve got to earn a bob!
Is it such a humiliation for a robber to perform an honest job?
So a job I’m getting, possibly
I wonder who my boss’ll be?
I wonder if he’ll take to me?
What bonuses he’ll make to me?
I’ll start at eight and finish late
At normal rate and all, but wait!
I think I’d better think it out again!
It seems to me that it’s long overdue, for the request to be made that the mayor in the city manager step down. And the executive Director of the downtown development group be terminated. Also that the Chamber of Commerce should not have as much input or authority over what goes on in city government. It’s time for Mr. Jamison to back off.
It is so evident that Aiken City government views taxpayer money as “play money.” They have absolutely no respect for their constituents and continue to waste money like it is endless. They need to be stopped and held accountable. Another big thank you to Don for exposing their continuing despicable behavior.
Tim O’Briant: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
This invoice shows us, in a nutshell, how the Project Pascalis sausage was and continues to be made. Thank you again, Don, for bringing the facts of the matter to the public. As you’ve relentlessly shown through your countless hours of research and writing over the past 9+ months, the Pascalis story is about more than how we, the public, feel about parking garages, conference centers, historic preservation, SRNL offices, or how to best rearrange the deck chairs on the City’s latest titanic downtown development project. It’s about the ethics and the lawfulness of the processes that have brought us to this point where we are only considering these things after the fact — after the sausage has been made.
The larger story is about a City government that operates one way in private, and another in public; about City officials not serving the interests of the public, whose interests they’ve been empowered to serve; about City officials so tangled in their own secrecy, treachery and malfeasance, they can’t keep their own lies straight — and seemingly have lost the ability to tell lies from truth. It’s about a City that, through its own bad examples, has written a cautionary tale on the cronyism and financial conflicts of interest that characterize public-private partnerships that conduct their business behind closed doors.
Transparency, openness, lawfulness, and public accountability are vital to prevent the next incarnation of Project Pascalis. As is, we’ve only gotten this AFTER the fact, one piece at a time, and due almost entirely to your diligence and hard work over the past 9+ months extracting this information from often hostile City offices, some of whom have been dodging, redacting, and holding for high ransom information to which the public is legally entitled. If not for you, we’d still be in the dark.
To any one in the general public critical of your work, I say: Give it a try. Better still, try taking a more active role in City government. Openness and transparency don’t amount to much if no one’s looking.
To anyone in City government taking umbrage at your scrutiny, criticisms, and your efforts to spare them repeating the same mistakes, I say: Check your executive privilege and defensiveness at the door.
To those in the Aiken public who are ready to “move on” and are rallying to support the latest arrangement of deck chairs, which unfortunately appears to have been produced by some of the same processes that bought us Project Pascalis: You either didn’t read/learn the lessons of the past 9+ months, or you did, but you don’t really care that much about openness, lawfulness and accountability, which suggests there’s little daylight between your ethics and the ethics of that man behind the green curtain.
You are so right and to see a few individuals who once questioned Pascalis now give a glowing endorsement to the nuclear reincarnation of Piggy is somewhat bewildering. Is that controlled opposition I smell?
Thank you Laura , Kelly Cornelius an d Don Moniak for all your hard work and perseverance.
Keep digging and exposing these scalawags.
By my math, this one invoice is equivalent to more than 600 hours of lifeguard pay that the City says it can’t afford to safeguard the kids at the City’s public pool.
60 hours? $9.50 x 60 hours = $570.00
I thought the invoice was for nearly $8,000. Did I get that wrong? and was splitting the difference between the City’s proposed raise to $11.76 per hour and the fair wage of $15.00 per hour.
No your math is correct. I misread. I thought you were referring to the $700 January invoice, not the nearly $8000 April 2022 invoiced cited also cited in the article. That 11.4 hours on April 20th was also spent either driving or sitting and listening—some very easy wages compared to having to be alert for a distressed swimmer.
Why did the AMDC even need a lawyer to attend two public forums that were not decision making meetings? For the show? I recall an audience member sitting next to me commenting that day that “They replaced Gary Smith.” Gary Pope was paid more than $3,000 that day alone.
And that April 20th forum was the evening the famed phone in recusal of Smith was made public by Pope when he said they had done things by the book ( which book I wonder? ) and that Smith had recused himself I believe he said early on in this juncture. His statement was followed up by a Foia request where the city determined it was Oct 15th 2021 citing a dual engagement letter however Smith was the attorney at the March 2022 first reading to give away Newberry St to RPM and a roster shows he attended an earlier joint meeting with the AMDC AND city council where Pope btw was also in attendance according to the roster. Most recently a Foia revealed that not only did Pope-Flynn submit an opinion on the bond to acquire the Pascalis properties but so did Smith ……and he did it as “we” and it was on SMBGM letterhead and it was dated Oct 25, 2021. Seems maybe Boris and Natasha are chronologically challenged? As usual when confronted with serious questions regarding Pascalis the City Council and Smith maintained Deer in Headlights status at the most recent meeting on Monday.
Thanks. I should have clarified that I was talking about, yes, the 4/22 invoice in the header.
Unbelievable. Shouldn’t you have used the graphic of the scarecrow again for article?
And the fact that O’Briant is writing checks for the AMDC should tell everyone that the City Council has learned nothing nor do they care about the public opinion of the citizenry which is also clearly evidenced by the recent Bomb Plant Lab proposal. Oh you people didn’t want a parking garage, a convention center or apartments downtown? Well, how about a Bomb Plant Lab, a parking garage, apartme…oops we mean worker housing, and a conventio…..oops we mean workforce training center. Project Pascalis: Nuclear Edition
The City Council just had to make themselves the AMDC due to the epic failure of the commission which citizens ( thank you Mr. Moniak) exposed and Bond Counsel Pope was responsible for counseling that failed Commission and City Council on Pascalis according to to him ( on April 20th ) he can’t redact what he said on tape and the Dual engagement letter which the city said is proof of Smiths recusal in a Foia which of course we know a recusal needs to be put into the minutes but anyway with Bond Counsel at the helm the AMDC self destructed and the city was left with a impotent 2 member commission, a failed project and one very expensive attorney who remains publicly unquestioned by CC just like OBriant and Smith. City Council looks like bidness as usual despite the Crocodile Tears at a recent meeting. Not to mention taxpayers are left with a 9.6M bond bill. This redaction mess cost taxpayers more than than their little party at Prime but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what he hauls in regularly from this city as Bond Counsel. Another April 2022 Bill obtained via FOIA showed he made $29,500 on a water and sewer bond. Invoice 11529
It sure seems that if one want to find what smells, look for the lawyers.