by Don Moniak
March 15, 2024
(Update and Correction: County Council has not yet approved the live stream. It only remains under consideration. The public notification that Council was livestreaming its next meeting was made in error. When informed of the public health emergency error within the notification, County officials did not state that the Public Notification of a Public Hearing livestream announcement or any other part of the notice was inaccurate. There was no public notification that a FB Live recording was not scheduled.)

(Update: July 19, 2025: County Council still refuses to livestream its meetings, and earlier this year voted 6-2 to not fund such an effort. Council members Mike Kellems and Landon Ball voted to fund livestreaming, whereas Chairman Gary Bunker and Council members Danny Feagin, Sandy Haskell, Phil Napier, Andrew Siders, and P.K. Hightower voted to not fund livestreaming.)

At 1,070 square miles, Aiken County is the fourth largest county by land area in South Carolina. County officials like to boast that it has a (slightly) larger land area in the State of Rhode Island. Despite its size, neither Aiken County Council nor Aiken County Planning Commission public meetings can be viewed remotely (1). The minimalist, incomplete, and often inaccurate, nature of County Council meeting minutes further hampers public knowledge of Council proceedings.

The Board of the Aiken County Public School District, North Augusta City Council, and Aiken City Council—as well as its three decision making bodies (Planning Commission, Design Review Board, and Board of Zoning of Appeals)—all livestream their meetings for remote viewers in the spirit of openness and access. The City of Aiken has meetings archived on You Tube that date back nearly a decade.

In contrast, the only time County Council has live streamed its legislative process, for constituents who were unable to attend, was during the early days of the COVID-19 public health emergency. With Council’s regular meetings being as short as half an hour, and rarely longer than ninety minutes, any resident in Jackson, Monetta, downtown Windsor, suburban Wagener, or other far flung areas of this Rhode Island-sized county can spend more time traveling to and from meetings than at the actual meetings.

This is about to change. After more than a month of prodding by County Councilman Kelly Mobley (R-North Augusta), who was responding to constituent concerns as well as the persistent voices of a few meeting regulars, Aiken County Council will begin the positive step of live streaming its meetings via the county’s Facebook page.

Council’s Administrative Committee discussed the matter with County staff during its February 20th meeting. The primary objections from staff, and a few Council members, to modernizing public meeting access were costs and trepidation over potential Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

The costs issue is expected, as Aiken County government is notoriously frugal; many would say cheap. At the same time, not a single person in the room had any sense of what the costs were; a recommendation was made to reach out to the cities for more information.

The FOIA issue seems more contrived than real. County code already dictates that audio recordings of Council meetings must be made available upon request, with a possible slight fee of about three dollars. The idea that there will be requests for video, when the video is provided for free during the meeting and can easily be archived for future viewing, seems far fetched.

Councilman Mobley eventually swayed the group, stating that “something is better than nothing,” and that “in this age, there are affordable and easy options.”

Wear Your Mask?

The renewed effort, which debuts on Tuesday, March 19th at 7 p.m., has already experienced two gaffes.

First, the public notice (Figure 1) for the livestream that was published in the Aiken Standard on March 2nd was a cut and paste of COVID-era public notices that informed attendees that mask use and distancing rules will be observed “due to the current public health emergency.” The reason given for the error by County staff was that:

“The project’s attorney published the public hearing (notice). Aiken county did not.”

The second gaffe involves the comment period. In this instance, citizens were informed they must comment on March 19th agenda items by noon on March 5th. There is, of course, no link to an agenda where items can be found; only the one-sentence, legalistic, and meaningless title of a proposed ordinance. There will be no agenda until March 18th, the day before the meeting.

Aiken County Council has a quirky system for releasing its agendas and associated documents that is also in need of a modern update.

First, County staff is mandated to provide the materials to Council members on the Friday before regular Tuesday meetings. Then, by 8:30 Monday morning, staff must provide the materials via email to any news media or regular citizens who have requested to be on a meeting notification list; a South Carolina FOIA requirement (2).

Thus, County Code allows for Council to receive agenda documents four days ahead of meetings; while their constituents must wait until the day before meetings. In contrast, Aiken City Council and its Boards, Commissions, and Committees publicly release agendas and related documents four days before meetings.

To make County business even more opaque, agendas are squirreled away behind an online layer of fine print. The County’s “Calendar of Events” that provides the links to agendas and documents occupies about one-quarter of its homepage, and the links are tiny and nearly indecipherable. (Figure 2).

Still, the livestream implementation is a positive step towards more open government. If nothing else, county residents at least have an opportunity to view their elected officials in action; without having to make a one hour roundtrip for a half-hour meeting.

Viewers should be aware, however, that County Council meetings are much drier and more regimented than those held by their elected officials in Aiken and North Augusta. There is seldom a discussion about agenda items, and decisions about the majority of agenda items—known as the consent agenda—are made beforehand in Committee meetings (3)

Footnotes

(1) In terms of other forms of modern information access, Aiken County government remains mired in a previous generation. The County website has not been updated in years, and is in places a labyrinth. With the exception of its Parks and Recreation and anti-litter Departments, social media is not used to convey news and messages. The main Facebook page occasionally features photos of adoptable dogs, but few notices of meetings or upcoming events.

(2) To be placed on the email notification list for Aiken County Council meeting notices, which include agenda attachments, contact kgorby@aikencountysc.gov

(3) Monthly Committee meetings (Development, Administrative, and Judicial and Public Safety) are currently being held in small rooms, instead of the spacious Council Chambers. The meetings are characterized by Committee and Staff members siting at a table with their backs to fellow Council members and any citizens who wish to attend. The only positive attribute of this arrangement is that the rooms are not smoke-filled.