(An update to Project Pascalis Legal Costs) (Update, November 13, 2025: Response to FOIA request 341-2025 provides a July 14, 2022 letter from the City’s Insurance and Risk Fund denying a claim, and the City’s tally of legal expenses through early June of 2025).
by Don Moniak September 13, 2025
The City of Aiken and numerous other entities and individuals were sued on July 5, 2022. In Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al; or the Pascalis lawsuit, plaintiffs alleged that the City of Aiken, its Municipal Development Commission (AMDC), Design Review Board (DRB), and City Attorney violated numerous state laws while pursuing the $75-100 million demolition and redevelopment project known as Project Pascalis.
When the lawsuit was filed, there was an expectation among City officials that the City’s insurance would cover legal costs; and in fact the City filed a claim.
For example, on June 29, 2022, in response to concerns that any cancellation or restart of Project Pascalis could result in legal action by the preferred Pascalis developer, RPM Development partners, City of Aiken Economic Development Director Tim O’Briant wrote to AMDC members that:
“Each commissioner is fully covered by the City of Aiken’s policy with the SC Municipal Insurance Reserve Fund.” (sic; In actuality, it is the South Carolina Municipal Insurance and Risk Fund, or SCMIRF).
O’Briant would also write on July 5th (Figure 1) to commissioners, after the Pascalis lawsuit was filed, that “please be assured that the City’s tort insurance fully covers each of us named in the suit as a group and individually.”
Figure 1. July 5, 2022 email from Tim O’Briant to AMDC Commissioners.
That same evening, AMDC attorney Gary Pope Jr. wrote to AMDC Chairman Keith Wood, stating his belief that SCMIRF would be assigning counsel “fairly shortly.” (Figure 2)
Figure 2: Email from AMDC Attorney Gary Pope Jr. after the Pascalis lawsuit was filed.
No such coverage or counsel has occurred, or is expected to occur. A claim was filed in July 2022 and was under review for at least two months. Ultimately, the claim was apparently denied–a FOIA request for that denial letter is pending. (Update: The denial letter and City’s tally for legal costs can be viewed via FOIA 341-2025).
The City’s contract with the South Carolina Municipal Insurance and Risk Fund (SCMIRF) calls for SCMIRF to cover many, but not all, legal actions filed against the city. The insurance policy states:
“SCMIRF has the right and duty to defend any Suit asking for covered Money Damages….SCMIRF will only defend any action or suit seeking Money Damages brought against the Member or Covered Person.”
The Plaintiffs in the Pascalis lawsuit did not ask for monetary damages, they only asked the Court for injunctive relief (stop the project) and declaratory relief (find violations of the law and instruct remedies.)
The policy also states that SCMIRF will not defend against claims involving “Dishonest or Criminal Acts,” and exempts “Any claim or liability arising out of fraudulent, dishonest, or criminal acts, including without limitation the willful violation of a penal statute or ordinance, committed by or with the consent of the Member or by a Covered Person.”
The Pascalis Lawsuit did not openly allege the willful violation of state law, but did infer the possibility of such actions.
These are two possible reasons why SCMIRF denied the City’s claim and is not defending the City; which in turn is bearing all of the costs of the lawsuit.
Table 1 shows the costs through May of this year. Since that time, there has been a costly deposition of two AMDC Commissioners; which was attended by at least five of the defendants’ lawyers.
As reported in Project Pascalis Legal Costs, only the City of Aiken can provide the most up-to-date and precise figures.
Table 1: Project Pascalis Litigation Costs Incurred by City Taxpayers, as of June 1, 2025.
Yesterday the Plaintiffs in the Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al lawsuit, aka the “Pascalis Lawsuit,” released a media advisory, a summary of two depositions from former Aiken Municipal Development Commission (AMDC) Chairman Keith Wood and Vice Chair Chris Verenes, and the depositions themselves.
The Media Advisory read as follows:
“Today the Plaintiffs in the Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al lawsuit, also known as “The Pascalis Project Lawsuit,” are releasing the sworn depositions of former Aiken Municipal Development Commission officers–specifically former Chairman Keith Wood and Vice-Chairman Chris Verenes. In addition, Plaintiffs are also releasing a six-page memo summarizing the findings from the deposition and other discovery documents.
The revelations from the Wood and Verenes depositions include the following:
Some City officials knowingly failed to comply with state law and standard ethical guidelines for procurement practices by “steering” the contract for the $75 million Pascalis Project towards a preferred developer who was not selected via an open, official procurement process.
The procurement aspect of Community Development Law was knowingly violated when an official, open procurement process was knowingly delayed in November of 2021 until AFTER a contract was signed with a preferred developer in December of 2021. The depositions reveal that the AMDC was not made aware of this irregular, unethical, and illegal process by City staff and their attorney until seven months later, at a closed-door meeting on June 23, 2022. Shortly thereafter, the AMDC took the position to restart the project with a new redevelopment plan and a legal, open, official procurement process. This restart, however, was derailed by this litigation.
After being informed of the transgressions, at least two Aiken City Council members advocated a no action approach, declining to pursue an investigation as to the cause of the debacle.”
While the Plaintiffs have yet to release their volume of exhibits, some key documents cited in the depositions were obtained from the City of Aiken via a Freedom of Information Act request that yielded approximately 120 formerly “privileged” emails (spread out in redundant fashion in more than 1200 pages) and that provides additional supporting documentation to the summary.
The key documents include a June 29, 2022 email from Keith Wood in which he described “knowing violations” of state Community Development Law; and a three-page memo from Woods outlining a timeline of key Pascalis project events in which he highlighted “facts associated with what transpired that is potentially unethical and potentially in violation of SC statute.” These documents are available at Privileged Records of the Pascalis Project.
The depositions, coupled with pertinent records, indicate that some city officials did knowingly violate the law, and were reportedly advised by legal counsel not to delay a Request for Proposals. The Defense, which did cross examine both Wood and Verenes, failed to provide any documentation to challenge the assertions of at least one serious willful violation. No evidence was presented that indicated the delay of an official Request for Proposals in order to benefit a preferred developer was an “honest mistake.”
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Coming soon: The Steering” of the Project Pascalis Contract: May 2021 to June 2022.
How the City of Aiken is poised to expand via a creative annexation trick.
by Don Moniak August 9, 2025 Updated August 13, 2025
The City of Aiken could soon expand to its east via a 650-foot-long, 10-foot-wide strip of land that it purchased in 2020. The strip of land will enable annexation of 66 acres between Toolebeck Road and Charleston Highway ( State Hwy 78); across the road from the AGY Plant. The property (Figure 1) is proposed for development of a 157-home subdivision called Toolebeck Commons.
Figure 1: Location of proposed Toolebeck Commons residential development. (From Aiken County public.net)
The process by which this innovative expansion has come about began in 2020.
At its August 24, 2020 meeting (pages 34-40), Aiken City Council approved the provision of sewer service* for 247 homes on the Toolebeck Road property.
During its September 14, 2020 meeting, Council approved a $5,000 purchase of a strip of land from property owned by Dominion Energy (Figure 2) that would enable annexation of the Toolebeck parcel and proposed subdivision. That sale was finalized in December 2020.
Figure 2. The 10-foot-wide strip of land purchased by the City of Aiken in December 2020. The Toolebeck Commons property is to the right, and city-owned property with Deodora Plantation’s detention pond is to the left. Dominion Energy’s parcel is to the North, above the 10-foot strip. (From Aiken County public.net)
The City Manager’s memorandum (Page 148) read that:
“Council has been very clear that the City should grow through targeted annexation. Recently, Council authorized the provision of sewer service to a future residential development of +/- 60.6 acre as on Toolebeck Road that is currently not contiguous to the City of Aiken. As a condition of sewer service, the property must be annexed once contiguous. I reached out to Dominion Energy to purchase a small strip of property that is +/- 0.15 of an acre for $5,000 that would allow for continuity between our existing corporate limits to this undeveloped property. Dominion has agreed to the sale.
I recommend Council approve this transaction…costs would come from Economic Development funds.”
The resolution passed unanimously and without question.
According to the meeting minutes the purchase was considered a step towards city expansion to the east:
“Councilman Girardeau thanked Mr. Bedenbaugh for checking on purchase of the property so other property can be annexed. He said it is part of the movement to grow to the east.”
Between the time of Council’s approval and the closing on the purchase, a proposed cost-sharing agreement for the sewer expansion failed to materialize and the development was shelved.
As it turns out, the developer was unaware that this purchase and annexation effort was in the works. According to its narrative (Page 33), for the currently proposed 157-home subdivision:
“This purchase by the city was never mentioned during the City Services request process. If the city had been forthcoming with their intentions, the applicant would have waited until the purchase by the city was completed and an annexation petition would have been submitted instead of going through the City Services request and now the Annexation request wasting everyone’s time and fees.”
This is not the only time the City has found a creative way to expand via annexation. Nor is it the only time that a third party found fault with its methods—which have continued to contribute to the fragmented and irregular shape of the city’s boundaries.
As reported in Who Bought This Property, the annexation of the new Steeplechase Foundation property was enabled via the February 2020 purchase of a 0.4-acre parcel of land by the Aiken Corporation. In exchange for this $40,000 purchase, the City forgave $246,600 in loans to Aiken Corporation.
In January 2021, Generations Park was annexed via another 10-foot wide strip (Figure 3) that had been obtained to facilitate a sewer line. This occurred two years after the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SC DOT) threatened to nullify a misguided attempt to annex via a highway right-of-way. The City had annexed Generations Park via the right-of-way in 2018 and was compelled to repeal that annexation in 2019.
(The city’s Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the Toolebeck Commons annexation and concept plan requests on Tuesday, August 12th, at 6 p.m. in the Aiken City Council chambers at 111 Chesterfield Street S. )
Update.
The Planning Commission’s August 12th meeting took a few unexpected turns, ultimately resulting in a 3-2 vote against a Motion to Approve the Toolebeck Commons subdivision.
The Motion was made by Caleb Connor, and included the amendment that Condition #3 would be removed from the list of requirements. Condition #3 required the developer to create an access point at Woodward Drive, which is now a dirt road, and improve it to City standards.
The developer, on the other hand, proposed to having that access be for emergency access only. Connor advocated this approach in response to concerns by area residents over converting a rural dirt road into a paved road and thus ruining the agricultural integrity of the area.
The Motion was not seconded by any Commissioner, so Chairman Ryan Reynolds took the unusual step of seconding it. (Presiding officers are not supposed to make motions nor second them).
Commissioners Reynolds and Connor voted to approve without Condition #3; and Commissioners Roscoe Epps, Peter Messina, and Sam Erb voted against it.
Erb had expressed the opinion earlier that two access points were needed. Messina expressed the same opinion, but went much further by stating his opinion that the concept plan did not meet the requirements of Planned Residential zoning. Specifically, the density was too high relative to the surrounding properties and landscape.
This is the second subdivision in three months to be rejected by the Planning Commission. However, the developer can move forward to City Council, which can agree with or overrule the Commission’s recommendation. The developer could also agree to provide a second entrance point, and this would alleviate half of the concerns raised against the project. I predict Council will approve this one if it is brought before it.
Footnote
* Because the property is in the Montmorenci-Couchton Water District, the request was only for sewer services; but not drinking water services.
(An update on City Elections and the rewrite of the City of Aiken’s Zoning Ordinance; reported in Local Politics and Planning: 2025.)
by Don Moniak July 25, 2025
Aiken City Council Election Campaigns Begin
Aiken City Council will have a different look in 2026.
Municipal elections are scheduled for November 4, 2025. Four City Council seats are open this year: Districts 2, 4, 5, and 6.
Aiken2025, a newly formed, nonpartisan group whose goal is to raise awareness of the elections, promote a set of values for candidates, and create a forum for candidates, has published this map of the electoral districts.
Councilman Ed Girardeau (District 4), Councilwoman Andrea Gregory, (District 5) and Councilman Ed Woltz (District 6) all opted not to seek reelection. Councilwoman Lessie Price (District 2) will be the only incumbent on the ballot in November. Unless a strong challenger emerges via petition or write-in ballot, she will be reelected.
The Primary
Only the District 6 race will feature a primary; between Republican candidates Barbara Morgan and Clayton Clarkson.
Ms. Morgan served as the Solicitor (equivalent to a District Attorney) for the Second Circuit– Aiken, Barnwell, and Bamberg Counties– from 1990 to 2009; having been elected four times in total. Most recently she has served on the City’s Design Review Board after being appointed by Councilwoman Andrea Gregory in February 2024. For more information, visit her Facebook page and website.
Clayton Clarkson has served as Councilwoman Kay Brohl’s appointee on the City’s Planning Commission since February 2020. For more information, visit his Facebook page and profile on Aiken2025.com.
Candidates in the General Election
Five candidates will only appear on the general election ballot.
Jacob Ellis is running as the Democrat for the District 4 seat. He has been a regular participating attendee at Council meetings, and ran as a write-in candidate in 2021. For more information see his Facebook page and website.
Peter Messina is running as the Republican for the District 4 seat; He has served as Councilwoman Andrea Gregory’s appointee to the Planning Commission since February of 2021. For more information see his profile at Aiken2025.com.
Braylen Waldo is running as the Democrat for the District 5 seat. He is a newcomer to city politics. For more information see his Facebook page.
Kent Cubbage is running as the Republican for the District 5 seat. He served on the City’s Planning Commission from 2013 to 2017. For more information, see his profile at Aiken2025.com.
Lisa Smith is running for the District 6 seat as a Democrat. In 2022, she was a leader in the Do It Right Alliance movement that defeated Project Pascalis; and has continued in an activist role in city politics. She will face the winner of the August 12th primary between Clarkson and Morgan.
The remaining schedule of the elections is as follows:
July 28 to August 8: Early voting for primary August 12: District 6 Primary. August 21: Closing of entries for nomination by petition. November 4: Election Day.
Status of the Rewrite of the City of Aiken’s Zoning Ordinance
The next City Council will be responsible for helping to craft and ultimately approve a rewrite of the Zoning Ordinance, which has been retitled as the “Unified Development Ordinance” (UDO). The UDO will govern all future development for the foreseeable future; it will help determine what Aiken will look like in the coming decades.
In January 2024, the City of Aiken issued a Request for Qualifications for a consultant to facilitate a rewriting of the Zoning Ordinance. In July 2024, the Chicago-based firm of Houseal and Lavigne was chosen by a committee of four city employees–City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh, Assistant City Manager Mary Tilton, Planning Department Director Marya Moultrie, and Planner Richard Cowick. City Council had no input on the selection process; it only validated the final choice.
The latter only submitted a four-page skeletal bid and received the lowest collective grade of 311 out of 400 points. Their monetary bid was $179,000.
According to the FOIA response, White Smith Cousino worked as consultants during preparation of the City’s 2017-2027 Comprehensive Plan. The firm’s bid and their website indicates widespread experience with communities across the Southeast.
Their 38-page submittal contained a detailed schedule and breakdown of tasks for completing the job; including a commitment of 160 hours of “stakeholder and public engagement.” They also made reference to the importance of historic preservation.
Houseal and Lavigne has more limited experience in the Southeast, and had no previous experience with Aiken. Their 26-page submittal contained no details of the tasks at hand; it was predominantly a review of the firm’s background. No reference was made to historic preservation issues.
The City awarded the job to Houseal and Lavigne for $208,000. Planning Director Moultrie and Planner Cowick both gave the firm’s proposal a perfect grade of 100.
Overall, White Smith Cousino scored a collective numeric grade of 339 out of 400; whereas Houseal and Lavigne scored a 379. (see review files in FOIA response).
The monetary bid by White Smith Cousino is unknown because City officials claim it cannot be found and thus was not part of the FOIA response.
A Rocky Start
To date, Houseal and Lavigne has experienced a rocky start, largely due to the minimal amount of public involvement prior to their first presentations on initial recommendations.
The firm and the Planning Department hosted a single, two-hour long, informational public drop-in session at the City Municipal Building on a cold rainy evening this past February. It only attracted 26 people. No similar session was held on the Southside of Aiken.
A survey was also posted online. As of June 2nd, after four months, only 125 people had completed the survey.
In early May, Houseal and Lavigne and the Planning Department began to present initial recommendations through the use of powerpoint presentations; whereas the final recommendation documents remained (and continue to remain) in undisclosed drafts.
The firm’s first stop was a Design Review Board (DRB) work session on May 8th; where Board members expressed concerns over a proposal to shift more power to the Planning Department and redraw historic overlay boundaries. Another issue raised was the development of recommendations without any initial consultation with the Board. (A video of the two-hour presentation and discussion is available here.)
According to the sanitized minutes of the sometimes chaotic meeting, Board members also expressed concern about the lack of preparation time and failure to provide an entire report before the meeting. Two months later, the final recommendation report on the historic districts remains unavailable on the Planning Department’s UDO webpage.
The next stop was a June 2nd joint work session with City Council and the Planning Commission; which was attended by approximately 30 citizens. (An audio of that meeting can be found here and the meeting minutes can be found here).
City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh began the meeting by acknowledging that reception to the process had not been positive; stating that:
“We have received comments from all sectors, and they have been largely negative.”
The issue of the lack of meaningful citizen involvement was summarized by the first speaker, Aiken resident Linda Johnson:
She stated she thought the presentation had some good work and a lot of great ideas. However, she does have some issues with the process that has happened so far. The process so far did not include interviewing the Design Review Board, the Board of Zoning Appeals or other appointees to other commissions, and stakeholders. She was baffled how they could come up with all the strengths and weaknesses without having talked to those people. (From meeting minutes, pages 6-7)
Johnson also asked for a show of hands from Council and Commission members who had taken the online UDO survey. Only one of the twelve officials, Councilwoman Kay Brohl, acknowledged taking the survey.
The citizen involvement issue was reiterated by Councilwoman Lessie Price, who admonished the consultant and the Planning Department that “it is not always about asking folks to come to us, we have to go to them.”
As a result of this myriad of concerns regarding involvement of both appointed boards and commissions, Planning Department Director Marya Moultrie announced an extension of the public input period at Council’s July 14th meeting.
The survey remains on the UDO website, the drop in boards are now stationed in the Municipal Building, and there are plans to replicate or move them to the Odell Weeks Center.
The next steps for Houseal and Lavigne are to meet with “focus groups,” of which only the Planning Commission is identified by name; and to complete its recommendations, which are now a few months late.
Overall, the process is approximately six to eight months behind schedule and will not be completed in 2026; meaning that the next City Council is likely to have the final say.
For four years, the City of Aiken has pursued an unwritten policy of opaqueness regarding the disclosure of information related to Project Pascalis; and for that matter, the Pascalis project properties that the city still owns and is seeking to sell.
Throughout most of 2021, project details and progress were kept secret or obscured via multiple closed-door Executive Sessions.
In August 2021, Aiken City Council’s approval of a $10 million general obligation bond to fund the Aiken Municipal Development Commission’s (AMDC) purchase of Project Pascalis properties failed to identify any specific properties. Instead, the bond issuance was tied to purchases of any parcels in “the Parkway District” as part of a “land bank.” However, it was known to some, if not all, Council members that the properties in question were for the AMDC’s downtown Pascalis demolition and redevelopment project.
As reported in City of Aiken Information Games, obstructionism of citizen efforts to learn details of the project began in March 2022 when city officials issued identical, exorbitant** $5,312 fee determinations to two distinct and separate Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requestors.*** Two months later, an identical fee determination letter was issued in reply to a third FOIA request; one bearing no similarity to the first two. None of the requestors became aware of this malfeasance until six months later.
In August 2022, City officials went further in their efforts to deter public inquiry by levying a charge of $48 per hour for time spent redacting Freedom-of-Information-released documents—but only for Pascalis-related queries. This tripling of FOIA fees was implemented under the justification that “high volumes” of requests were being filed.
That same month, officials attempted to redact project invoices that had previously been publicly disclosed. This trend would continue with the attempted redactions of legal invoices that were also already a matter of the public record; an effort that went as far as redacting the very term “Project Pascalis.”
As reported in Three Missing Pages, an arguably fraudulent $599 FOIA fee determination was made in April 2023 for a request pertaining to the Pascalis properties; one that ultimately led to a response involving only a single three-page document.
Sometime during the Summer of 2024, the City took down the AMDC’s website, aikenmdc.org, and in the process erased the history of the Pascalis project as viewed from the AMDC’s perspective.
Finally, in the case of Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al, in January 2025, a Judge ordered the City to produce requested records to the Plaintiffs by March 10, 2025–by this time, the City was claiming there were approximately 120,000 emails that met the discovery criteria.
There was a catch. The judge allowed a “clawback” of any documents the city deemed, within ninety days of the production of records, to fall into the privileged records category. The Plaintiffs, who had to commit to a nondisclosure agreement, then would have seven days to challenge the City’s assertions of privilege. All documentation is to be treated as confidential until a final determination is made on whether a document falls under the privileged category.
In May of this year, the City denied access to any property appraisals of its downtown Pascalis properties, citing the FOIA exemption for documents related to the sale or purchase of a property. Such knowledge earlier in the process would certainly have sullied the City’s proud announcement on June 9th of a new developer for the properties. (Seven weeks later, the appraisal was released. It showed the remaining six properties to be worth only $2.5 million, meaning a potential $5 million loss for the City.)
A few weeks later, City Solicitor Laura Jordan responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the Pascalis lawsuit discovery documents with a $45,000 fee determination (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Response and fee determination to City of Aiken FOIA Request 129-2025. The documents in question have already been turned over, in part or in whole, to the Plaintiffs in the Blake et al. vs. City of Aiken et al lawsuit. Therefore, there are no search and retrieval costs.
While this beyond-exorbitant fee would never be paid, even in part, it has clear implications for city taxpayers who have already footed legal costs exceeding $200,000 (Figure 2).
The redaction fees cited in the FOIA response reflect the potential legal costs to the City of determining which of the reportedly 120,000 emails contain privileged information. But at a rate of $180-250 per hour, four times that quoted in the FOIA response, even a fraction of the total time dedicated to reviewing for privilege could yield costs similar to the $45,000 FOIA fee.
Figure 2. Memorandum to City Council with update on Project Pascalis lawsuit costs to date.
Finally, the City took more than six weeks to even reply to FOIA request 166-2025, filed on May 21, 2025, for a series of emails from Keith Wood and Chris Verenes. The statutory response time is only ten days.
For this request, the City charged $365 for redaction fees for a relatively meager 1,300 pages of records. In a separate email, the City made the spurious claim that the request that yielded a $45,000 fee “is duplicative of 166-2025 and the response will be issued through request 166-2025.” The City then canceled the $45,000 FOIA request.
Thus, according to the City of Aiken’s legal department, a request that involves an alleged 120,000 emails and requires a $45,000 fee to process is “duplicative” with a request that involves 1,300 pages that requires $365 to process.
As reported in Which Project Pascalis Records Remain Hidden from Public View, City Council members are on the record supporting the release of all Pascalis project records. Yet, nine months after Keith Wood and Chris Verenes revealed the presence of 120 emails that are in a “privilege log,” and four months after a judge ruled that any pre-July 2022 emails from the pair should be released, the privilege log documents remain a secret; although one that might be unlocked, at least in part, through a deposit to the city coffers.
To this day the City of Aiken continues to obfuscate and erect detours obstructing information access to Pascalis project records, whether it be exorbitant FOIA fees, nondisclosure agreements for discovery records, or excessive redactions.
This is not just a matter of withholding documents; it is a matter of withholding the basic facts as to whether city officials unwittingly violated state law or did so knowingly. Without a full accounting of the project, how can elected officials and city administrators arrive at any real lessons learned?
Footnotes
* In July 2022, AMDC Chair Keith Wood wrote, in a letter to the Historic Aiken Foundation, that the AMDC had purchased the Pascalis properties “at the behest” of City Council.
** According to South Carolina law (Section 30-4-30(2)(B)), public bodies “may establish and collect fees…reasonable fees not to exceed the actual cost of the search, retrieval, and redaction of records…the records must be furnished at the lowest possible cost to the person requesting the records… Fees may not be charged for examination and review to determine if the documents are subject to disclosure.“
In the case of the $45,000 FOIA fee determination, the City of Aiken charged unreasonable fees in two manners:
First, by inappropriately charging for review time to determine if documents needed redaction; whereas SC FOIA only allows for actual redaction time and explicitly states that fees may not be charged for examination and review time. Notably, the City also made the same mistake in 2022 for the $5,312 fee determination described in City of Aiken Information Games.
Second, by failing to acknowledge that the records requested were already in bulk files that had been released to the Plaintiffs in Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al. As such, the records were already reviewed for privileged and confidential legal status.
*** The City and AMDC did take the opportunity to create an illusion of openness by releasing information that was mostly already publicly available—i.e., news releases, AMDC resolutions, meeting minutes and agendas—on a new website, aikenmdc.org. Some of the new information did include spending receipts and banking information (the books), but very few pertinent records were released unless prompted by a FOIA request.
