Richland Co. chairman accused of ‘deception,’ ‘shameful tactics’ ahead of leader vote
Richland County Council’s longest-serving member and current chairman is accused by a colleague of “deception” and not “doing the right thing” in his role as a leader, particularly surrounding a controversial $1 million settlement paid to a former county administrator.
Council Chairman Paul Livingston strongly denied accusations made by Councilwoman Dalhi Myers in a letter Myers sent to all 11 members of council on Monday, ahead of council’s vote Tuesday to elect its 2020 chairperson. The State obtained a copy of the letter Monday afternoon.
Myers, who currently serves as the council’s vice-chair, wrote in her letter that she would not vote in favor of re-electing Livingston to a second term as chairperson because “you often choose political expediency over public candor and just doing the right thing.”
She cited Livingston’s role in County Council’s 2018 vote to pay $1 million to ex-administrator Gerald Seals, after a majority of council members voted — twice — to fire Seals. Livingston was not the chairperson of council at that time. That settlement is being challenged in an ongoing lawsuit.
Myers claimed that Livingston proposed the settlement agreement in a closed-door council meeting and then publicly denied supporting it by voting against it.
“While this instance is not isolated, it is stark and, because of the deception and lies surrounding it, has been the most damaging to the County and this Body. For me, it has been determinative,” Myers wrote. “Richland County is at an inflection point. We need a leader with the courage of his or her convictions. Despite my personal affinity for you (Livingston), which is not in dispute, I will be supporting a Chair with that courage.”
Livingston, who has served nearly three decades on council, adamantly disputed Myers’ account of the settlement arrangement — “That’s a lie,” he said — and said her letter “has a lot of inaccuracies.”
Livingston said he did not support a settlement with Seals and had made that clear in council’s private discussions. Livingston said that multiple dollar figures were being bounced around by council members and that he wanted “to get that amount down as low as we can.”
Livingston said he eventually proposed the $1 million figure that council finally voted on. But Livingston voted against that settlement contract, he said, because it included a clause that would allow Seals to be rehired.
“I made it very clear that I could not support it with that clause in it,” Livingston said.
Since the settlement was paid, it has been revealed that Myers exchanged text messages with Seals before and during the council’s closed-door negotiating session in 2018. According to the text messages, Myers told Seals, “Don’t counter small or reasonable. Go big.”
Myers has said that message was taken out of context and told The State, “Gerald Seals was wrongfully terminated, and I was standing up for him.”
Seals was a polarizing figure as county administrator from 2016 to 2018. He uncovered numerous inefficiencies and improper dealings in county government during his tenure, including exposing some council members’ inappropriate behaviors. But he was portrayed in an authoritarian light by multiple council members, who sought for months to terminate him.
Livingston was among the council members who voted twice to fire Seals. Myers was one of Seals’ strongest supporters.
Myers did not level any other specific accusations against Livingston in her letter, but she listed a dozen other accusations against unnamed council members related to Seals’ tenure and departure. Myers refers to both current and former council members in allegations that highlight ongoing dysfunction in Richland County leadership, including:
- “Members routinely claimed an inability to understand Seals’ ‘big’ vocabulary, publicly in televised meetings and privately in memos and emails. They engaged in long diatribes requesting ‘definitions’ of words he used in memos, while publicly ‘praising’ his extraordinary vocabulary to create a never-ending circus around their need to ‘look up the big words he used.”
- “Members dog-whistled that Seals was ‘lazy,” when he closed his eyes during a Council Member’s excessively loud and profanity-laced, hour-long, public tirade against him (which caused administrative staff to clear the entire 2020 Hampton Street 4th floor public conference room area).”
- “Following the vote to ‘terminate Seals,’ two members tried to forcibly remove him from 2020 Hampton Street, using Richland County Deputy Sheriffs. The Deputies called their boss, Sheriff (Leon) Lott, who instructed them to stand down and not involve themselves in ‘Council business.’”
Myers also included an allegation involving a letter from an exotic dancer that said some council members had received sexual favors in exchange for votes that would exempt a strip club from paying business license fees. Seals had forwarded that letter to law enforcement, and council members retaliated against him for it, Myers wrote.
Other allegations involved alleged sexual harassment by council members, the county’s purchase of protective glasses for the 2018 solar eclipse and management of the penny tax road improvement program.
Myers declined to identify the unnamed council members referenced in her letter.
Myers wrote that she “implored” Livingston — as the senior council member and later its chair — to address “the lies and whisper campaigns” and behavior of fellow council members. “You failed to act, even to this day,” she wrote.
Livingston bristled at Myers’ litany of accusations against various council members, which he said did not relate to him.
“Not a single one of those apply to me, so why would you put those in a letter as if I was engaged in them when I was not?” Livingston said. He said he considered the letter “intentionally to be character assassination, for whatever reason.”
Monday evening, Myers told The State, “I regret that my private letter became public.”
“I sent a private letter to colleagues,” she said. “I did not attempt to do what had wrongfully been done to me. I stand by my private letter and respect Mr. Livingston personally. That has nothing to do with this very difficult decision. I regret that my private letter became public.”
Richland County Council traditionally has followed an unwritten agreement to elect a chairperson for two consecutive year-long terms. Livingston would serve his second year as chairman if re-elected by his colleagues Tuesday.
In the recent past, tension was sparked when council members did not elect former councilman Norman Jackson to a second year as chairman.
Richland County government has waded through several rocky years, which have seen massive turnover in high-level staff and highly public controversies surrounding the $1 billion penny sales tax transportation program, the fumbled Richland Renaissance development plan and suspect transactions concerning Pinewood Lake Park in Lower Richland.
Recently, freshman Councilman Joe Walker called on the state attorney general to open a criminal investigation into council members’ behavior.
Richland County Council meets Tuesday at 6 p.m. to elect its chair and vice-chair.
This story was originally published January 6, 2020 at 5:28 PM.
