Cayce city manager left over frustrations with mayor, internal documents show
The former city manager of Cayce left the city’s top administrative position less than a year into the job over frustrations with longtime Mayor Elise Partin, a document obtained by The State shows.
“I feel that we are operating under two councils. Council one is with the Mayor and council two is with the other members. Council one does not communicate, collaborate, or cooperate with council two. It’s apparent that the only time these two councils communicate is on the dias [during meetings],” Jim Crosland, who left the role of city manager last month, said in a letter obtained by The State. Crosland left the letter with the city before he left the role of city manager.
He had announced his retirement from the role in early May before changing course and taking a job as the Irmo town administrator, which has roughly 12,000 residents and sits in the same county as Cayce.
Crosland was tapped as Cayce’s interim city manager after the municipality of roughly 14,000 across the Congaree River from South Carolina’s capital parted ways with previous city manager Tracy Hegler in July of last year. Crosland, a native of the Columbia area, had been with the city since 2016, when he became the assistant director of the police department.
He purchased four months of qualified service time from the S.C. Public Employee Benefit Authority to retire early over what he called a “toxic environment brought on by [the Mayor].”
The chain of command
In his letter, Crosland outlined issues he had with the city’s elected leaders and the division between Cayce’s four council members and its longtime mayor. Partin, who was first elected as the city’s mayor in 2008, “does not respect the chain of command and contacts and directs employees directly without the City Manager’s knowledge,” Crosland asserted in the letter.
Under Cayce’s code of ordinances, council members are prohibited, except for when asking a question, from giving orders to a city employee who isn’t the city manager.
“The city council shall deal with the administrative service solely through the city manager,” the city’s ordinance reads.
Cayce operates under a council-manager form of government, meaning that policy-making and legislative authority rests with the five-person council, made up of the mayor and four council members. The city manager is responsible for overseeing the city’s day-to-day operations, carrying out council ordinances and leading the more than 200-person staff.
In his letter, Crosland made multiple suggestions for improving the environment in Cayce, which included a proposal to adopt a formal policy on how the city manager and council will communicate with each other and “hold each other accountable for any infractions.”
“This should help to avoid the severe overreach that’s occurring every day,” Crosland said. While Crosland did not provide specific examples of that overreach, multiple current and former staff members have shared concerns with The State over Partin inviting them over to her home to discuss city matters without looping in the city manager.
Partin would not take questions from a reporter about the letter and instead directed the current city manager, Michael Conley, to send a statement on her behalf, and on behalf of the city, wishing Crosland well and calling him a “wonderful asset to the city.”
Council quarrels
In his letter to city council, Crosland said Partin put staff in the middle of council quarrels and that it had “become extremely stressful to the City Clerk, City Manager and Deputy City Manager.”
“I was shocked by how deep the letter really goes and how deep this was affecting staff morale,” Councilman Hunter Sox told The State.
On one occasion, during a June council meeting, Partin openly disagreed with staff on where the funding came from for staff retention bonuses the prior fiscal year. Partin claimed the money had come from grant funding and not from excess revenues in the budget, undermining Sox, who made the opposite assertion at the previous council meeting.
“The public accusation that our Cayce financial staff utilized charitable donations from the Boyd Foundation or another grant to fund staff retention bonuses is something we take very seriously,” city spokesperson Ashley Hunter told The State at the time.
“If the allegation were true, this would be a misappropriation of funds, a breach of the public’s trust and could have caused a revocation of our Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting. ... Our city staff and leaders worked tirelessly to make sure this was a fiscally responsible budget.”
At the time, Sox told The State that he believed Partin targeted the comment at him during the council meeting in an attempt to discredit his work on the previous year’s budget and that it was disrespectful to the city’s finance staff.
When reached for comment following staff’s pushback after that June meeting, Partin didn’t back down from her assertion and said in a statement that she had a meeting with the finance director and “took notes and understood that there was not money left over” during the last budget process.
“At the time, I was sharing information that I had gotten directly from the city’s finance director, and I was not aware that it was incorrect. If it is, I still need information that would explain my notes and what was said,” Partin told The State over text.
In response to Crosland’s letter, Sox told The State, “It’s ironic that the person on council who vocally claims how much she supports staff at just about every meeting is the reason behind [Crosland’s] letter ... I think we’re taking steps in the right direction to look into it.”
Third-party review?
Sox said he would push for a third-party review of the document to find out which policies and procedures were violated.
“I was disappointed by what I read, but hopefully we can use this as a catalyst for a positive path forward,” Councilman Phil Carter told The State when reached for comment. Carter agreed with Sox on bringing in an outside firm to help address the issues.
Other council members did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but during a council work session Tuesday night, Mayor Pro-tem Tim James clarified concerns about communications with Conley, who the city hired as its new manager late last month, noting that the only staff members council should be communicating with is Conley or Assistant City Manager Wesley Crosby.
Crosland asserted in his letter that the upcoming November election, in which Sox and James will be up for re-election, had increased the amount of “strategic planning against one another” and led to the “instability we are experiencing.”
“Constantly putting staff in the middle of this instability only creates anxiety, instability and mistrust,” Crosland’s letter read.
The city has been embroiled in controversy in recent months — with city council spats over where to send accommodations tax money and a number of department heads leaving the city dominating headlines.
“Many of you talk about how important our employees are but then run to the media to intentionally burn the city in the headlines. We, to this date, still do not have any applications for an HR director and I blame a member of council for this,” Crosland said in the letter.
Since the summer of last year, the city has gone through two city managers — Hegler left in a “mutually agreed voluntary separation” in July of last year and Crosland announced his retirement in May — and two police chiefs. Cayce also saw the departure of its finance director, Kelly McMullen, this summer. The city’s HR director also departed recently, but her retirement was planned.
In December, police chief Herbert Blake left Cayce after three months on the job following complaints from employees that he had created a hostile work environment. After a months-long search, the city hired Bruce Wade, the former assistant police chief of West Columbia, to lead the department in March. Just months later, Crosland announces his retirement.
This story was originally published July 16, 2025 at 12:00 PM.
