Growing Midlands town votes to strip mayor of administrative powers
Blythewood will soon have a new form of government.
The rapidly growing town northeast of Columbia, which has been marked in recent months by contention between its mayor and four-member council, held a referendum Tuesday allowing residents the option to change its form of government from its current mayor-council form to the newly adopted council-manager form.
The final vote tally had 381 votes in favor of the change and 319 votes against it.
The results transfer the administrative powers of the mayor to a yet-to-be-hired town administrator. Several other powers and responsibilities will also shift.
The council of Blythewood, a town of about 6,000, voted 4-1 in May to move forward with putting the referendum before residents, with only Mayor Sloan Griffin voting against the measure.
The new form will take effect Nov. 24, shortly after the town’s general election, which will decide who holds the two council seats held by Erica Page and Rich McKenrick. Neither has announced plans yet to run for re-election.
Changing the form of a municipality’s government is a relatively infrequent practice in South Carolina. Blythewood is now the 35th of the state’s 271 municipalities to operate under this form. In the central Midlands, five governments have this form, including Batesburg-Leesville, Cayce, Columbia, Newberry and Winnsboro.
Since the mayor and council are all part-time elected officials, the growing town will benefit from having a professional manager to execute the council’s policies, Blythewood Mayor Pro-Tem Donald Brock told The State.
“The benefit, in my opinion, is very clear,” Brock said. “It’s that you will have a professionally trained and educated manager overseeing the day-to-day operations. It removes politics, and you bring somebody in that basically, this is what they do. They eat it. They breathe it. They live it.”
The change in government will strip some of Griffin’s powers as mayor. He will likely still preside over council meetings, but will act and vote as a member of the council. Griffin will no longer hold administrative powers beyond those of the other council members, and he and council will have no direct involvement in hiring staff other than the town manager.
Griffin has been vocal about his opposition to the change.
“Today, you have the power to decide how your town is led,” the mayor posted to social media Tuesday morning. “I’m asking you to vote NO on the referendum, to keep YOUR VOTE strong and YOUR MAYOR accountable directly to YOU, the residents of Blythewood.”
He emphasized that voting no would ensure that “The mayor you elect continues to lead day-to-day operations,” “You have a voice in how your government functions,” and, “Power stays with the people and not an unelected bureaucrat.”
Brock said that the intention behind the change is not to disempower Griffin.
“People seem to think that it was to remove him from office or to diminish him. It never was that,” Brock said. “And it’s not going to be like that. We think that Mayor Griffin has great ideas, and we look forward to working with him.”
Griffin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday morning, Brock posted a picture of his ballot on Facebook voting in favor of the change, in violation of state law. He then deleted the image and posted an apology.
“I apologize to the citizens of Blythewood for this oversight and if there are repercussions, I accept them 100%. It was and is never my intent to violate any state law,” the post read.
This story was originally published July 30, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
