Cayce paid thousands for ‘spin job’ when reporter asked for police dept records
The city of Cayce paid a communications firm more than $26,000 for a campaign to promote its police department after a reporter’s public records request ignited concerns from city officials about a negative news story from those documents.
The thousands that the city dropped on positive publicity and media relations for its roughly 75-person police department came less than a year after more than a dozen employees left the department. Days after a WIS-TV reporter requested exit interviews for the employees who left, city officials emailed NP Strategy, a Columbia-based public relations firm, to ask for crisis communications help despite already retaining and paying a separate PR firm, MPA Strategies.
What followed was a concerted effort on the city’s part to paint the police department in a positive light to get out in front of a potentially negative story, according to emails from city officials obtained by The State through a public records request. That story, the reporter told The State, never ran.
“This money was to continue making it seem like our [police] department was doing so well. It’s like, ‘Hey, look at us on social media. We’re doing awesome stuff,” Cayce City Councilman Hunter Sox told The State, when reached about the documents. “And it’s just covering up the fact that the department was in shambles ... everything seemed to be just a spin job, even to us.”
It’s unclear what role the city council played in the FOIA response or in the decision to hire the firm. Multiple council members have said they believed they initially confused the two firms — NP Strategy and MPA Strategies — because of their similar names. Three of the five council members denied knowing about the total cost of the project.
The records, obtained in response to a FOIA request, come three months after documents provided to The State showed that the city had paid NP Strategy at least $17,000. The new records show almost $10,000 more and provide more detail about how city officials communicated with NP Strategy.
An email shows the city’s longtime Mayor Elise Partin played some role in the conversations about how to respond to the FOIA request.
“I had a good conversation with Mayor Partin about our strategy yesterday. She was very supportive and impressed,” then-city manager Tracy Hegler said in an email to an NP Strategy employee on Dec. 14, 2023, a day before the city sent its response to the reporter’s public records request.
“[Partin] did have a good idea and I wanted to document that for our thoughts. She still wants us to put WIS on notice, if you will, about their horribly worded FOIA request.”
Partin, who’s led the City of Cayce since being elected in 2008, said in a statement to The State, “All of council cares about the men and women in the Cayce police department. We supported the city manager’s request to make fun, positive community-oriented videos about our police department. They turned out great … our city, like many, has multiple engineers, multiple lawyers and, in this case, reached out to a PR firm for video work.”
Why did the city hire a different firm?
By November 2023, 15 police department employees had left the city that year, according to a memo shared with the city council. Frustrated about what was going on within the department, former employees reached out to Maggie Brown, then a reporter with WIS-TV who is no longer with the station.
At the end of November, Brown filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the city. The act, enshrined in the state’s code of laws, gives the public the right to obtain certain records from state and local governing bodies. Brown requested copies of the exit interviews of employees who’d left in the last year. In her request, she cited “concerns brought up by officers regarding dysfunction in the department” as justification for why the records should be made public.
Four days later, on Dec. 1, 2023, Mike Conley, who was then assistant city manager, sent an email to Heather Hoopes-Matthews, a co-founder of NP Strategy.
“I had the pleasure to work with you in Kershaw County right before I left to come to City of Cayce,” Conley wrote. “The City of Cayce is in need of professional communication help. I know you and your team are qualified to help the city with a crisis management plan and response. This matter is time sensitive so I hope you may have an open bit of time today to discuss.”
Brown’s request sounded “like a pretty routine FOIA request,” S.C. Press Association attorney Jay Bender told The State. “None of that sounds like a crisis.”
Emails showed the city was concerned how the story would impact the police department’s reputation. And that the intention to hire the communications firm was to promote a different narrative.
“It is our expectation, as I mentioned last week, that WIS is not intending to write a fair piece, having already shown a clear opinion about our Police Department,” Hegler wrote in a Dec. 15, 2023, email to council. “That means, if they release anything, it will likely be painful for a bit, even though [the city attorney] and I agree it’s a non-story. Regardless, we’ll weather that and plan to send out a variety of positive messages and videos next week to showcase the ‘real’ story of our department.”
Following Conley’s email, Hoopes-Matthews, Conley and Hegler agreed to a meeting for the following Monday, emails showed. Less than two weeks later, Hegler signed an agreement with the firm for $12,000 of video work and media relations.
Invoices from the firm to the city, obtained by The State in response to a FOIA request, showed NP Strategy helped draft messaging surrounding a FOIA request around the same time. One item, for more than $1,000, was for a call with the city to discuss FOIA response strategy, review documents and draft the messaging. Those tasks were logged two days before the city fulfilled Brown’s request.
The communications firm recommended the city turn over the documents “as soon as possible,” Hegler said in an email. The city handed the documents to Brown on Dec. 15, 2023 — with heavy redactions that excluded employee names, citing unreasonable invasion of privacy.
In response to a separate, but similar, FOIA request, filed by The State in January 2025, seeking more recent complaints and resignation letters from the city’s police department employees, Cayce did not redact names. Those documents were included in a February 2025 story in which multiple employees in the department accused former police chief Herbert Blake, who left the city after three months on the job, of creating a hostile work environment.
The story Brown was working on never ran, she told The State.
In a mid-December 2023 email, Hoopes-Matthews of NP Strategy sent city officials contact information for WIS-TV’s general manager and news director, but it’s not clear what, if anything, city staff did with the information.
When reached with questions about Brown’s story, Robby Thomas, the general manager of WIS-TV, said the station “does not comment on our editorial processes.”
What did the city pay for?
When Hegler, who left the city in a “mutually agreed voluntary separation” in July 2024, signed the cost proposal agreement with NP Strategy in mid-December 2023, the initial cost was $12,000 — a fixed fee of $6,500 for promotional video work and an estimate for hourly work related to media relations of $5,500.
But by the time the city sent its final check to the company in October 2024, it had spent $26,965, according to a purchase order log obtained through a public records request. Cayce sent the company three checks between January 2023 and October 2024 — one for $16,355 in January, another for $9,239 in February and a final check for $1,370 in October.
The paid services included help drafting messaging, creation of videos that cast the police department in a positive light and updates on how the city’s police department social media pages were faring, all while the city separately paid another media relations firm.
The city has employed MPA Strategies for more than a decade. Ashley Hunter, who runs the firm and serves as the city’s spokesperson, said she makes around $78,000 annually for her work with the city.
The city paid at least $7,600 for three promotional videos for the police department. One video, shared to Facebook Dec. 27, 2023, featured an interview with La Estrella owner Dori Benitez talking about the strides the police department had made with the city’s Hispanic community. Another showed officers shopping with children in Walmart as part of the annual “Shop with a Cop” day. Another video, posted Jan. 31, 2024, and featuring Cayce resident Joe Long, cost the city $1,100, according to invoices.
Other services from NP Strategy included a subscription to a social media management platform and creating best practices for the police department’s social media accounts.
The money was logged under a charge account named “Prof Service - Attorney Fees,” according to financial documents obtained in response to a FOIA request.
NP Strategy is a subsidiary of the Maynard Nexsen Law firm, but, as laid out in the company’s proposal to the city, is not a law firm and doesn’t provide legal services or practice law. The company declined to comment on the story when reached by a reporter for The State, citing client confidentiality.
How much did the city council know?
The emails indicated that most of the planning and communication surrounding the FOIA and the decision to work with NP Strategy was done by city staff.
Three of the four city officials involved in the emails — city manager Hegler, deputy city manager Jim Crosland, assistant city manager Conley and police chief Chris Cowan — are no longer with the city of Cayce. Conley, who was assistant city manager at the time, is now Cayce’s city manager.
When reached by The State for comment, Hunter, the spokesperson for the city, sent a statement saying the hiring of NP Strategy occurred under a previous city administrator and police chief, and that the city is committed to serving residents and has confidence in its new leadership. The statement also praises Crosland, who is now the town administrator in Irmo, which also employs Hunter as its spokesperson.
Cayce’s ordinances give the city manager the ability to authorize payments for supplies and services “for which funds are provided in the budget,” but requires the city manager to put contracts of $25,000 or more through a bidding process and get final approval from city council.
While the total amount paid to NP Strategy is over that cap, the initial proposal was $13,000 under that.
Two of the three checks sent from the city were for invoices addressed to Hegler, the former city manager. Check registers show that at least $25,595 was approved by someone with the initials TLH. It’s unclear who signed off on the October payment of $1,370, but Hegler was no longer with the city at that time. Multiple attempts to reach Hegler to answer questions for this article were unsuccessful.
“If it had the potential to be in excess of $25,000, a cautious city manager would have brought it to city council,” Jay Bender, an attorney for the S.C. Press Association, told The State.
City staff discussed the matter with the council, in some capacity, in executive session on Dec. 5, 2023, according to an email from Hegler sent to the council Dec. 15, providing them an update on the situation.
“We sought advice from NP [Strategy], which is part of a law firm, for how to navigate this properly and in a way that positively positions us and the great work our department does,” Hegler sent in an email to the council more than two weeks after city officials initially contacted NP Strategy.
It’s unclear from the email what information the city council was given during the executive session.
Councilmen Sox, Phil Carter, and Mayor Pro-Tem Tim James have said they were not aware of what the total cost of the services would be. Both James and Carter maintained that they initially confused NP Strategy with MPA Strategies, the firm the city was already using, due to their similar names.
Multiple calls to Councilman Byron Thomas went unanswered.
In an interview with The State, James said he had questions about whether the council should’ve been made aware of the payments and whether NP Strategy was able to provide the city a service MPA Strategies could not. He said he was looking into the situation.
The city’s longtime Mayor Elise Partin told The State that the decision to hire NP Strategy was made, in part, because the firm “provided video capability that we didn’t have in house or with current contractors.”
After the city initially agreed to $12,000 in payments, Hoopes-Matthews came back to Hegler and city officials in late December to update them on the cost, informing them that the firm was around $1,400 over its hourly estimate. She asked if the city wanted them to proceed. Hegler responded that the firm should continue working, with the intention that the city would check in on the cost again at the beginning of the year.
“To spend that kind of money and not keep council totally in the loop was just extraordinary,” Carter said in an interview with The State. “We’re dealing with public money. Every nickel we spend belongs to the taxpayers and we have to be 100% and totally transparent and upfront and forthright with everything we do. It’s that simple.”
