AUGUST 28–SEPTEMBER 3, 2025
WWW.YOURISLANDNEWS.COM
COVERING BEAUFORT COUNTY
City hires law firm to investigate FOIA gaffe By Mike McCombs The Island News The fallout continued Monday, Aug. 25, from the City of Beaufort’s release of more than 9,000 pages of unredacted documents in the fulfillment of a Freedom of Information Act request, as City Council voted unanimously during a special-called meeting to hire an outside law firm to investigate how and why the unintentional data release happened. Immediately after the opening of the 2:45 p.m. meeting, Council voted to go into executive session,
where they stayed for about an hour and a half. When they returned, Councilman Neil Lipsitz made a motion to “authorize Mayor [Phil] Cromer to take such action and execute such documents as are necessary to retain Haynesworth, Sinkler, Boyd PA to investigate and provide legal advice regarding the inadvertent production of sensitive and/or personal identifying information
produced on July 29, 2025 in response to an FOIA request.” The motion was seconded and approved unanimously — Councilman Mike McFee was not present, but voted via Zoom. Mayor Cromer could not confirm that the results of the investigation would be made public. “Until we complete the investigation, we don’t know,” he said. “As soon as we get all the information
back from them, we’ll go forward, we’ll make a statement.” Almost a month ago, in the process of fulfilling a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Autumn Hollis on July 29, the City mistakenly released information it was not required to release and that it should not have produced, potentially compromising the personal information and privacy of numerous individuals and causing the City to re-evaluate how it handles requests for information. As reported by The Island News, when Autumn Hollis submitted a
FOIA request to the City of Beaufort in May, she and her husband, Kiel, were hoping to learn more about how the Beaufort Police Department handled the case of their daughter Emily. The Hollis family contends their then-12-year-old daughter was a victim of human trafficking in February, while the Beaufort Police maintained initially that she was a runaway and now says any trafficking took place outside its jurisdiction.
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Council votes to begin Pine Island talks
The Beaufort County Detention Center. Asa Aarons Smith/The Island News
No room with an ocean view
I
Longtime local attorney reflects on his night at the Beaufort County Detention Center
t is Saturday, and I’m sipping my Green Mountain, hazelnutflavored coffee. This morning’s Post and Courier tells us about the Dockside Condominium in Charleston; and the Yachtsman Hotel in Myrtle Beach. Dockside, according to the City of Charleston, is unsound and ready to “pancake” down into a mountain of rubble. The glass-sheathed Yachtsman is being converted from a regular hotel into a condominium with multiple owners. Both structures represent an expensive, elevated view that allows one to extend one’s gaze across several miles of open water. There is something magical about staring into a distant horizon with a cup of coffee and, say, an almond flavored croissant. On the morning of June 18, 2025, I did not have a view of the marsh, the Beaufort River or the Cane Island shore-line in the distance. My view was a white painted wall, six bunk beds, three sleeping inmates and a stainless steel toilet. My bunk came with a blue plastic covering that featured a crusted
SCOTT GRABER
coating I did not see (the night before); but when I woke my cellmate said, “Boss, you slept in shit last night.” But, actually, I didn’t do any sleeping that night because I had been arrested earlier, handcuffed, then taken to the Beaufort County Detention Center. The scene inside the Detention Center was chaotic. Stunned, just-arrested detainees were being brought in and processed amid a background of constant screaming from a nearby holding cell. That screaming, strangely amplified, followed me into a small alcove where the fingerprinting was to occur. But something was
wrong. The young deputy repeatedly mashed-down the back of my palms using all of her strength to get an image. Nonetheless there was a signal saying that her mashing efforts had failed. When it came time for a mug shot I tried to smile — I am a retired 80-year-old lawyer and I am familiar with mug shots showing despair and shame. “Get that smile off your face!” Then, of course, there was the removal of one’s clothes and being told to bend over and reveal one’s buttocks. The next morning I looked down at a floor covered with mashed-up cookies, discarded plastic dinnerware and other debris I could not identify. The cookies, Oreos, are a favorite and I was perplexed that anyone would discard them. At 5:30 a.m., we were given a meal that came on a gray, plastic tray with compartments for the breakfast fare — the same kind of tray used in grade school cafeterias — one of the slots holding a circular, gray and
By Delayna Earley The Island News The Beaufort County Council has agreed to begin legal negotiations with the Pine Island developer after a 5-4 vote in a Special Called Meeting where council received legal advice about a proposed development agreement for the St. Helena Island property. While this is not a final decision on whether the county will accept the developer’s application for the development agreement, it allows the conversation to continue so that they could potentially make a deal later. If the agreement is ultimately accepted, the 437-acre property could be developed into an 18-hole golf course and gated community and would no longer be subject to the Cultural Protection Overlay (CPO), a zoning overlay that prevents such developments from being built on St. Helena Island. Council members spent several hours in a closed-door executive session during the meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 20, so they could receive legal advice regarding the proposed development agreement. Council members David Bartholomew, Tom Reitz, Paula Brown, Tab Tabernik and Logan Cunningham voted in support, while York Glover, Lary McElynn, Gerald Dawson and Council Chair Alice Howard voted against working with the developer. Councilmen Joe Passiment and Mark Lawson did not attend the meeting in person or virtually. John DuBose of Smith, Robinson, Holler, DuBose and Morgan law firm was hired to review the development agreement application. A development agreement is a contract between a local government and a developer that lays out the terms for how a piece of land will be developed. A zoning map amendment, which changes how a land is classified or designated, is part of the deal with the property. The developer of Pine Island seeks a zoning map amendment to remove the property from the CPO, as well as council’s approval of the development agreement that includes a golf course. Elvio Tropeano, who serves as the public developer for Pine Island, applied to have the property removed from the CPO originally in 2022.
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County Assessor hosting community events; staff available to answer property related questions, concerns.
Nine books restricted in Beaufort School District libraries.
Community impact of hospitals ‘wide-reaching’ at state, local levels.
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