Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

NAACP: Horry County administrator search flawed

The Myrtle Beach chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is asking Horry County to start over on its search for a county administrator.

Mickey James, president of the NAACP chapter, said he and other members believe the process the county used to get to the three finalists announced earlier this week was tainted by legal missteps and possible prejudices.

The finalists including John Weaver, current interim administrator and Horry County attorney, and Florida public administrators Duncan Ballantyne and Terry Stewart are white men, and James said he wants to know why no women or minorities made it to the final three candidates.

"This is not a threat, it is a promise that if they did break the law, then we will go to the justice department and to whoever we can to try and get a new process," he said Friday. "We would like them to start over and to have a search that's public and for there to be some representation of women or a minority. I mean it seems to me that they are trying to go through the formality to hire Mr. Weaver regardless."

Jim Mercer, president of The Mercer Group Inc., the executive search firm hired for $15,000 to expand the administrator search outside of the immediate area, said that none of the 12 resumes presented to the council belonged to women, but not because he or the council had ruled them out as a group.

"The reality is, of the resumes we received, the applicants who met more of the characteristics outlined by the council members as desirable, were these candidates. There were women who applied, and I think overall it was a good ratio. Many of them were in an earlier stage in their career or did not have the specific or length of experience the council was hoping for," Mercer said. "In terms of minority candidates, I knew several of the candidates who applied personally and there was a good mixture."

James said he believes if the council had conducted a more open search, particularly after Horry County Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland said in May she would not support a woman candidate, there would be less doubt about the fairness of the process.

"I honestly believe if that was said about a woman, it may as well have been said about a minority. Where's the line?" he said. "They had two meetings in private and no one knows what happened. That shouldn't have happened."

James said he will send a certified letter from the NAACP to Gilland, the county attorney's office, and to the attorney general's office seeking a new search.

"My concern was their qualifications, their experience, their demeanor, their ability to communicate. And gender and race didn't matter at all, I was looking for the right person," Gilland said. My comment about women has been misunderstood; it had a whole lot less to do with women than it did with men. I never said a woman couldn't do the job, or was not competent enough to do the job."

Councilman Gary Loftus, who was present for two meetings held to interview five semi-finalists for the position, said that he believed the process was as fair as it could be. Those meetings are in question because a quorum of council met to discuss public affairs without notifying the public and without opening in public session and closing into an executive session to meet with candidates.

"We hired [The Mercer Group] to vet the candidates and that is what they do. We had no idea what race any of the candidates were when we were looking at their resumes, and until they showed up for their interviews," Loftus said. "The only reason they were held in private was to provide some sort of protection for candidates who are employed, so that they didn't face any repercussions from their employers."