Blythewood Town Council passes motion to pursue civil action against mayor

BLYTHEWOOD, S.C. (WIS) - Blythewood Town Council passed a motion Monday to stop an executive order issued by the town’s mayor, Sloan Griffin.

This civil action will prevent the mayor’s executive order regarding staffing from taking effect.

The motion was made by Councilman Rich McKenrick during an explosive special meeting.

In the executive order, Griffin would reinstate several jobs that were defunded by the town’s council back in December.

During Monday’s meeting council members gave Griffin an ultimatum to either rescind the Executive Order or they move forward with the motion to file a civil action.

“Since you have been in office, let me say this for the fifth time, you have been hell-bent on being the strong mayor and you’ve got people believing that we are not supporting you. Well no support certainly doesn’t stop you from doing what you want to do,” said Councilwoman Andrea Fripp.

These were strong words coming from Councilwoman Fripp following a more than 30-minute long executive session. That session was later followed by a motion from Councilman Rich McKenrick to pursue an injunction or civil suit against Griffin.

“Who arbitrarily thinks he can spend money in a budget that’s not allocated to the resources he’s trying to spend it on,” said Councilman McKenrick.

Mayor Griffin defended his executive order by saying: “These positions were already pre-done in the budget prior to me taking office. So, in my opinion, there’s no explanation on cutting every position.”

Some of those positions in the executive order include a deputy administrator, an annexation coordinator and a human resources specialist.

“In essence, we empowered our attorney to file an injunction to stop him from doing that,” said Councilman McKenrick.

McKenrick said four positions were unfilled in the 2024-25 budget.

“What the mayor did was hire someone for a totally different position. He hired a social media specialist that was not budgeted in the 2024-25 budget,” said Councilman McKenrick. “And he [Mayor Griffin] reallocated resources to pay for that from another position that he chose not to rehire for,” he added.

Councilwoman Fripp said litigation could’ve been avoided.

“Absolutely it could have,” said Councilwoman Fripp. “We could have done negotiations prior to the executive order being placed, we were notified by email at 2 p.m. on Friday that this executive order was signed and executed. How do you negotiate after the fact,” the councilwoman added.

She said the council wanted a more advanced notice of the executive order.

“Well first and foremost, I have to be honest about this, since they wanted to be honest in there, you have to answer the phone,” said Mayor Griffin in response.

WIS News 10 spoke with Mayor Griffin shortly after the meeting. He said he wasn’t surprised with the response from council members wanting to pursue a civil suit, but he said he doesn’t believe it’ll go too far.

“I’m really open to having negotiations, it doesn’t matter exactly where it starts in the middle, beginning, or the end, there’s always room for negotiations.”

Mayor Griffin also assured the citizens of Blythewood not to worry about any civil actions that would cost taxpayer dollars at this time.

He also reiterated these positions in question are needed to keep up with the continued growth of the town.

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