UNREAL DEAL: McBee mayor and councilman fined $2,300; admit ethics violations in town water vote

Yahoo

21-04-2025

MCBEE, S.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — It took an ethics complaint, three scribbled signatures, and exactly 796 days to close the ethics investigations into McBee Mayor Glenn Odom and his friend and employee, McBee Councilman James Linton.
The investigations were related to decisions Odom and Linton made during a town council meeting on Feb. 11, 2023, within hours of the men taking office.
With the stroke of a blue ink pen, S.C. Ethics Commission Vice Chairman Neal Truslow signed a consent order on April 17, the day Odom and Linton were supposed to show up for an evidentiary hearing on their ethics charges at the ethics commission's office in Columbia. The order required the men to admit to violating the ethics law.
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The order amounts to a public reprimand of the pair.
A week earlier, the McBee elected officials informed the commission through their attorney, John E. Parker, that they'd admit to the ethics violations and pay a $2,300 fine to avoid the public hearing and whatever disposition the commission, as a whole, decided to hand down.
Both men initially faced a $4,300 fine and still do if they do not pay the $2,300 by Oct. 17, 2025. The commission confirmed, as of April 21, it had not yet received Odom or Linton's fine payment.
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'Through this Consent Order, Respondent (Odom and Linton) acknowledges he violated the Ethics Act in this regard,' the order stated. 'The commission, as a matter of law, found Odom and Linton, each, committed two violations of the S.C. Ethics, Government Accountability, and Campaign Reform Act over a vote and closed-door discussion they participated in on their first 24 hours in office.'
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Both men, with financial ties to Alligator Rural Water and Sewer Company, participated in an executive session and then voted on a town council agenda item that awarded Alligator temporary control over the town's water system after the town's water operator, Joey Oliver's Oliver Environmental, submitted its resignation letter the day Odom, Linton and a new councilmember, Robbie Liles, took office.
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Essentially, instead of town taxpayers purchasing water from the town's water department, they now purchase water directly from Alligator.
04172025-CO_LintonDownload
Odom is the owner, president, and sole officer of Odom & Associates, a South Carolina corporation incorporated in 1998, according to the ethics commission. On Nov. 19, 2002, Glenn Odom and Alligator Rural Water and Sewer Company entered into a contract where Alligator agreed to pay Odom's company a base sum of $720,000 to run the water company's day-to-day operations.
Alligator is a non-profit entity and sells water to 85% of Chesterfield County, with the exception of the Town of Cheraw. When Odom took over as mayor in February 2023, the Town of McBee was operating its own water department, selling water to homes and businesses within the town limits.
With Oliver's resignation on Feb. 10, Odom told the ethics investigator that the day Oliver resigned, an inspection of the town's 'water system and supplies were inspected,' but the ethics order does not state exactly who conducted the inspection.
'The chemicals found during the inspection were determined to be unusable and potentially unsafe due to age and deteriorating conditions,' according to the order. Odom called Paula Brown, a woman identified in the ethics filing as a Department of Health and Environmental Control staffer, telling her '…the Town did not have enough usable chemicals to continue to adequately treat the Town's water.'
A footnote in the ethics filing shows that DHEC employees 'subsequently agreed that the chemicals should not be used,' however, the ethics document doesn't note whether the ethics commission investigator spoke with Brown or DHEC directly or whether the investigator took Odom's word for the state of the chemicals.
Queen City News Chief Investigative Reporter Jody Barr asked the ethics commission for clarification on this point, but the commission has not yet answered that question.
Part of the two-count ethics violation against Odom and Linton is for their participation in the Feb. 11, 2023, executive session and the formal vote the men cast to shutter the town's water department and to hand over the operation of the town's water system to Alligator until the town contracted with a permanent operator to run its system.
Odom explained in an interview with Queen City News Chief Investigative Reporter Jody Barr in 2023 that he was not employed by Alligator, but earned a salary from Alligator by way of a management contract between his Odom and Associates company and the water utility.11192002-ARW-AND-ODOM-MANAGEMENT-CONTRACTDownload
Here's a partial transcript of the Oct. 2023 interview of McBee Mayor Glenn Odom:
BARR: 'What is Glen Odom's role with Alligator Water, and where you're drawing your salary from – Odom and Associates, what exactly is that you all do for Alligator, would put a lot of this to bed, probably.'
ODOM: 'Odom and Associates operates and manages Alligator Rural Water 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year. I also write the grants, loans again, about $100 million so far. I do all that. I meet with Rural Development. I meet with the tax people, I meet with DHEC, meet with a lot of different people. I couldn't tell you how many those are, but again, I'm the face of Alligator, I guess is what it amounts to.'
BARR: 'Odom and Associates is obviously, as you hold this contract, that company is obviously making money or you're not operating at a loss.'
ODOM: 'Nope.'
BARR: 'But you're saying you don't draw a salary from that company?'
ODOM: 'No, I didn't say that. I said Alligator doesn't pay me. I draw $10,000 a month from Odom and Associates, cuts me a check for $10,000 a month.'
BARR: 'And you're saying that $10,000 a month is not – would not be defined as a financial benefit if you were to vote on an issue that benefited Alligator, thus benefiting Odom and Associates?'
ODOM: 'It does not change. It doesn't go up or does not go down, especially when it's a loss to Alligator to sell the town of McBee water. So again, talking with the investigator from ethics, there's not – and it was easy to prove when I showed him the figures, there's not a $50 profit. He said, that's the threshold.'
The consent order that convicted Odom and Linton of the ethics charges shows that because Odom and Linton held an 'economic interest' in the water agenda item, the law required the poiticians to 'prepare a written statement describing the matter requiring action or decisions and the nature of his potential conflict of interest with respect to the action or decision,' and to ensure that written statement is published in the minutes,' according to the ethics order.
When QCN reviewed the town's meeting minutes published to the town's website in 2023, nothing about Odom or Linton's conflict of interest was noted in the Feb. 11, 2023, minutes. In fact, the town once had meeting minutes published to its website as late as the Fall of 2023, but the town has since erased all meeting minutes from the site.
The law also prohibited Odom and Linton from voting on the agenda item or participating in any discussion or any 'other actions on the matter,' according to the order.
Odom argued from the first time QCN questioned him about the vote and his conflict of interest that he and Linton had no choice but to act when they took office. In two separate interviews with Barr, the mayor appeared to mitigate his ethics violation, arguing McBee's water system posed a public safety threat when he took over in February 2023.
'Do you think that may have been a vote, looking back, that maybe should have bowed out of?' Barr asked Odom in August 2023.
'No, I don't. Because it dealt with the health of two schools, probably 6 or 700 students, number one, all kinds of DHEC complaints about the pots turning green at schools, and children's hair turning green, young babies or whatever, blistering in the water. No, I would stand on it, I would vote again every time for it,' Odom responded.
'You don't think, given your relationship to Alligator, that Alligator, obviously receiving a benefit, now that they're selling the town water, you don't see a conflict of interest in that at all?' Barr asked the mayor, 'No, because Alligator loses money on what they sell it to the town for. They're selling water to other wholesale customers higher than what they're operating the Town of McBee's water for,' Odom explained.
The mayor and Councilman Linton used the same argument during the ethics investigation and in negotiating the consent order their attorney settled with the ethics commission.
'In mitigation, Respondent states that in and around Oliver's resignation, the Town discovered that the chemicals being used to disinfect the Town's water system were improperly stored. Respondent states that goven the lack of usable chemicals, utilizing AWS as an emergency water source was imperative and constitued a public health emergency. Respondent further states that based on the bid solicitations performed by the Town, he believed AWS to be the most cost-efficient solution for the Town at the time he participated in the aforementioned discussion and vote. Finally, Respondent states, and the Commission has confirmed, that his compensation as a compensated agent of AWS did not change as a result of AWS's temporary assumption of duties as the Town's water supplier and operator.'
April 17, 2025, S.C. Ethics Commission Consent Order v. Glenn Odom and James Linton
Aside from the 2002 management agreement we obtained between Alligator and Odom, the only other independent verification we could find to confirm payments made to Odom's company by Alligator is contained in the water utility's Internal Revenue Service 990 filings. As a non-profit, Alligator is required to annually file tax statements, which are published to the IRS tax-exempt organization's website.
The 2022 IRS report also shows Alligator, a non-profit organization, loaned Odom and Associates $246,420 in two separate loans. The IRS form lists the purpose of the loans as 'Equipment,' with Odom and Associates owing a balance of $112,872.
2015-ALLIGATOR-IRS-990Download
Alligator's 2015 990 form shows Alligator Rural Water and Sewer paid Odom and Associates $1,155,250 as an independent 'management company.' The figure does not show an accounting of what the seven figures paid for. By 2022, the last 990 filing we could find for Alligator, the utility reported paying Odom and Associates $1,029,781 for management services.
2022-ALLIGATOR-IRS-990-Alligator-Rural-Water-Company-Inc-FulDownload
The 2002 management contract between Alligator and Odom expired in 2022, however, the ethics order shows the 2002 contract is still in effect today. The contract pays Odom and Associates a base sum of $60,000 per month to manage the water utility.
'This sum shall cover all costs incurred by Odom and Associates to operate the water and sewer facilities of the Water Company, except the cost of major repairs,' the contract states. The contract shows Odom and Associates' pay 'shall be adjusted based upon the volume of water and sewer handled by Odom and Associates above 600 million gallons per year in water sales and 40 million gallons per year of sewage.'
The contract shows Alligator will increase Odom's 'base management fee' by 40% if water sales push beyond 600 million gallons a year and another 25% if Odom handles more than 40 million gallons in a year or if Odom and Associates 'increased sales revenues for the base amount of water and sewer which is generated by cost increases imposed by the Water Company on its customers.'
McBee paid Alligator $6,666.50 a month to operate and maintain the town's water system following the Odom and Linton vote in February 2023. When the town council competitively bid the operation and maintenance of the town's water system in November 2023, Alligator was the lowest bid by $100,000, and the town awarded the utility the contract to operate the town's water system.
Odom and Linton recused themselves from that November 2023 vote, which is noted in the ethics commission order.
Despite the additional revenue from the town contract, Odom and Linton told the commission that their compensation 'as an AWS employee did not change.'
Odom and Linton have until Oct. 17, 2025, to pay the ethics fines levied against them.
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