A group known as “Concerned Citizens of Bamberg” sent a letter from their legal counsel demanding that the members of Bamberg County Council defer the final vote on the 2025-2026 county budget due to alleged lack of public notice and violation of state law.
On June 20th, Attorney Lauren Martel, the legal counsel for Bamberg’s concerned citizens, sent a letter to Bamberg county council members outlining the violations of state law, failure to provide public notice, along with several demands.
This letter states that Bamberg County Council has not provided a written proposed budget despite “certain members of council requesting a written proposed annual budget.”
Along with a request of preservation of evidence, the letter sets out four demands:
- Immediate deferral of any vote or approval on the proposed county budget.
- Publication of the full proposed budget ordinance in writing, including line items, at least 15 days before any hearing.
- Compliance with all procedural requirements, including three public readings, a properly noticed public hearing, and opportunity for meaningful public comment; proof of competitive RFP Bidding
- A written response from the Council or County Attorney within five (5) business day of this letter confirming compliance or outlining the County’s position.
To read further details, check out the letter here:
County Administrator With A Checkered Past
Bamberg County is ruled by a Council-Administrator form of government. This means that the county works alongside the county administrator (who is appointed by the county) to make decisions for the public. As stated on the Bamberg County website, the county administrator is “to be the administrative head of the county government.” According to his own personal website, Joey Preston has served as the Bamberg County administrator and the Bamberg County airport manager since 2012 following an impressive list of administrative roles in other South Carolina counties. What was not included on the website was a public scandal-turned-lawsuit between Preston and Anderson County that that took place a decade ago.
Before coming to Bamberg County, Preston worked as the Anderson County administrator from 1996-2009. In 2008, Joey Preston received a $1.1 million severance package from Anderson County. According to Anderson Independent Mail, “when the severance deal was approved, Preston invested $192,000 in early 2009 in [former Anderson County Councilman] Ron Wilson’s Atlantic Bullion & Coin silver investments, one of the biggest Ponzi scams in state history.” When new council members took office two months after the deal (in January), the county sued Preston to rescind the severance package. This case took around a decade and made it all the way to the South Carolina Supreme Court, resulting in the county paying over $4 million in the legal battle that was finally decided in the county’s favor of overturning the severance deal.
Bamberg County Council Moves Forward to Final Vote
The third reading and final vote of the county budget was scheduled for Monday, June 23rd, 2025. From a source close to county council, allegedly half of the chairs were removed from the room, limiting the amount of citizens who were able to participate in the scheduled public hearing that was on the agenda for the Monday meeting. The County Council voted 4-3 to not pass the budget during that Monday meeting. However, when the agenda came out for the special meeting on Friday, June 30th at 12pm it came as a surprise to at least one council member that the only agenda item was to reconsider the budget again.
Normally, these council meetings are live-streamed and you are able to watch the full panel of council members during the regular meeting. When I logged on to watch the special called meeting, the camera was zoomed up to the Bamberg County seal for the entire meeting. The Bamberg County Council voted 6-1 to pass the 2025-2026 county budget that still has not been published to the public, according to citizens of Bamberg County. The only published proposal I could find was the public notice for Monday, June 23rd, the day that was supposed to be the final reading for the proposed budget. This one page “public notice” has the barebone numbers of what is supposedly in the proposed budget and compares it to the previous budget as you can see HERE. It is unclear when this public notice was released and/or posted.
At the end of the Friday, June 30th meeting, you could hear several constituents attempting to ask questions of their council members and were quickly denied by Council Chair Sharon Hammond because “we had a public hearing, no comments.” As heard in the video, citizens continued to ask permission to speak with their council representatives as the sheriff tells them to “cease and desist” (timestamp: 21:00) while the council quickly voted to adjourn. The sheriff of Bamberg County is Kenny Bamberg, the father of prominent lawyer-legislator Representative Justin Bamberg. Watch the full June 30th meeting below:
Council members Sharon Hammond, Michelle Martin, Evert Comer, Jr., Spencer Donaldson, Dr. Jonathan Goodman, II and Larry Haynes voted to pass the budget while Councilman Ken Ahlin was the only vote against.
The Lone County Councilman Speaks Out
Bamberg County councilman Ken Ahlin has become the lone member to vote against this proposed budget as the rest of council voted to pass it on June 30th, even though the council had voted four days prior to not pass the budget in a 4-3 vote.
Recently elected to Bamberg County Council this past November, Ahlin previously served on Bamberg Town Council for four years. During his campaign for county council, Ahlin ran on transparency and fiscal responsibility, both of which do not seem like top priorities for the rest of county council.
Ahlin stated that the council didn’t have any budget sessions to review the details of the generic proposed budget that was given to the members in April. According to Ahlin, there were no specific line item breakdown of the budget, and after asking numerous times for more detail, only received a vague list of discretionary spending the night before the final vote on June 29th. “I’m embarrassed to be sitting here and say we haven’t even had one budget session,” Ahlin commented, “If they [Bamberg County Council] had any I wasn’t there for it.”
On June 30th, Ken Ahlin was the lone vote against the proposed 2025-2026 budget. Ahlin expressed his concern for the lack of details during the budget process, especially when it came down to the final vote: “I’m not voting for it if we don’t know what’s in it.”
As more Americans get involved in local politics across the United States, the call for transparency has become consistently more prominent. Bamberg County is one of many counties to experience outrage over their lack of detail, however, they are one of the few who have decided to take action. This lack of transparency raises the question: what else is Bamberg County hiding and who is behind these efforts to hide details on the spending in county government? Leave your best guesses in the comments.
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