District records reveal that longtime trustee Chuck Saylors was a vice president of M.B. Kahn Construction when the company received a $12.9 million school construction contract.
With Greenville County voters heading to the polls Tuesday, November 3, questions surrounding a multimillion-dollar school construction contract have resurfaced following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted to Greenville County Schools.
At the center of the inquiry is longtime school board trustee Charles "Chuck" Saylors, who is seeking reelection to his Area 20 seat, and his employment relationship with M.B. Kahn Construction.
The significance of that relationship is not merely that Saylors once worked for the construction company. He was serving as a vice president of M.B. Kahn during the period in which the company was awarded a $12,909,300 contract for improvements to J.L. Mann High School in 2015.
The employment relationship is supported by Greenville County Schools' own public records. In a December 2015 announcement, the district identified Saylors as vice president of M.B. Kahn's Construction Management Division. The district continued identifying him in that position in subsequent years.
The district's 2015-16 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report disclosed the business relationship under a section specifically titled "Related Party Transactions." On page 76, the district acknowledged that a sitting school board member was a vice president of M.B. Kahn Construction and reported the company's approximately $12.9 million contract for improvements to J.L. Mann High School.
The disclosure establishes that the district acknowledged the connection between a sitting trustee and a company receiving a substantial construction contract.
But it also raises questions about the safeguards governing such arrangements.
Who Approved the Contract?
In a written response to the FOIA request, Greenville County Schools Communications Specialist Matt Moore explained that the Board of Trustees does not directly approve construction contract awards.
According to Moore, those contracts are awarded by district administrators under the district's Procurement Code, which is approved by the state.
The Board of Trustees instead approves project budgets, while the administration operates within those budgets and awards the necessary contracts.
Moore explained that the Board would become involved in a procurement dispute as the final arbiter of a challenge, but ordinarily does not vote on individual construction contract awards.
He further stated that the J.L. Mann 400-seat addition was approved as part of the district's Long Range Facilities Plan on March 10, 2015.
Saylors was absent from that meeting and did not vote on the plan or its associated funding.
M.B. Kahn was subsequently selected for the project in the fall of 2015.
According to Moore, that selection occurred through the district's procurement process without involvement or a vote by the Board of Trustees.
These distinctions are important. The available correspondence does not establish that Saylors personally participated in the selection of M.B. Kahn or improperly influenced the contract award.
However, the absence of a board vote does not, by itself, answer every question concerning potential conflicts of interest.
From $12.9 Million to $13.47 Million
The district's response also provides details concerning the final cost of the project.
The original construction contract totaled $12,909,300. The final construction cost increased to $13,474,273.35, a difference of approximately $564,973.
According to Moore, a major change order of $378,452 involved constructing six concrete tennis courts to replace four existing courts demolished during the project.
Additional changes included $73,945 for relocating a toilet building and $42,903 for athletic field asphalt work.
Moore explained that changes remaining within the approved project budget generally do not require additional Board approval.
The district maintains that these procedures were consistent with its established procurement practices.
Questions of Transparency and Accountability
The central issue is not simply whether a school board member voted to award a contract to his employer. It is whether adequate safeguards existed to identify, disclose, and address potential conflicts of interest when a company employing a sitting trustee competed for millions of dollars in district construction work.
Several questions remain relevant:
- What conflict-of-interest disclosures or recusals, if any, were required of Saylors during the procurement process?
- Did Saylors have any professional involvement with the J.L. Mann project through his position at M.B. Kahn?
- What safeguards ensured that the company's relationship with a sitting trustee did not influence the selection process?
- Were those safeguards documented and independently reviewed?
The district's response provides explanations concerning board voting procedures and administrative authority, but does not fully resolve these additional questions.
The employment relationship and contract award do not, by themselves, establish wrongdoing or a violation of procurement rules. Determining whether all applicable safeguards were followed would require examination of the underlying procurement records and conflict-of-interest documentation.
Additional Records Still Pending
Moore indicated that the district had provided information ahead of a formal estimate for the staff time required to compile the remaining requested records.
Under district policy, the first hour of work responding to a FOIA request is provided without charge.
The district also acknowledged that the original emailed request had not reached its FOIA inbox because the requester's email address had previously been marked as spam systemwide following a school-level employee's complaint.
Moore stated that the designation had been removed and that future correspondence should be received.
The additional requested records have not yet been reviewed as part of this report.
Voters Deserve Answers
Saylors, first elected to the Greenville County Schools Board of Trustees in 2002, is seeking another term against challenger Conservative Robert Giles along with Bennie Cantrell in Tuesday's nonpartisan Area 20 election.
Greenville County Schools is the county's largest local property-taxing authority by millage, exercising substantial taxing power over businesses, vehicles, and other taxable property. With that authority comes an equally substantial responsibility to account for how taxpayer dollars are spent, particularly when multimillion-dollar contracts involve companies employing members of the very board entrusted with overseeing the district.
The fact that a sitting school board trustee held an executive position with a company awarded a multimillion-dollar district construction contract is a matter of legitimate public interest, regardless of whether the arrangement complied with applicable procurement rules.
The district has offered an explanation of its procedures, and those explanations deserve consideration. At the same time, the remaining questions concerning disclosure, recusal, and safeguards deserve answers grounded in the complete documentary record.
Public accountability does not begin and end with whether an official cast a vote. It also requires transparency about the relationships, procedures, and safeguards surrounding the expenditure of taxpayer dollars.
Voters have every right to ask these questions. And those entrusted with their tax dollars have every responsibility to answer them.
