Council Orders Attorney to Respond to Voice’s FOI Request at No Charge
BLYTHEWOOD – An FOI (Freedom of Information) request for records, submitted to Blythewood town hall by The Voice on Dec. 19, 2025, pertained to the newspaper’s investigation into $20,000 awarded to UniversalCMG World Entertainment/Edward Straiter to plan and pay for Blythewood’s 2025 Juneteenth celebration.
Those funds were awarded from the H-tax (hospitality tax) revenue in March 2025.
However, the funds were appropriated by town council on June 24, 2024, from the general fund, not from H-tax revenue. The Juneteenth event had been designated in the budget as a town event to be planned by town hall and Manor staff and awarded from the general fund.
On March 24, 2025, as town staff was planning the Juneteenth event, Blythewood Mayor Sloan Griffin halted the process and turned the planning and funding of the event over to an outside agency, UniversalCMG World Entertainment, according to Jordan Langland, the Town’s marketing and special projects manager.
Griffin instructed Langland to write a $20,000 check from the H-tax account (Acct. No. 23-5110-373) instead of from the general fund to pay for the event even though, according to Langland, UniversalCMG had not submitted an application for H-tax funding as required by the Town’s H-tax policy. (See policy posted with this story at blythewoodonline.com.)
According to the Town’s Hospitality and Local Accommodations Tax Guidelines/Application, “the Town of Blythewood imposes a 2% local hospitality tax on all prepared food and beverages sold within town limits, and the proceeds are used to support tourism-related, non-profit events and organizations through a grant application process.”
Approved from Mayor
But UniversalCMG did not submit an application, and Langland made a notation on the corner of the $20,000 check request: “Approved from Mayor in place of application.”
On March 27, 2025, the $20,000 check was given to Edward Straiter, the founder and owner of UniversalCMG World Entertainment, according to Langland.
On April 30, 2025, council voted to cancel Juneteenth and other nighttime town park events due to ongoing security concerns.
On May 1, 2025 (the next day) – Straiter cashed the $20,000 check.
During a report on the Town’s event funding that was presented at the Nov. 24, 2025, town council meeting, Langland stated, “I am not sure where that [$20,000] is now.”
Councilman Donald Brock responded to that information, stating “$20,000 from last summer’s Juneteenth event funding walked away, and it can’t be accounted for.”
“I don’t think any council members were told about any of this until Nov. 24,” Councilman Rich McKenrick told The Voice. “I know I wasn’t.”
During the Feb. 23, 2026, council meeting, Councilman Rich McKenrick challenged Griffin as to why the $20,000 check was cashed the day after council voted to cancel the event.
“Mr. Mayor, after the meeting on April 30, did you have a conversation with UniversalCMG?”
Griffin paused, then answered.
“I always do, because I value his [Straiter’s] input on economic development.” During a YouTube presentation the previous evening, Griffin praised Straiter, stating that he and Straiter had a growing friendship and that Straiter was his mentor.
“You [Griffin] had a conversation with UniversalCMG [Straiter] on April 30, then on May 1 they deposited our $20,000 check. Is that right, Mr. Driggers?” McKenrick asked.
“Yes,” Driggers answered.
“And that is just happenstance?” McKenrick asked Griffin.
“I don’t work for Universal,” Griffin said. “It’s no different than past relationships you may have had, like the rodeo. I mean, it’s no different.”
Juneteenth Relocated
In demand letters to The Voice, Brock, and Langland – dated Dec. 12, 2025 – UniversalCMG’s attorney, Imene Meziane, included a list of nonrefundable deposits that she said accounted for the $20,000 funding. The deposits totaled $16,230 and included some expenses that may not have been eligible for hospitality tax event expenditures according to the Town’s H-tax policy.
In the demand letters, Meziane also stated that after the Juneteenth event was cancelled, Straiter relocated the event to another location, but she did not name the location.
At the Feb. 23 council meeting, Interim Town Manager Ed Driggers and Griffin disclosed to council that Straiter had relocated the Blythewood Juneteenth event to Chester, S.C., where it was held across multiple days in mid-June, though neither Driggers nor Griffin provided any details about the Chester event.
Eligibility Questioned
At the Feb. 23 meeting, council members questioned whether UniversalCMG was eligible to receive the H-tax funding awarded by Griffin.
“So, Mr. Mayor …were you treating that as an H-tax application event? No different than we would treat Rib Fest (an H-tax funded event)?” McKenrick asked Griffin. “Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Griffin answered.
“But you were doing so without receiving an application and with no approval from council. Correct?” McKenrick asked Griffin.
“Yes,” Driggers answered.
“You also purposely broke our own town ordinance,” McKenrick said to Griffin. “First-time events paid for through H-tax funds only qualify for $7,500 in funding,” McKenrick said. “And you gave [UniversalCMG] a $20,000 check.”
Griffin defended himself, pointing to the Town’s finance department.
“It went through finance to clear,” Griffin said. “So, finance cleared it, approved it, wrote it in.”
McKenrick reminded Griffin that the finance employee was his (Griffin’s) subordinate – down the chain, not up the chain.
Mayor Pro Tem Andrea Fripp also questioned the event’s eligibility for funding from H-tax revenue.
“There’s a difference if it was an H-tax-sponsored event or a Town-sponsored event,” Fripp said. “If it was an H-tax event, then it would have had to submit an application and come before council to be eligible for funding. If it was a town event, then Jordan and Fred (town employees) would have planned it all.”
According to Blythewood’s H-tax policy, H-tax revenue is awarded to nonprofits.
UniversalCMG World Entertainment is not a non-profit in the state of South Carolina, according to the S.C. Secretary of State’s office.
At the Feb. 23, 2026 council meeting, Driggers reconfirmed that UniversalCMG did not submit a request or application for the funding, a requirement to receive H-tax funding.
While there is evidence that UniversalCMG may not have been eligible to receive the $20,000 H-tax funding, there is little evidence that town hall officials have made any significant effort to address the discrepancy publicly or recover the funds.
$500 FOI Request
On Dec. 19, The Voice submitted an FOI request to town hall for copies of UniversalCMG’s H-tax funding application and contract between Edward Straiter/UniversalCMG World Entertainment and the Town of Blythewood concerning the $20,000 H-tax award.
Town Attorney Pete Balthazor responded that the cost for the search and retrieval of archived emails would be $500. He said prior to the Town engaging its vendor, ATG (Access Technology Group), to conduct a search for the requested emails, The Voice would have to pay a deposit in the amount of $125.
Instead of using staff to search town hall’s computers for emails, Driggers said he wanted to use a third party vendor for searching in order to maintain the integrity of the search.
When questioned by council members during the Jan 12, 2026, strategic planning meeting as to why town hall couldn’t respond to FOI requests for emails, Driggers responded, “Because I don’t have the ability to do that,“ he said. “We just don’t have the expertise. We don’t have the technology to do these searches.” He also said staff can’t respond to FOI requests because there are no servers in Town Hall for archived emails.
“If we’re looking for a record, our vendor has to do that search for us,” Driggers said. “With what you have me doing, I can’t take that on,” said Driggers, who has a service agreement with the Town to work approximately 20-30 hours a week at a rate of $200 per hour.
“It boggles my mind as to why you just can’t go to my email and just type in an email address or a name or a keyword, and boom, it pops it up and there’s 50 emails. PDF them and send them out the door,” Brock said at the Feb. 23 meeting.
The Town’s contract with ATG, which was obtained by The Voice, makes no mention of charges to search and produce emails.
When asked by council members at the Feb. 23 meeting about the $500 charge, Driggers was vague.
He said he had conversations over the phone with ATG’s CEO. He said the costs to search emails fluctuated from $500 one day to $300 another.
“I’m not happy with this conversation,” Councilwoman Trish Hovis said. “An itemized bill [of costs to The Voice] would have been appropriate. I mean, I could pull my 2023 emails from my workplace in 30 minutes. I believe we’re bound by the [FOI] law to provide an itemization of the amount of money that we want to charge [for FOI responses] as opposed to holding people hostage and asking them for a down payment on [emails] we haven’t actually pulled yet,” she said.
Driggers disagreed.
“What I think the law says is that we are entitled to recoup actual expenses to retrieve data,” he said. “I believe that’s what the law says.”
Media Attorney Jay Bender referred to the Freedom of Information law.
“The demand that the paper pay $500 to retrieve documents responsive to a request for records, and then to claim that the charge is necessary because the town has shipped its records to a third party vendor, raises at least two significant issues.” Bender said. “First, state record retention law places the burden on government to retain and protect its records in an accessible location. Second, the contract with the vendor does not seem to establish charges for retrieval of records. ”
“Town council has taken a good first step in directing compliance with the records request without charge,” Bender said. “The next step would be to contact the state Department of Archives and History to develop a records retention policy in conformity with state law.”
Out of Compliance
At the end of the Feb. 23, 2026 meeting, Councilwoman Trish Hovis brought the conversation back to the way town hall managed The Voice’s FOI request, stating that, “I think we’re out of compliance [with the law] …we’ve set a dangerous precedent and will likely end up with another lawsuit.”
With that, she made a motion, “that the Town accept the responsibility for paying the $500 fee to provide the FOIA compliance for the request that came from The Voice on Dec. 19, 2025.” After a friendly amendment from McKenrick, she added, “that we pay not more than $500 to satisfy the FOIA request filed by The Voice on Dec. 19, 2025.”
The motion passed unanimously.
Driggers called The Voice on Monday, March 2, to say the FOI request is being processed.
While the FOI request moves forward, the $20,000 in H-tax funds remain unaccounted for.
