Tuesday, November 5, 2024
The Coast RTA board will hold a special meeting today to consider ways to expand board membership.
Horry County Council requested over a year ago to have its membership on the Coast RTA board increased from the present one member to three members because of the amount of overall funding it provides the agency.
Horry County provides approximately 20 percent of Coast RTA funding, the largest amount after the federal government.
Myers Rollins, former General Manager/CEO of Coast RTA, filed suit Tuesday against the agency he headed before being fired April 30th.
In addition to Coast RTA, Rollins is suing SCDOT, Coast RTA board members Bernie Silverman and Kitty D’Angelo, Horry County Council members Mark Lazarus and Gary Loftus, SCDOT employees Doug Frate and Hart Baker and interim Coast RTA General Manager Julie Norton Dew.
Rollins is seeking five million dollars in compensatory damages as well as punitive damages to be determined and reinstatement as GM/CEO of Coast RTA.
A letter from SCDOT that purportedly removed Coast RTA from being designated as a “High Risk Agency” is apparently a forgery, according to a follow-up letter from SCDOT.
Dated October 11, 2011, the letter, allegedly from SCDOT Deputy Secretary Hart Baker to Coast RTA General Manager Myers Rollins, states, “I have rescinded the letter (designating Coast RTA as High Risk Agency) and removed the Waccamaw Regional Transportation Authority’s designation as a “High Risk Agency”…”
In replying to a request for validation of the October 11, 2011 letter, SCDOT Director of Intermodal and Freight Programs Doug Frate sent a letter to Coast RTA board chairmen Bernie Silverman dated May 2, 2014. The letter said in part, “Please know that I have been informed that this letter was neither signed by or for Mr. Hart Baker, nor did it originate from the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT).”
Speak Up…