BENNETTSVILLE— What is Palmetto Opioid Telehealth and why did this company expect Marlboro County to wire them $10,000?

Charleston consultant Ned Brown and Aiken resident Laura Bagwell started the start up company and over the summer, they worked with the city of Aiken to create a nonprofit telehealth clinic called Palmetto Opioid Telehealth and a for-profit mail-order pharmacy called Suboxone Delivered LLC with both to be based in Aiken, according to a report from The Post and Courier. The city, according to the paper, was approved to receive $112,000 but declined the money because city staff believed the city was assisting a nonprofit — led by its executive director, Bagwell — with its request to receive discretionary funding, City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh said. However, the city wasn’t requesting discretionary funds. It was asking to receive some of the political division funds.

According to the Post and Courier, “Brown and Bagwell argued the city has an obligation to provide the $112,000 grant to Palmetto Telehealth and Suboxone Delivered.

On the other side, Key and Emmanuel-McClain argued the city should return the money, that the Brown and Bagwell’s organizations could apply at the next available opportunity for discretionary funding and that the money (and the remainder of the city’s political division.”

What does this have to do with Marlboro County?

Following the failure in Aiken, Brown approached the Marlboro County Council with a proposal to bring Palmetto Opioid Telehealth to Marlboro County and write a grant for funding— with the company’s own grant writer, despite the fact that county administration has an on-staff grant writer.

At Tuesday’s board meeting, the council discussed the issue. “I’m a little bit concerned,” said councilwoman Pearlie Lawson, “all members of the council, we all received an email from Mr. Ned Brown of Palmetto Opioid Telehealth sharing information about the South Carolina Opioid Recovery fund and in that it talked about the 46 counties in the state receive those funds. The counties in the Pee Dee were some of the highest ones who were needing these funds. We had an opportunity to receive state funding of $300,000 and it was because if we submitted our funds on time, we would also look forward to having another $1.2 million for this project.”

Lawson said she thought this was a great opportunity for Marlboro County. She said she understood there were concerns about the method of payment to the company and the fact that there would be an outside grant writer working with the project.

“I want to point two things out about that. We contract out all the time. Using someone else with more expertise, I don’t see where that is a problem. Maybe that was with most of you. I don’t see where having money wired is a big problem,” she said. Lawson told the council that the concerns about the project should have been addressed during the initial meeting.

“It made me think, if someone brings a proposal to us, we sanction ourselves when we say I will accept this, if you do that. I don’t know whether that happened, but there’s a lot of favoritism and nepotism in Marlboro County. The problem I have with this is that this was an opportunity where Marlboro County could have received funds to help with the opioid crisis, but we didn’t take advantage of this.”

Councilman Damien Johnson said Marlboro County didn’t lose anything because the money in the settlement is earmarked for the county and can’t be diverted to another city or county. “I don’t think we missed that opportunity. This deadline came upon us really quick and I agree with having a measure of caution. This was a real quick turnaround and I agree with us taking a step back.”

Councilman Ken Stroman said while the entire council agrees with the need for an opioid program in the county, ” We’re dealing with a company that was pitching a telehealth component and they wanted us to wire them $10,000 to get a grant that was not guaranteed within 24 to 48 hours. There is no way that we do business like that…And $10,000 to write a grant, when we have a grant writer who has written opioid grants. That’s how we got the grant for the sheriff’s department.”

That grant which provides drug treatment services in the detention center was well over $500,000.

Stroman said if the county is going to give someone $10,000, then the county’s grant writer should receive a bonus for the grants that she’s written for the county.

“$10,000 isn’t even the market price to write a grant. There’s no way that we as a county can do business with a company that tries to strong-arm us,” he said.

Council chairman Anthony Woods said his issue with how the company approached the county is that Brown didn’t reach out to the county administrator but contacted Lawson and the NAACP first.

“Mr. Clyburn was informed late in this situation and that threw up a red flag,” Woods said. He added that Brown entered into the discussion at the last minute and the county couldn’t wire money.

“That’s unacceptable,” Woods said.