Under Greenway, county paid consultant $20k including $875 dinner bill not including food, drinks
Elementzal LLC., a company founded by Lisa Lynch and Angie Hassinger with ties to former Administrator Eric Greenway, billed Beaufort County more than $66,000 for consulting services between March and June with more than $20,000 of that sum resulting from 33 items performed in April. The April items mostly included meeting preparation, meeting attendance and debriefing sessions. The hourly rate was $275 and the hours billed for April alone were listed as 65.25. For a brief period of time, Lynch was both serving as a paid consultant to the county and as it’s Wellness Director. Lynch claims Greenway was aware of this and provided her guidance on how to navigate the dual roles. Greenway also would have been the county officer who was approving the billable hours for payment to Elementzal, according to Sarah Brock, Beaufort County’s interim public information officer. Greenway also created the new position of Wellness Director for Lynch with a salary of $110,000. That role began on April 24.
The entries on the April invoice detail the days the two from Elementzal met with school officials to develop K through 12, year-round programming for opioid abuse prevention in the school system. They attended an Rx and Illicit Drug Summit, in Atlanta. They also had multiple meetings with Evoke MicroMass, a media company specializing in public health initiatives, Lynch told the newspapers.
Six of the Elementzal meetings itemized on the invoice - totaling 13 hours for $3,574 took place on or after April 24. This is the same date that Lynch says was her first day as the county’s Wellness Director. The job reported directly reporting to Greenway.
Elementzal was contracted in January by the county under Administrator Eric Greenway’s authorization to provide “opioid consulting work.” Lynch is also a self-described witness in the ongoing criminal misconduct investigation of Greenway by a joint task force of the 1st and 14th Solicitor’s offices. She has also publicly accused her former boss of sexual harassment and retaliation while she was a county employee.
When Lynch was asked about the time she was both billing as a consultant and simultaneously working as a salaried employee she responded, “I need(ed) to make sure there’s a clear delineation of my workday in terms of me being a full time employee and me working on the opioid (contract work). I didn’t want anyone to think I wasn’t giving 40 hours to the county role. I had never worked in a county position and we (Lynch and Greenway) did have a conversation about that. For two weeks I was doing training and then there was that incident with Eric.” Lynch was referring to texts she received from Greenway after she brought a date to a party. He wrote, “Be aware of what you gave up tonight and what this will cost you,” the text reads. “But have f***ing fun because you are now just an employee of Beaufort County and I’ve lost all trust and affinity for you!”
After then, says Lynch, “I was thrown to the wolves. At that point there was zero way for me to do the opioid (consulting) work”
Elementzal’s fees of $20,943 for the month of April, 2023 were for 33 billable entries covering 18 days. Elementzal’s April monthly invoice to the county was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
The invoice below provides a date, description of the work, who performed the work and the billable time of each task. The conversion of each line item hours to dollars was calculated by the Island Packet’s reporting team based on the $275 per hour rate.
But, several of the entries stood out including:
4/2/23 - A meeting between Greenway and Lynch, itemized “Meeting with Eric” lasted one hour and 15 minutes costing the county $343.
4/3/23 - Item listed as “Meeting prep for dinner with Eric” took Lynch and Hassinger two hours for a total of $550.
4/3/23 - Item listed as “Dinner with Eric” included Greenway, Lynch and Hassinger lasted two and a half hours at a cost to the county of $687.
4/25/23 - Item listed as “Dinner with (candidate) for Medical Liaison position per Eric” lasted three hours for $875. This amount is the total of Elementzal’s billable time without the expense for the meal. Lynch’s recollection is that Greenway paid for the dinner but she was uncertain if it was on a personal card or a county purchasing card. The job candidate at the center of two meal meetings never received a job offer as the position had yet to be created.
Finally, an entry on the next day, 4/27/23, is listed as “Job description creation/review with Eric,” that Lynch says was for the previously mentioned Medical Liaison position and not her own. The liaison would have been “someone who drives that changing of the stigma of addiction,” she said. “We were going to try to hire someone who was capable of going out and doing that,” she added.
Greenway was not available by phone Thursday morning.
While the solicitor’s task force continues to investigate Greenway and possibly others, the county leadership has largely remained silent on the matter.
Greenway’s upcoming public hearing has been postponed to September 11.
