By Jamie Rogers
The Florence Morning News
DILLON, S.C. — The State Law Enforcement Division continues to investigate the actions of several Dillon County firefighters amid allegations of misconduct in office.
SLED agents launched the investigation more than a month ago after receiving a request from the state Attorney General’s Office, SLED public information officer Jennifer Timmons said.
Agents have offered no other details about the case or who alerted the attorney general’s office.
Former Dillon County Administrator Charles Curry said in a previous interview the firefighters are notorious for violating county policy by being paid for fires they didn’t fight.
Attempts to reach Curry for additional comments on the matter were unsuccessful.
For years, Dillon County firefighters have signed or had their friends sign their names in a fire log book so they could be paid county funds, even if they didn’t actually work a particular fire, Curry said.
During a public hearing concerning Curry’s firing in July, Curry said Dillon firefighters were investigated by SLED almost a decade before the current investigation.
At the hearing, Curry showed a SLED report from 2000 about how the local firefighters were defrauding the county.
The report was given to then-4th Circuit Solicitor Jay Hodge for review, but the matter was apparently never pursued, Curry said.
During the hearing, Curry also said Dillon County Councilman Bobby Moody mishandled the building of the Lake View Fire Station, which cost the county more money than any other station that had ever been built.
The fire station, which was completed about two months ago, is located in Moody’s district in the Kemper community.
Curry also said the project didn’t have a council-administered budget until he made Moody go before the body and get one.
Moody said he has received and is still getting negative attention from Dillon County residents because of Curry’s comments.
“Yeah, we spent more on it because we had to do a lot more,” he said.
Ditches around the property had to be tiled and those working on the project had to overcome many setbacks to get the station built, Moody said.
“The contractor who got the job went belly up,” he said.
As a result, individuals had to oversee the project, Moody said.
“We did everything on our own,” he said. “The contractor did some of the work and then he quit.”
Moody said some residents even believe he and others were somehow personally profiting from the project.
“I just want people to know that we did the best we could,” he said. “Nobody took any money from the fire department. They insinuated we were getting kickbacks.”
After reviewing a Dillon County government account inquiry, Moody said he discovered Curry recorded $434,000 spent on building the Lake View Fire Station.
“I asked for that (inquiry) for three months. Charles never gave it to me,” Moody said. “When he left, I got it.”
But at the July hearing, Curry said about $225,000 had been spent on the project.
The total cost of the fire station is about $240,000, Moody said.
Curry told Moody to go before council to get a budget for the project and council approved $25,000 for its completion, Moody said.
That final amount came from county infrastructure funds, the councilman said.
During the past few months, Moody said, he’s had to refute Curry’s claims that proper bidding wasn’t held for the jobs pertaining to the construction of the fire station.
During the July hearing, Curry said no bidding was held on the pouring of the concrete at the fire station; rather, he said, a firm was paid $42,000 for the job.
“Is $42,000 a fair price? We’ll never know because there was no bidding,” Curry said July.
Moody said that wasn’t the case.
“We got bids on everything,” he said.
Curry, who was county administrator just three months before he was dismissed, took the job toward the end of fire station project. The project was started under former Dillon County Administrator Clay Young, Moody said.
Moody said the site of the fire station is within two miles of the North Carolina border and was needed to protect as many people as possible.
“The closer you live to a fire station, the lower your home insurance,” he said.
Copyright 2009 Florence Morning News