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Consultant on tower may have violated ethics law
www.aikenstandard.com
ROCK HILL — A consultant working to save a 21-story tower that was once part of Jim Bakker’s PTL ministry may be violating the state ethics law because of his previous work as a county planning director.
An attorney with the State Ethics Commission said former public officials are prohibited for one year from involvement in projects they directly worked on as government employees.
Eric Greenway, a former York County planning director, had been involved in denying a request to save the Heritage Tower.
He left the county in March to head a private consulting firm which was hired to save the tower from demolition by its owner, MorningStar Ministries.
Greenway and MorningStar representatives met with county planning staff in September and Greenway helped MorningStar on the tower project as recently as last week.
“Based on the research I’ve done and the knowledge I have, that law does not apply to me,” Greenway told The (Rock Hill) Herald. “But if it does, I will take steps to correct the situation.”
Greenway is now president of Coulston Enterprises, the firm redeveloping the former Heritage USA property.
Greenway told the newspaper he would stop consulting on the project.
“I didn’t mean any harm by what I’ve done,” he said. “I’m just trying to get out and do private work.”
As county planning director, Greenway worked with Coulston and MorningStar to draft the plan requiring the tower be torn down.
“The purpose of the law is to keep people from doing the ‘revolving door,’ making deals or using their public position to get a private sector job,” said Cathy Hazelwood, the ethics commission attorney, who would not discuss Greenway’s case specifically.
But Greenway and former York County zoning official Mike Scott, who also works for Coulston, said such practice is commonplace.
The tower, left unfinished in the late 1980s when Bakker’s ministry collapsed in sex and money scandals, was supposed to be brought down last week. But that didn’t happen, and the building’s owners could be subject to fines and summoned to appear before a magistrate, county Planning Director Susan Britt has said.
The tower was originally slated to be a hotel, but now MorningStar plans to turn it into a retirement center.
MorningStar founder Rick Joyner said the ministry discovered the building could be saved.
“We thought it had been condemned,” Joyner said. “Everybody kind of assumed it. We had no idea there was any potential to save it. People kept coming up to me and saying we should save that. We found out it’s in much better shape than we thought.”
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