Despite attempts to alert you to covid threats, SC health officials made secret decisions they kept from you.

The Island Packet newspaper of Hilton Head reported Department of Health and Environmental Control advisors helped decide how covid vaccineS would be delivered.

They met in secret 12 times last year.

As a result you were kept in the dark about decisions they made in violation of state law, according to a leading expert on the SC Freedom of Information Act.

Jay Bender, an attorney for the Chronicle and the SC Press Association, said the Vaccine Advisory Committee consistently violated FoIA law. It neglected to post public meeting notices, convene in public and record official meeting actions.

THE COMMITTEE’S volunteer members advised DHEC on which of us should get the shots 1st, according to unofficial notes that DHEC provided to The Island Packet.

“Like everything else done in secret, it undermines the credibility of the organization,” Bender said.

The state’s open records law lists government “advisory committees” as public bodies subject to FoIA requirements.

Chaired by chief epidemiologist Dr. Linda Bell, the committee was briefed on vaccine rollout plans, according to the meeting notes but without many details.

Dr. Bell has since said the committee will no longer hold regular meetings. DHEC plans regional advisory panels instead.

She noted that lawmakers passed a new law requiring DHEC to allocate doses to the state’s 4 public health regions – Midlands, Low Country, Upstate and Pee Dee – based on population levels and other factors.

LAURA RENWICK, a DHEC spokeswoman, wrote that health officials formed the VAC after the Centers for Disease Control encouraged states to organize “volunteer groups” to make state-specific recommendations for covid vaccine planning.

DHEC, she wrote, thought the committee would meet for only 6 to 8 weeks.

DHEC in last year “determined the VAC could be a public body subject to the public notice requirements,” Renwick wrote.

As vaccine deliveries began, “it became apparent the group should follow more formalized procedures and should include a way for the public to hear the VAC’s virtual discussions,” she wrote.

The agency started to post online notices for the VAC’s 2021 meetings, stream its meetings, publish its agendas and document its minutes.

“It’s clear that DHEC’s committee,” Bender said, “has only recently become aware that it has to comply with the law.

“The law requires committees to give notice, just like the DHEC board has to.”

“The same prudence, which, in private life, would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the disposition of public moneys.” - Thomas Jefferson