RIDGEWAY – The town of Ridgeway has settled a lawsuit accusing it of violating the state’s public record disclosure law, a case that the complainant said shows significant gaps in the town’s regulatory system.
The town council approved on Thursday a proposed settlement between Ridgeway and a law firm representing a local church, paving the way for the 2025 lawsuit to be dismissed.
The lawsuit, filed in Fairfield County civil court last July, alleges that the town did not respond to the Neighborly Church of Peace’s requests for public records within the legally established process and timelines.
From February to May last year, according to court documents, the church’s attorney asked the town for 29 groups of records dated between 2017 and 2025. Those included training documentation for Ridgeway’s planning and zoning officials, business licenses that the town granted, the salaries of local government employees, the annual municipal budget and audit reports.
The church’s attorney, Todd Hagins, said he asked for the records after the town denied the Neighborly Church’s zoning-related requests to use a home it owned as a wedding ceremony venue. The church was incorporated in the state in July 2023, state business filings show.
Hagins said the terms of the parties’ settlement include a declaration from the town that it had provided all the requested records it possessed — which the attorney said was just a fraction of the public records he’d requested.
The declaration, Hagins said, was the town’s acknowledgement that it was missing some records that state law required of local governments. But it is not an admission of guilt or fault by the town.
“At the end of the day, we want cities, towns to say, ‘Yeah, we goofed up, we’re gonna do better,’” Hagins said in an interview. “We hope to get some kind of systemic change.”
The lawsuit, he said, revealed a glaring lack of training among town officials and employees who make zoning and land-use decisions.
Zoning matters can be “high-tension issues” locally, which Hagins said is why the state mandates local government training in this area.
Mayor Rick Johnson declined to comment on the deal, telling The Voice that he could not talk about it until the paperwork was complete.
Johnson and the town’s four council members unanimously voted “yes” to the settlement at a meeting Thursday evening.
Among the records that Ridgeway produced was information about municipal employees’ salary and the town budget for two out of the nine requested years, said Jessica Drew, an organizer of the Neighborly Church of Peace.
Documents that Drew shared with The Voice show the town provided the available records one to five months after the deadline laid out in the S.C. Freedom of Information Act. This was around three weeks after the church sued the town.
The town attorney had asked the court to dismiss the case, saying in part that the church could not sue Ridgeway because it was Hagins who submitted all the public records requests. The parties later asked the court to substitute Hagins’ law firm as the named plaintiff.
Under the case settlement, Hagins said, the town will also provide him with a timeline of when Ridgeway officials and employees can undergo zoning and land-use training. And the town will pay his firm $9,900 in reduced attorney’s fees for the lawsuit.
Drew said it was “mind-boggling” that the town would spend thousands of dollars on this lawsuit rather than just fulfilling its record-keeping obligations.
“The things that were asked for, it was not anything complicated,” she said. “They should have just been able to pull it out of their files and turn them over.”