GREENVILLE — Mounting tensions among members of Grenville County Council came to a head earlier this week with a confrontation in which deputies had to separate two councilmen.
During the Sept. 19 run in, which followed a tense council meeting, Councilman Ennis Fant said his fellow Councilman Stan Tzouvelekas approached him in the lobby as he was speaking to constituents. A heated exchange followed.
“I got blasted about, ‘You ain’t nothing, you ain’t gonna be nothing, you ain’t got nothing,'” Fant said, recalling the exchange with Tzouvelekas. “I had to count to 10, and I was like, ‘as an African American man, you cannot hit this White man, because it will be your fault no matter what.'”
Eventually, deputies stepped in and separated the two.
Tzouvelekas couldn’t be reached for comment by The Post and Courier over the course of multiple days.
Councilman Benton Blount, who was outside the County Administrative building during the start of the encounter, said he heard Fant yelling that Tzouvelakas was a “racist bastard” as Fant came out of the building, though Fant denies that.
Later that evening, Fant, a Black man representing Greenville County’s only majority-minority district, appeared on a Facebook Live stream in which he accused Tzouvelekas and Councilman Steve Shaw of racism — a claim Shaw vehemently denied in an interview with The Post and Courier.
Greenville County Councilman Stan Tzouvelekas
“If he doesn’t get his way, he doesn’t care who you are, he’s going to say it’s racist,” Shaw said. “Last year, we were all good friends, but he basically is a cold and calculating politician, and surprisingly, that’s all he’s left with, really. He doesn’t have good ideas anymore, and really he’s back down to his ’80s racism stuff.”
The rancor was incited by a vote on funding an event.
That evening, the council voted on appropriating $30,000 to Fant’s nonprofit Vision25 for a gala celebrating his district’s 60th anniversary.
Several of Fant’s colleagues on the council were contributing from their $20,000 in discretionary funds to support the event. Fant said it’s not unusual for that funding source to be spent on community events such as the Scottish Games or the Travelers Rest Christmas Parade.
But Shaw and Tzouvelekas ahead of the meeting had voiced opposition to using taxpayer money for the event, citing ethical concerns that public dollars were going to Fant’s organization.
During the meeting Shaw made a point of asking the clerk that comments made by two people who spoke out against funding the event during the meeting be “recorded verbatim.”
Greenville County Councilman Steve Shaw
The funding ultimately passed 9-3, with Shaw, Tzouvelekas and Blount voting against it. Fant, in turn, voted against funding requests Shaw and Tzouvelakas had made for their districts.
“Going forward, any community projects that any of those three bring forward, I am going to object to it being on the consent agenda, I’m going to ask that it be moved to the end of the meeting, make them discuss it, ask for a roll call vote, and then I’m going to vote no,” Fant told The Post and Courier. “I am not their punching bag.”
The discord was reminiscent of chaos that has reigned among the body for the past several years.
Chairman Dan Tripp and Shaw also clashed during the meeting.
The meeting ended abruptly as Tzouvelekas, over the sound of Tripp’s gavel pounding, tried to make a motion banning mask mandates in the county. Tripp said Tzouvelekas was out of order and trying to engage in a debate rather than offer a motion, in violation of council procedures.
The confrontation between Fant and Tzouvelekas in the lobby took place shortly after.
Greenville County Councilman Benton Blount
During the Facebook Live later that evening, Fant said Shaw, Tzouvelekas and Blount didn’t act reasonably as members of council and that their districts are suffering for it.
“Their minds don’t work right,” he said. “They don’t care about working with anybody else, they don’t care about the taxpayers, they don’t care about what’s in the best interest of the citizens of Greenville County, making a positive difference, making the community for the next generation of children, none of that. What you saw tonight is what I have to deal with every single week. They are absolute lunatics.”
Shaw and Tzouvelekas’ vocal opposition to county funding for initiatives including affordable housing and public transportation are also racially motivated, Fant said, a claim Shaw strongly denied.
The contentious tenor of the meeting earlier this week and its aftermath are a continuation of internal tensions on County Council, in which Tzouvelekas and Shaw consistently contend with other members, particularly Tripp.
The division was pronounced during the pitched political battle this summer over the county’s budget, which included Greenville County’s first property tax increase in 30 years.
Shaw and Tzouvelekas led opposition to that spending plan, a conflict that pushed Greenville County to the brink of a government shutdown.
The budget was eventually passed in an 8-4 vote, the minimum majority required, over strong objections from the two conservative councilmen.
Republicans in the Greenville area’s Statehouse delegation have since filed a lawsuit against the county alleging that its budget process is illegal and that it violated state transparency laws, a move Tripp described as a “political disagreement masquerading as a lawsuit.”
In the wake of the Sept. 19 confrontation, Blount took to Facebook to bemoan the state of affairs on County Council and clarify that race wasn’t a factor in his vote against funding Fant’s event.
In an interview with The Post and Courier, Blount said “I think that we can all, regardless of what side of the issues we’re on, have a lot more decorum than we did Tuesday night.”