Ashley Farmer, an employee of the Greenwood Convention and Visitors Bureau who has filed a lawsuit accusing the bureau of racial discrimination, has been selected by the organization’s board to serve as its interim executive director.
Eleven of the 12 voting board members present at Monday’s CVB board meeting approved the choice of Farmer as interim director with the same $70,000 annual salary and applicable benefits that Patrick Ervin, the former CVB executive director, had received.
This development was first reported by The Taxpayers Channel.
Board member Judge Betty Sanders abstained from Monday’s vote.
Farmer, an employee of the CVB since 2017, filed a lawsuit in early January in U.S. District Court in Greenville against the city of Greenwood, under whose auspices the CVB falls, and the CVB. Farmer alleges that she was passed over for the CVB executive director’s job last year because she is white.
Instead, a majority of the board voted in October to hire Ervin, who is Black, as the permanent director. The vote was split along racial lines.
Ervin began his job at the CVB in November but left in mid-April to take a position as editor and publisher of The Enterprise-Tocsin, a weekly newspaper in Indianola owned by Emmerich Newspapers, which also owns the Commonwealth.
Farmer’s lawsuit, which is one side of a legal argument, claims that she was better qualified for the job. An amended version of her suit alleges racial discrimination against the CVB board, as reported by The Taxpayers Channel.
The city has denied Farmer’s allegations.
Andrew McQueen, the chairman of the CVB board, said Tuesday that Todd Butler, a Jackson-based attorney serving as the board’s counsel, advised that Farmer receive the same salary and benefits as an interim director that Ervin had received as a permanent director.
Also during Monday’s meeting, the board voted to form a committee composed of Jean Cadney, Cyndi Long and McQueen to draft an advertisement seeking bids for a consultant to assist with the board’s search for the CVB’s permanent executive director.
The ad should be drafted, with proposed locations for publication, and given out to the rest of the board for review within seven days, Butler said at the meeting.
- Contact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com.
