Sunday, November 24, 2024
A good first step toward ethics reform in South Carolina would be to fire S.C. Ethics Commission Executive Director Herb Hayden.
Last month, Richland County Circuit Judge Alison Lee approved a consent order ruling Hayden propagated a “falsehood” to a state ethics watchdog agency and in responding with a falsehood violated the Freedom of Information Act.
As part of the settlement, Hayden and the ethics commission maintained the falsehood was inadvertent and unintentional.
A S.C. House ad hoc committee on ethics reform held its first meeting last week.
Acting S.C. House Speaker Jay Lucas has made ethics reform the number one priority for the General Assembly in the upcoming legislative session beginning January 2015.
Lucas wants pre-filed bills on ethics reform ready to go at the beginning of the session.
Should we get excited and think ethics reform, in this historically ethically challenged state, is near?
A very watered down ethics reform bill was reported out of conference committee Wednesday and received an overwhelming vote of yeas in the S.C. House yesterday.
The bill must be approved by the Senate before going to Gov. Nikki Haley’s desk for signature.
But, the key measure needed for real ethics reform in South Carolina was left behind by the conference committee.
South Carolina’s legislators just can’t allow themselves to be at the mercy of an independent ethics commission, so the House and Senate Ethics Committees remain as the investigatory bodies for the state’s legislators.
It is possible, some say probable, that an ethics reform bill will pass the S.C. General Assembly and be signed into law before sine die June 5th.
But, it really won’t be much of a law.
The key ingredient, an independent ethics commission to investigate allegations of ethics violations against members of the House and Senate, will be missing.
Sen. Vincent Sheheen got in the middle of the ethics reform debate in South Carolina with a letter to Sen. Luke Rankin, chairman of the S.C. Senate Ethics Committee.
In his letter, Sheheen, a Democrat who is expected to oppose Gov. Nikki Haley next fall in a rematch of the 2010 gubernatorial election, advocates stopping “constant abuses in order to clean up our state government.”
Specifically Sheheen advocates barring the use of the state airplane, state cars or any other state vehicles from being for political purposes including carrying political staff to events or for conducting fundraising activities.
There is no ethics reform this year for South Carolina politicians because the S.C. Senate wasn’t interested in changing the way the ethics of its members is monitored.
Last summer, Gov. Nikki Haley ran around the state, accompanied by Attorney General Alan Wilson, trumpeting the need to tighten ethics laws in the state and overhaul the way in which ethics oversight is accomplished.
That no bill was passed in the General Assembly this year says everything that needs to be said about the way in which the state is governed.
The 1895 Constitution, which governs the state, places all real power in the General Assembly. If it doesn’t want to act, no force on earth can make it.
A S.C. Senate sub-committee Tuesday made major changes to an ethics reform bill the House had rushed through last week to meet the May 1 crossover deadline for legislation.
The amended bill would make major changes to the way in which ethics violations against members of the General Assembly are investigated as well as requiring new income source disclosure for public officials throughout the state.
The amended legislation takes investigation of allegations of ethics violations against House and Senate members out of the hands of legislative committees and puts a revamped state Ethics commission in charge of all ethics investigations.
The House bill proposed elimination of the House and Senate Ethics committees, replacing them with a Joint Committee on Ethics, a body that would include eight legislators and eight members of the public chosen by legislators.
Ethics investigations of legislators would have effectively remained in the control of legislators with this committee.
A House bill on ethics reform passed the important second reading vote Tuesday, which will allow it to pass with a majority vote in the Senate, if one can be arranged, before the end of the current legislative year.
However, before we get too excited about ethics reform occurring in South Carolina, let’s consider some of the provisions of the proposed legislation.
The bill would do away with the House and Senate Ethics Committees and replace them with a Joint Committee on Ethics to hear complaints filed against members of the General Assembly.
The committee would be made up of sixteen members, eight legislators and eight members of the public.
The makeup of the legislators would be four senators, two each elected from the majority party and the largest minority party in the body. Four house members will be elected to the committee in the same manner.
The eight public members would be elected four each by the House and Senate with two each from the majority caucus and the largest minority caucus in each body.
Ethics reform and government transparency sounded great on the campaign trails last fall, but the reality in Columbia is another year will pass without any meaningful changes taking place in state government.
The S.C. General Assembly is up to its old tricks of exempting itself from the laws that govern all other elected officials in the state.
Two bills that may have added real oversight over state legislators appear to be dead on the vine. One would have gotten rid of the House and Senate ethics committees and put legislators under the same ethics commission that oversees all other public officials in the state.
The current discussion on ethics reform for public officials in South Carolina appears to be veering off the main track that will establish public confidence in the governing process.
The discussion this week appears to be about additional funding for the S.C. Ethics Commission. Extra funding is necessary for this agency, which has been way underfunded for way too long.
According to ethics commission director Herb Hayden, approximately 70 percent of the funding for the agency’s budget comes from fees and fines.
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