By Lynn Shuler Teague | The first regular session of the 121st South Carolina General Assembly convened this Tuesday. Both House and Senate are prepared, with sound pre-filed bills designed to move ethics reform forward rapidly in this session. Legislators have been working hard and effectively.
Now with new Speaker Jay Lucas, we can be sure that reform won’t be stalled from moving onto the House floor for week after week, as it was under Speaker Bobby Harrell. In the Senate, Judiciary Chairman Larry Martin is holding committee meetings designed to get his bill, S.1, to a vote on the Senate floor in February.
However, no sooner had work begun than an old issue resurfaced. Once more we have been told that the need for independent oversight of ethics complaints against members of the General Assembly is “a House problem.” The Senate has no problem. Let us examine the evidence.
Both houses have found probable cause of ethics violations by members and held public hearings during the past year or two: Robert Ford in the Senate and Harold Mitchell Jr., in the House. A comparison of these cases in detail would provide interesting contrasts, if we examined how long it was known that there were significant problems and how serious the problems were. However, for now, we’ll just note that both cases occurred simultaneously with a push for ethics reform that might have inspired greater vigor in pursuing cases than had previously been the case, and that neither individual was among the most powerful leaders of their respective houses. On the evidence provided by these cases, we can consider the two houses evenly matched.
It is well known, however, that the House failed a crucial test when complaints against powerful Speaker Bobby Harrell were not pursued. Has the Senate passed an equivalent test? The answer is no. Because proceedings are very secret, we probably will never know if the Senate has not taken this test at all (no credible complaints against the leadership having been filed) or if they have taken the test and failed it (buried a complaint against a powerful leader). There is insufficient evidence to conclude that the Senate has enforced the ethics laws more consistently than the House.
And that brings us to the crux of the problem. We don’t know. Internal proceedings, held in secret, leave the citizens of the state no evidence on which to evaluate whether in-house legislative ethics committees are doing their jobs consistently and well.
The League of Women Voters has a simple solution. Any part of the enforcement process that is secret (which should be only the investigation prior to determination of probable cause) should be independent. Any part of the enforcement process that is conducted by colleagues and coworkers of the accused must be public. That is the only way that the citizens of the state will ever be able to trust that the process is fair, consistent and ensures that the officials of this state are serving the public interest and not their own.
Lynn Shuler Teague of Columbia currently serves as vice president for issues and action of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina.
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