Ray of hope still in Senate for ethics reform

State senators voted Thursday to carry over a motion to reconsider a comprehensive ethics reform measure that looked all but dead late Wednesday.

In layman’s terms, the Senate bought some time to try to come to terms with a major sticking point: competing plans on how to police legislators. Thursday’s parliamentary move allows members to bring up the motion to reconsider when they want for another bite at the ethics apple.

It’s kind of complicated. The original bill, S.1, offers comprehensive reform ranging from dealing with lobbying fees and legislators being elected to judgeships to revamping the Election Commission and campaign spending reform.

But Wednesday, Senate Ethics Committee chair Luke Rankin, R-Horry, proposed an amendment on how the Ethics Commission would be restructured. His committee amendment called for state lawmakers to continue to be involved in policing themselves on ethical issues. The amendment said the commission should be comprised of two senators and two House members (one from each party in each chamber) to serve with five people appointed by the governor. Currently, the state Ethics Commission has nine members, all appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. But the current commission doesn’t have investigatory power over legislators.

Meanwhile, the original 61-page bill restructured the commission differently to keep lawmakers from serving on it. This original measure envisioned an eight-member, independent Ethics Commission with oversight of legislators. That proposed panel’s members would have four gubernatorial and legislative appointments each, but lawmakers wouldn’t be able to serve on the board.

On Wednesday, senators voted 25-20 to adopt Rankin’s amendment, which showed that the majority wanted to be involved in policing of members’ ethics. After lawmakers then debated a bunch of amendments to the overall bill, they voted on whether to approve the amended bill. In that “second reading” of the bill, the amended bill failed by a 24-19 vote, which put ethics reform in a kind of legislative purgatory.

Overall process, but not Senate’s, is broken, Rankin says

Rankin said the oversight process is broken at the current state Ethics Commission as evidenced by thousands of required reports from city, county and state officials go virtually unaudited every year.

The process, he said, also was broken in the House, which allowed former Speaker Bobby Harrell, who eventually pleaded guilty to corruption charges, to skate for a long time until the House changed its rules. Now, the whole process needs to be fixed appropriately, but without losing what works in the Senate, he said Thursday.

“There’s not a lot of trust in the present statewide Ethics Commission and its ability to be insulated from politics,” Rankin said, pointing to a campaign controversy last year involving the Ethics Commission’s involvement with a 2013 Freedom of Information request involving Gov. Nikki Haley’s use of a state vehicle for a campaign fund-raiser.

“Instead of having potentially less-effective oversight [and] given the state Ethics Commission’s inability to manage what it is assigned now, what I do is elevate the joint commission between House and Senate committee members and add five public appointees.”

Reform is in danger, some say

Now some worry this week’s loggerhead between senators may endanger ethics reform this year.

“The practical problem we have is our ability to take up separate bills as the House is proposing to do,” state Sen. Larry Martin said Thursday morning. “We don’t have that luxury under our rules. We don’t allow amendments to raise new and independent matters. Any amendment we can put on the bill has to specifically address the subject matter.

“That’s good in that it keeps us running from running rabbits and bobtailing onto a bill and oftentimes lengthening the debate needlessly on something. But the downside is it does tie our hands somewhat.”

One longtime observer said if the Senate doesn’t deal with reform in S. 1, long-awaited ethics change could happen through piecemeal passage of multiple narrow bills from the House.

“We might get parts of the package that way.”