By Lynn S. Teague | The League of Women Voters of South Carolina agrees with Andy Brack’s commentary on November 13 – our senators have disappointed us, and many others, by their failure to pass ethics reform. What has led to the current impasse?
State Sen. Marlon Kimpson (D-Charleston) commented,“I voted for the [GOP Sen. Luke] Rankin plan, [but] the Republicans blocked it.” Kimpson said. “We really need a total do-over as the plans being discussed don’t get to the heart of the matter.” State Sen. Paul Campbell (R-Berkeley) also commented that he voted for this “independent panel.”
Other Republicans joined Rankin, a Republican from Horry County, and the Democrats in supporting Rankin’s amendment. The omnibus ethics bill with the Rankin amendment, S.1, was not blocked by “Republicans” but by those Republicans who had worked hardest for real ethics reform, led by state Sen. Larry Martin (R-Pickens), primary sponsor of the bill. Reformers blocked this bill because the Rankin amendment was not an independent panel by any stretch of the imagination.
The supposedly independent panel in question was to be a joint commission of the General Assembly charged with making initial determinations regarding complaints. The members were to be appointed by the House and Senate and by the governor and attorney general upon the advice and consent of the General Assembly. Four members were to be legislators, while five were to be members of the general public. No provision was made for legal or clerical staff for this new commission that would be independent of the existing General Assembly staff. No professional investigators would be hired. No provision was made for the commission to audit legislative ethics records or to act without someone having filed a complaint.
Does this sound like an independent panel? Legislators would control the appointment process. They would control the inadequate staff. Legislators who are members of the commission would need only one vote from a member of the public (appointed with their consent) to kill any complaint.
Some optimists have suggested that the long-standing animosity between the House and Senate would guarantee that this smoke-and-mirrors commission would be an effective watchdog. Nonsense. The certain outcome of this arrangement would be similar to the MAD nuclear strategy of the Cold War: Mutually Assured Destruction. Neither chamber would be willing to find fault with the other for fear of equal retribution.
In short, this “independent panel” would have allowed legislators to claim that they had enacted reform without actually putting themselves in danger of effective independent oversight.
The November 13 article also quoted state Sen. Kevin Bryant (R-Anderson) on his opposition to donor disclosure provisions. It is worth observing here that there are actually two such issues. One is a fix for existing law, a narrowed definition of a political action committee (PAC) that is needed because the current definition in South Carolina law did not survive federal court scrutiny. The existing law did not chill free speech in the many years that it was in place and restoring it should not be controversial.
It is likely that Senator Bryant’s concern is actually more focused on the “electioneering” provisions that affect organizations that do not have the primary purpose of influencing the outcome of elections. However, it is important to recognize that even in its controversial Citizens United decision, the U. S. Supreme Court observed that citizens must rely upon disclosure of donors to provide the sunlight needed to disinfect the big-money political process unleashed by that court decision.
So where are we now? The major House bill sent to the Senate was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee but an objection was filed by state Sen. Kent Williams (D-Marion) and it is stalled on the Senate calendar. However, the House of Representatives also passed a number of single-issue ethics bills in addition to the large omnibus ethics bill. The House strategy was wisely intended to bypass the possibility that not getting one element of reform would kill the whole effort. These more restricted bills were sent to the Senate and some of these also have been reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and appear on the Senate calendar.
However, all of those bills have had minority reports or objections filed against them by senators who do not want to see them pass. State Sen. Lee Bright (R-Spartanburg) put a minority report on the bill that would require donor disclosure. State Sen. John Matthews (D-Orangeburg) objected to the very important bill requiring disclosure of private income sources, as well as bills abolishing leadership PACs and even a bill allowing university faculty to share in the proceeds from their own discoveries and inventions. State Sen. John Scott (D-Richland) objected to a simple bill that would clarify how contributions are allocated in runoff elections. It seems that no reform is so uncontroversial that it does not draw opposition.
Senators can pass some aspects of ethics reform without passing the whole package envisioned by the South Carolina Commission on Ethics Reform in 2012 or pro-reform groups like the League of Women Voters. We would rather see comprehensive reform. However if that is impossible, we can pass some aspects now and work on the remainder in future sessions.
There are three crucial aspects of reform: disclosure of private income sources of officials and their immediate families, disclosure of donors who support messages that attempt to influence our votes, and truly independent investigation of potential ethics violations by legislators and their staffs. The League of Women Voters has no intention of giving up on any of these, but would welcome passage of bills in this session that address some of these concerns.
Those senators who say that current bills are inadequate or too weak to earn their support should work on realistic and meaningful changes to pass better bills. Without a sincere effort to improve the bills now before the Senate, claims that existing bills are too weak ring very hollow indeed.
Senators say that the public doesn’t care about this. They are wrong. The public loses faith in our government because many are convinced that reform is simply impossible and that all politicians are inherently corrupt. This isn’t true. We do have public officials of integrity. However until we have reform, we will continue to have legislators who vigorously lobby on behalf of their employers or their clients while hiding behind absurdly narrow interpretations of existing law on conflicts of interest. Without reform legislative ethics committees will continue to bury violations of existing law. Without reform, secret “consulting fees” will continue to buy the support of our officials. Without reform, some public officials will continue to adhere to their own private high standards of integrity but those without a strong moral compass (and there are far too many) will continue to work for their own benefit rather than that of South Carolina’s citizens.
We could and should have meaningful ethics reform in the coming session. Our democracy does not function as it should without the confidence of its citizens, and at present South Carolina’s citizens have every reason to believe that far too many public officials are working to benefit themselves rather than the citizens of our state.
Lynn S. Teague is a vice president with the League of Women Voters of South Carolina.
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