Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009

Taxpayers to pay $150-a-hour lawyer to defend Governor’s Office

Gov. Mark Sanford has a second layer of legal protection -- at taxpayers’ expense.

The Governor’s Office has hired Connecticut-based attorney Ross Garber to represent its interests as lawmakers begin deliberations on whether to impeach the embattled, two-term Republican governor.

Garber, who will be paid $150 an hour by the Governor’s Office, said Tuesday he has represented public officials and companies during investigations.

He may be most well known as the ethics expert who represented the Connecticut governor's office when John G. Rowland faced a 2004 impeachment effort. Rowland subsequently resigned and pled guilty to a corruption charge.

Sanford already has private attorneys.

Garber said he was hired to protect the institution of the governor’s office and help lawmakers realize the gravity of their deliberations.

But, he acknowledged, Sanford is his boss.

"The eyes of the world are on South Carolina," Garber said Tuesday, adding lawmakers’ decision on whether to impeach Sanford will have ramifications for future S.C. governors and the state.

Garber said Sanford’s disappearance for five days in June to secretly visit his lover in Argentina does not meet the high standard required for impeachment.

The state Constitution says serious crimes or other serious misconduct are the only reasons for impeachment.

"I hope the House looks at the history and realizes what they’re doing is an extraordinary thing," Garber said, adding only 16 governors ever have been impeached and only eight removed from office.

In the past 80 years, only two governors have been impeached, Garber said. In both cases, they were subject to criminal charges alleging they had committed felonies.

"The further you get away from (a felony), the more difficult it is to justify impeachment," Garber said.

Garber sent S.C. House members a research paper Monday, detailing why impeachment is inappropriate in Sanford’s case and, ultimately, he contends, bad for South Carolina, disrupting the balance of power among the three branches of government.

A subcommittee of House members will meet for the first time at 1 p.m. today to discuss an impeachment resolution. that resolution says Sanford should be ousted from office for abandoning the state for five days.

Get The State newspaper delivered to your home. Click here to subscribe.