Editorial: Don’t let Richland penny-tax scandal taint Midlands bus system

WE GET THAT Richland County Councilman Kelvin Washington hasn’t been convicted of a crime.

We get that state officials say the charges against him have nothing to do with allegations of waste, mismanagement and possible criminal activity in the county’s penny transportation tax program. We get that they just happened to discover that he and then-Columbia City Councilman Brian Newman had failed to file and pay income taxes in the course of their investigation.

We even get that there have been no allegations that the part of the penny tax that funds the bus system has been misspent.

But, come on. Mr. Washington is in line to take over as chairman of the board that runs the penny-funded bus system? Seriously?

And County Council Chairman Torrey Rush really has to think for more than a split second about whether to replace Mr. Washington? Seriously?

Now, truth be told, we’re not quite sure how Mr. Rush has the authority to replace Mr. Washington, since state law allows Mr. Washington to serve out his three-year term unless he engages in “misconduct, malfeasance, or neglect of duty in office.” But based on their comments to State reporter Sarah Ellis, Mr. Rush and Mr. Washington both seem to think Mr. Rush has that authority, so we believe he needs to use it.

(We also believe that the Legislature needs to change the law that prohibits elected officials from removing their appointees to transportation authority boards when they simply exercise bad judgment, or undermine public confidence in the board. For that matter, the Legislature needs to change that sort of language in more laws than we can count.)

At some point, you have to wonder whether our local elected officials have decided that, having convinced voters to raise the sales tax to pay for transportation projects, it just doesn’t matter whether voters have any confidence in the program.

After all, Mr. Washington isn’t the only issue here. He’s in line to chair the Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority because Mr. Newman was the chairman. Which means that both of the council members serving on this committee were charged as an outgrowth of the investigation. Talk about coincidences.

You wonder, too, how our elected officials could be so unconcerned about the plummeting public trust in local government in general that is accompanying their hesitant response to those allegations, which include waste in the program that paid Mr. Newman $200 an hour to be trained to do work on the road-building projects; mismanagement in the plan to create a countywide mentoring program using the transportation tax funds; and possible criminal activity in the irregular procurement procedure the County Council adopted for the $1.1 billion program.

It looks bad enough that Mr. Washington is in line to chair the transit authority. Worse is the fact that this has just now become an issue, because Mr. Newman didn’t bother to resign his position until late last month. That was three weeks after he pleaded guilty to state income tax charges. It was two and a half weeks after we learned that he had been paid with penny-tax revenues to be taught how to do subcontracting work on the roads.

We’re also not quite sure why Mr. Newman was still serving on the transit authority board, since he had ceased being a City Council member when his term ended in December. State law says that the governments that belong to a regional transportation authority may appoint elected officials to the board, but if they do, those members serve ex officio — which means they have to hold the elected office in order to hold the position on the board.

We never have thought it was a good idea for elected officials to serve on governing boards other than the ones to which they are elected. They tend to dominate those boards, even if they are outnumbered by citizen members. That certainly seems to have been the case on the transit board, as evidenced by the fact that the City Council member was elected chairman and the County Council member was elected vice chairman. Council members have enough to keep them busy serving on the bodies to which they were elected; serving on governing boards not only inappropriately injects legislative officials into executive decision-making but also distracts them from the jobs they were elected to do.

We’re encouraged by the fact that the City Council seems interested in replacing Mr. Newman with a private citizen rather than a council member; it absolutely should do that. The county should remove Mr. Washington and do likewise. Not only would that avoid the conflicts inherent in council members serving on the board; it might even help restore confidence in our city and county governments.

This story was originally published February 3, 2016 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Editorial: Don’t let Richland penny-tax scandal taint Midlands bus system."