Cindi Scoppe
Cindi Scoppe
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CINDI SCOPPE
Want to know, do more about ethics reform?
There won’t be a new ethics law this year unless the Senate finishes debate on the budget and agrees to debate the ethics bill. So the most important thing you can do is to let your senator know that going home without a bill is unacceptable; also, explain what you think the bill should include...
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CINDI SCOPPE
Odds, ends and extras in the ethics bills
People who lobby the Legislature must register with the state, and they’re barred from giving gifts or campaign donations to public officials and serving on state governing boards. There also are limits on the lobbyists’ employers.
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CINDI SCOPPE
Why ethics reform now?
Demands for ethics reform coalesced amidst a string of ethics scandals, a study that tied the scandals to flaws in our laws and the first election after a federal judge threw out a key component of our campaign reporting law:
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CINDI SCOPPE
Scoppe: Why the SC budget hasn’t recovered, even as most have
Overall, state budgets have recovered from the recession. But South Carolina, of course, is an outlier. It’ll be years before we collect as much as we did in 2007.
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CINDI SCOPPE
Scoppe: Medicaid madness
I KEEP GETTING these offers in the mail: Let us send you this cookbook for free, and then we’ll send you another one every year, which you have to pay for, unless you cancel. I throw them in the trash because so far I haven’t been offered any cookbooks that I want, and it’s ...
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CINDI SCOPPE
Scoppe: The extraordinary case of Hampton v. Haley
What makes the Supreme Court’s unanimous rejection of Gov. Nikki Haley’s power grab so extraordinary is the same thing that made the case extraordinary at its inception: the fact that our governor, our treasurer and our comptroller general would commit grand larceny, in broad daylight...
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CINDI SCOPPE
Scoppe: Senate ethics plan might solve enforcement problem
Maybe turning enforcement of legislative ethics over to an independent panel isn’t essential to serious reform after all.
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CINDI SCOPPE
Scoppe: Reforms must be precondition for highway funding
THE PROBLEM with all of the proposals to tackle South Carolina’s huge and growing highway maintenance backlog isn’t that they’re a mere drop in the bucket — although they are. The problem is that they’re a hole in the dike.
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CINDI SCOPPE
Scoppe: The ‘choice’ charade continues
WHEN SENATE budget-writers took time away from more pressing matters (such as writing the state budget) to begin a review last month of legislation to pay parents to abandon the public schools, Sen. Larry Grooms complained that he had been pushing the plan for a decade...
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CINDI SCOPPE
Scoppe: House ethics plan is improved, but still falls short
THE ETHICS legislation the House is set to take up today is much improved from the disaster that House leaders had hoped to pass last week. But it’s far from ideal.



