LR5 school board member fined $2,000 after sending emails to oust colleagues in election
Lexington-Richland 5’s school board chair agreed to pay a $2,000 fine to the state Ethics Commission after she was found to have sent multiple emails from a school district account calling for her school board colleagues’ defeat in the 2020 election.
Jan Hammond agreed to the fine last month to resolve 15 ethics charges that also included accusations she failed to disclose sources of income on several years worth of economic filings with the state.
Hammond, a teacher in the neighboring Lexington 2 school district who became Lexington-Richland 5’s board chairwoman after the 2020 election, had a scheduled public hearing on the charges before the S.C. Ethics Commission April 21 that was dropped from the public agenda the day before.
By agreeing to the commission’s order, Hammond “acknowledges she violated the Ethics Act when she failed to report income ... and when she sent the above-mentioned emails using her District Five-issued email accounts,” according to the order, dated April 19.
She admits she failed to report her husband’s income for four years on her statements of economic interest from 2018 to 2021. She also did not report income she received as a school board member in 2019 and 2020. In 2019, Hammond also failed to report her income from her full-time teaching job.
“Respondent states that her spouse often files her SEIs on her behalf and that she had no intention to omit any information from her SEIs,” the order says. “Respondent states that her technical skills are ‘not the best’ and that, as a result, she and her husband have occasionally visited the Commission’s physical office to seek assistance, although she acknowledges she did not do so from 2018-2021.”
Hammond told the commission she amended the financial statements as soon as she was made aware of the missing information.
Hammond did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The State on Monday.
In a letter to the editor of the New Irmo News, Hammond blamed the omissions on a “confusing webpage.”
“I can assure my public that none of my complaints resulted in economic gain for me,” Hammond wrote. “Technical errors like placing items in the wrong space and even not listing my teacher’s salary were not to do anything unethical.”
Separately, Hammond admits she responded to eight emails from parents in the school district between August and October 2020 with requests that they vote for school board candidates Matt Hogan, Rebecca Blackburn Hines and Catherine Huddle, or against board incumbents Michael Cates and Robert Gantt.
“I pray we can elect a board that is more accountable to the public,” Hammond said in one email cited in the Ethics Commission’s order. “I teach SS (social studies) and I know they (sic) government should be accountable to the majority rule and this process has circumvented the will of the people,” she said in reference to the district’s COVID-19 safety measures.
The current school board chair said she uses her cellphone to respond to emails to her personal account, her Lexington-Richland 5 account and her Lexington 2 teacher email.
During the height of the pandemic, “Respondent states that she was inundated daily with hundreds of emails from parents and concerned citizens,” the order notes. “(I)n her efforts to be responsive to as many individuals as possible, she paid no attention to which email account was being used.”
Hammond said she did not initiate the email exchanges and that three of them explicitly asked for her opinion on the upcoming election.
She told the New Irmo News that she “believed that since I did not initiate the contact and that I was not on my D5 computer I was not in violation of the ethic rules.”
The Ethics Commission noted that it did not take issue with the content of the emails in question.
“As a citizen, Respondent is permitted to advocate for the election or defeat of any candidate in any election,” the order reads. “However, she is not permitted to do so using public resources and the Commission has held on numerous occasions that use of a government-issued email constitutes such use.”
The commission found that Hammond did commit all 15 violations she was charged with. She was fined $100 for each year she failed to report income ($400 total), $100 for each email she responded to asking for her opinion on the school board election ($300 total) and $200 for each email where Hammond brought the election up unprompted ($1,000 total). With the addition of a $300 administrative fee, that brings Hammond’s total fine to $2,000.
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