On ‘life support’ or dead? SC Senate stalls on ethics reforms

Efforts to toughen South Carolina’s two-decade-old ethics laws are on “life support” after more than two years of debate.

That is according to state Sen. Larry Martin, a leading advocate for ethics reform, who failed this week to convince his Senate colleagues to vote to end the practice of lawmakers investigating themselves – a top priority of good-government groups and Gov. Nikki Haley.

Another senator all but said the prospects for reform are dead, adding the moment to pass a bill passed this week, when Martin and others rejected a push to keep lawmakers involved in investigating ethics complaints against fellow legislators but share that task with members of the public.

“That’s called a compromise,” said Sen. John Scott, D-Richland.

If proposals aimed at toughening the state’s ethics laws die, the blows dealt those efforts in the Senate likely will be the reason.

State Sen. Luke Rankin, R-Horry, spelled out the beginning of the end Wednesday, when he argued the Senate had done a good job investigating and punishing its own members – the same argument he made two years ago when the Senate first let the clock run out on ethics reforms.

Rankin added that sending ethics complaints against lawmakers to an already overburdened State Ethics Commission, as Martin proposed, was a bad idea. Instead, he recommended replacing Martin’s proposal with a joint legislative-public panel.

Rankin also asked his colleagues why they were “being asked to chuck” their authority to investigate themselves as members of the House and Senate ethics committees.

“No disrespect to the governor. This is her issue. Again, it’s the House’s issue,” Rankin said.

Year 3 of debate

Lawmakers have been under pressure to pass ethics reforms since 2012, when Haley announced it as a top priority.

That call for change came just months after Haley was investigated on complaints she violated ethics laws while a Lexington state representative.

Republican Haley was cleared by a GOP-dominated House Ethics Committee, raising questions about that panel’s fairness. Later, the House changed that panel’s makeup to have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans.

But ethics reform advocates say recent high-profile ethics scandals show why S.C. ethics laws need to be changed.

Last fall, House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor public corruption charges after trying to dismantle an investigation that led to his indictment.

In 2013, state Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston, resigned after the Rankin-led Senate Ethics Committee accused him of misusing campaign money. Earlier this year, Ford pleaded guilty to spending campaign money on himself.

Those abuses could have been caught more quickly with more effective oversight, reform advocates say.

‘Slap in the face’

The House, which passed an ethics reform bill two years ago, has passed more reform proposals this year, approving 11 out of 18 ethics-related proposals, each addressing a narrow reform.

But, in two years of debate, little has changed in the Senate.

Wednesday, a majority of senators agreed with Rankin, voting to replace Martin’s proposed independent panel to investigate lawmakers with one that has lawmakers and members of the public.

Haley immediately threatened to veto any bill “that does not include true independent investigations of elected officials.”

“When we allow legislators to investigate themselves, it is a slap in the face to every citizen in South Carolina,” Haley said on Facebook.

After hours of debate – veering from topic to topic – the Senate Wednesday defeated its own sweeping ethics reform proposal. In the end, Martin, the bill’s chief architect, voted against his own proposal because it no longer included independent oversight.

After voting against the legislation, Martin said he was “very disappointed, after all the time and effort expended, that we had lost that provision of what I consider to be a true reform.”

The remaining proposal, he added, “was so unacceptable I couldn’t even vote to send the blooming thing to the House, knowing that I would have a chance to amend it later.”

‘Things ... they just did not want’

Even after Wednesday’s vote, Martin says he has some hope he can “resurrect” the reform proposal by getting the Senate to reconsider.

“I don’t think it’s dead,” he said. “It’s obviously on life support.”

But, after two years of reaching the same impasse on who should have the authority to investigate lawmakers, Scott, the Richland Democrat, says there is little desire to continue the fight.

Scott said Martin should have voted for Rankin’s compromise, then let the bill go to the House, where debate might have led to the changes that Martin wanted.

“I voted for the bill,” Scott said Friday. “I didn’t want people to say (Democrats) held the bill up. It represented a compromise.”

As for other senators, “There were things in the ethics bill that they just did not want,” Scott said, adding the appetite for revisiting the ethics debate has passed.

Martin still sees his single ethics bill, which makes multiple changes to the state ethics law, as the best shot at passing reforms in this two-year legislative session.

Taking up each narrow House bill could cause the same struggle, again and again, he said.

“Anything of consequence or with any controversy to it, you face the same hurdles and obstacles on everything you do,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to start down that road.”

Primary challenges?

Some lawmakers clearly have little passion for the issue, contending the only calls for change have come from the media, advocacy groups and the governor.

That needs to change, Martin said, calling on South Carolinians to call their representatives.

Haley attacked senators who voted against her wishes.

“How bad is the coverup if these legislators will fight this hard against independent investigations and insist on overseeing themselves?” she wrote on Facebook. “Don’t forget their names and let them know you expect them to reverse course. No excuses.”

But some reform advocates remain unfazed.

Lawmakers just need a little pressure, said John Crangle of the government watchdog group Common Cause of South Carolina.

“With the senators coming up for elections next year, they don’t want to be vulnerable to primary challenges, which some of them might be facing if they don’t get meaningful ethics reform passed,” Crangle said.

“This was just the first skirmish in the Senate,” he added. “We’ll see how they stand up to pressure next week.”

This story was originally published February 13, 2015 at 8:11 PM with the headline "On ‘life support’ or dead? SC Senate stalls on ethics reforms."