Gov. Haley says Lt. Gov. McMaster helped ‘kill’ ethics reform

Gov. Nikki Haley criticized one of her closest allies, Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster, Thursday after he threw out a key portion of an ethics-law reform bill under debate in the S.C. Senate.

“It is amazing the level elected officials will go to avoid disclosing who pays them. Never did we think that this Lt. Governor would help the Senate kill income disclosures,” the Lexington Republican wrote in a Facebook post. “There is no good excuse for what happened today — and how incredibly sad we are for our state.”

McMaster, a Columbia Republican who presides over the Senate, was asked to rule on a motion by state Sen. Gerald Malloy, D-Darlington, concerning an amendment that required lawmakers to share more information about where they earn money — a cornerstone of ethics reforms, one of Haley’s top legislative priorities.

The Senate amendment replaced a House ethics bill. However, the amendment contained items not in the House bill, including income disclosure. McMaster said that left him no option but to follow the law and punt the measure.

McMaster said the decision pained him, adding he supports more transparency. The former S.C. attorney general was appointed by Haley to co-chair an ethics-reform task force in 2012. The Senate amendment addressed some of the issues raised by that task force, he said Thursday.

“We ran into a little bump today,” McMaster said. “The session is not over.”

He said the Senate could try to take up other ethics bills that the House has approved.

McMaster said Haley visited him Thursday during the Senate session to ask him to consider ruling against challenges to the Senate amendment.

“She said how important the bill was and what kind of opportunity we had to make changes,” McMaster said.

The lieutenant governor said he and Haley, whom he has supported since losing the GOP primary to her in 2010, have a good relationship.

“This is just another day at the State House,” he said.

Democrats called out Haley Thursday, saying she was a hypocrite. They noted she faced ethics charges in 2012 for failing to disclose some of her income while she was a state representative. Haley was cleared of any wrong-doing by the House Ethics Committee.

“Bless her heart. It seems to me that Governor Hypocrite Haley has a bad case of short-term memory loss,” said Malloy, also a target of Haley’s critical Facebook post.

This story was originally published April 7, 2016 at 6:30 PM with the headline "Gov. Haley says Lt. Gov. McMaster helped ‘kill’ ethics reform."