Crangle: Legislators’ jobs do not include committing crimes

Convicted former House Speaker Bobby Harrell says it was legal for him to use $134,000 from his campaign funds to pay his attorneys to plead him guilty on six criminal counts. His argument is based on 8-13-1348(A), which says the ban on using campaign funds to defray personal expenses does not prohibit “an expenditure used to defray any ordinary expenses incurred in connection with an individual’s duties as a holder of elective office.”

Apparently Harrell thinks that his six crimes were incurred in connection with his ordinary duties as an elected official. Of course, the ordinary citizens of South Carolina would think that the ethics of our officials have not yet degenerated to the point where the commission of crimes has become part of the job description of those paid by the taxpayers.

Rep. Ken Bailey tried a similar argument in his 1993 appeal to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, when his attorneys argued that the FBI had interfered with the operations of the state government in violation of the U.S. Constitution by giving Bailey bribe money in the Operation Lost Trust sting operation that convicted 17 legislators.

But the 4th Circuit held in U.S. v. Bailey that taking bribes was not part of the job of being a state legislator and Bailey was not conducting state business when he took a payoff to vote for a betting bill.

The House Ethics Committee in 2015 must rule on Harrell’s defense, and it is better than the House Ethics Committee of 1990, when three of its six members were among those who would be convicted for taking bribes in the sting operation, rendering the committee unable to act because it lacked a quorum.

Of course, cynics have argued since Lost Trust that legislative ethics committees are, by design, thalidomide babies — their limbs stunted by conflicts of interest, partisan partiality and self-guilt.

This story was originally published December 28, 2015 at 12:53 PM.