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Our State Ethics Commission Blows

WHAT’S THE POINT IN HAVING A LAW IF NOBODY’S ENFORCING IT?

FITSNews - July 22, 2008 - In case you were wondering why people are always breaking South Carolina’s already-lax ethics laws, it’s because the agency charged with enforcing them is even laxer.

This holds especially true for South Carolina’s educrat establishment, which has apparently been granted the exclusive right to use taxpayer funds and resources for political activity despite the fact that state law expressly forbids such uses.

Now, the S.C. State Ethics Commission is declining to enforce two other laws in a recent pro-educrat ruling - the law that requires lobbyists to register and report their activities and another law that requires in-kind contributions to political organizations to be disclosed.

According to the first of these controversial decisions, which was reached last month, the Ethics Commission flatly ignored the fact that a paid employee of the S.C. Association of School Administrators (which frequently uses taxpayer resources and whose employees receive state benefits) explicitly lobbied a member of the General Assembly at the request of the organization - and did so without registering as a lobbyist.

In fact, the Commission admitted as much in its ruling concerning SCASA’s Ross Shealy.

“From the investigation it is clear that Ross Shealy was employed at SCASA and that he provided information to a Representative of the General Assembly that was favorable to the position of SCASA. Furthermore, it appears that the director of SCASA facilitated setting up the meeting between (State Rep.) Herb Kirsh and Shealy.”

Wait a minute … that’s not lobbying?

According to state law, it absolutely is.

From the statute governing such activities, “lobbying means promoting or opposing through direct communication with public officials the introduction or enactment of legislation before the General Assembly,” and a lobbyist is “any person who is employed, appointed, or retained, with or without compensation, by another person to influence by direct communication with public officials or public employees.”

As if that definition wasn’t clear enough, shortly after his meeting with Shealy, Rep. Kirsh introduced a bill based exclusively on the information that Shealy provided him, something he made perfectly clear in an interview given to La Socialista’s John Monk the day he filed his legislation.

So what gives?

Basically, everything … at least everything our laws are supposedly founded on.

In fact, the practical impact of this Ethics Commission ruling is simple - every lobbyist in the state of South Carolina should immediately head down to the state capital in Columbia and “de-register,” removing their names from the system and preventing any public oversight whatsoever over their activities.

After all, if getting paid to promote a specific organization’s agenda in front of lawmakers (at that  specific organization’s request) isn’t lobbying, then there’s no reason any of the hundreds of high-paid special interest hacks at the State House should have to follow the law, either - not even those who lobby using taxpayer dollars, or those who take advantage of public funds, resources and benefits like SCASA does.

Based on this ruling, our state might as well be the wild, wild west, people.

Of course like Chamberlain and Munich, the Ethics Commission wasn’t quite done in appeasing the educrats.

They also ruled that SCASA - again, in open contradiction of state law - doesn’t have to report its in-kind contributions to political action committees.

Specifically, the Commission’s “informal advisory opinion” concluded that SCASA’s provision of office space and telephone lines to LEAPAC, a political action committee founded by State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex, doesn’t constitute an in-kind contribution.

“The Ethics Reform Act does not require LEAPAC to disclose in kind contributions received from SCASA because the services being provided by SCASA personnel are not contributions by definition,” the ruling states.

Of course, the decision doesn’t offer any explanation as to how the sharing of resources is exempt from the definition of “contribution,” which is downright ludicrous.

After all, anybody who pays rent or a telephone bill can understand that such provisions clearly fall with the legal definition which requires the disclosure of “anything of value.”

Again, the implication of this ruling on the future of South Carolina’s campaign laws is immense.

Essentially, it means that from this point forward, any political campaign or organization can receive free office space and free telephone service without ever having to report it - even though such in-kind expenditures are expressly prohibited by law.

Needless to say, we’ll be very interested to see how the first tests of these new rulings hold up - particularly if the party that’s attempting to take advantage of them is among those organizations working to improve South Carolina’s academic achievement as opposed to continuing to run it into the ground.

Our bet is that the so-called State Ethics Commission will rule quite differently when the shoe is on the “other foot.”

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