Confederate Evasion

An eight year odyssey of evasion finally ended last month when a judge ordered S.C. Senate President Glenn McConnell and Warren Lasch’s “Friends of the Hunley” group to pay $140,000 in court costs to Greenville, S.C. government watchdog Ned Sloan, the prevailing party in one of our state’s most significant open records lawsuits.

The story of Sloan v. The Submarine is one of mind-boggling contempt for the people of South Carolina, whose open records laws were trampled under foot as McConnell  – the powerful Senate President – funneled millions of taxpayer dollars into a secretive group charged with “restoring” the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley.

Eight years ago, Sloan sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to “Friends of the Hunley” asking for information about its taxpayer-funded operations.

FOIA’s are common information gathering tools used by reporters and government watchdogs to gather public information, and South Carolina’s FOIA law is written very broadly so as to prevent public entities from hiding information about their activities.

Nonetheless, Sloan’s request was rejected, prompting a legal battle that “Friends of the Hunley” managed to stretch out for nearly a decade.

From Judge Joseph Strickland’s ruling last month:

This litigation has taken nearly eight years to resolve … Only after litigation had begun did (Friends of the Hunley) produce the documents Plaintiff originally request under FOIA, and only after the litigation progressed to oral argument before our Supreme Court, did Defendants concede that they were indeed a public body subject to FOIA.

Indeed, “Friends of the Hunley” stonewalled right up to the end, and only when a Supreme Court defeat was staring them in the face did they provide Sloan with the public information he requested.

Of course, their objective in doing so obviously wasn’t to be transparent, it was to avoid having to pay the price for their obstructionism.

Quoting again from his ruling, though, Judge Strickland was having none of that:

… the Friends of the Hunley, “after extensive litigation, at the eleventh hour, and facing imminent defeat, [attempted to] simply moot [the] case in order to dodge this fee-shifting statute.”

Good for him.

Strickland’s ruling is a huge victory for open government – and for the press. Which is why it’s funny that no mainstream media outlet in South Carolina has even mentioned it.

“Friends of the Hunley” spent four years trying to hide their taxpayer-funded shenanigans from public view, and another four years trying to duck the costs associated with doing so.

Now they’ve been busted on both counts.

According to Strickland, McConnell and Lasch “transformed a simple FOIA request and the applicability of FOIA into complex and drawn out litigation.”

That’s putting it nicely.

Nonetheless, the message to government entities here is simple: “Stonewall at your own risk.”

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