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by ALAN WILSON
Since Donald Trump was sworn back into office, all eyes have been paying attention to the work being done by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Supporters have hailed it as a desperately needed reform to rein in the federal government’s gross amounts of fraud, waste, and abuse. Opponents, on the other hand, cry foul and proclaim it’s an unconstitutional power grab. Both sides agree that people are now paying more attention to how our government is misspending our money.
What’s happening at the federal level can also be done here in South Carolina. I am happy to see our legislative leaders begin to discuss the idea of a DOGE in this state. I strongly support this idea, and the good news is that our state already has a framework for establishing a DOGE-like agency. The Office of the State Inspector General is an agency that investigates allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, misconduct, violations of state or federal law, and misconduct by agencies and political subdivisions.
The problem, however, is that while the Inspector General’s office is good at receiving complaints of abuse and issuing its findings, it is not adequately equipped to randomly and proactively conduct audits of entities receiving state-appropriated funds at the local or state level. The Inspector General must first receive a complaint or allegation before an investigation can begin. However, most fraud, waste, abuse, and misconduct is never reported because it’s either unknown or occurs in local government, where there is less oversight.
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What if the Inspector General’s office were equipped to be more of a DOGE-like watchdog agency? It would randomly and proactively conduct audits and reviews on all state agencies and political subdivisions that receive state-appropriated funds, regardless of whether a complaint is filed. This new agency would report or recover misspent tax dollars and deter future fraudulent or wasteful spending. This office could also root out and expose bad conduct by state or local government officials.
Consider the billions of dollars in state-appropriated funds that state agencies, municipalities, counties, and school districts receive. These funds rarely get a second look to see if these recipients spent tax dollars in the way they were intended. When these entities conduct audits, they are overseen by the people receiving the tax dollars. This is akin to a fox guarding a henhouse.
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Local school districts and political subdivisions receiving funds should spend them as if, on any given day, a state watchdog agency could walk through their doors with the authority to compel them to open their books, search their public records, and interview any employee. The deterrent effect would be very similar to how people decide to drive on public roads. When law enforcement officers randomly and proactively police our highways, it doesn’t always guarantee that people will never drive intoxicated or recklessly, but it certainly catches many who do and deters others from taking that chance.
The Office of the Inspector General should be more like the police who patrol the open roads. Its authority and resources should be reformed to allow it to become a more effective government watchdog. It should possess the statutory authority to empower it to root out fraud, waste, abuse, and bad conduct of government officials at all levels of government. It should be adequately staffed and funded so that random audits and investigations can happen all over the state.
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“The Office of the Inspector General should be more like the police who patrol the open roads…”
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When conduct becomes criminal, the Inspector General can refer those cases to the Attorney General for criminal prosecution. In all other cases, the public can have a complete and transparent accounting of how their local officials are spending their tax dollars, educating their kids, and whether they are following the law. Government agencies and political subdivisions that act responsibly should be effusively praised in public reports, and those who mismanage and abuse public trust should be outed to the voters.
As Attorney General, I’ve spent my career prosecuting and investigating public corruption and bad conduct by public officials. This experience has led me to the inescapable conclusion that we need to reform the State Inspector General’s office to be South Carolina’s version of DOGE. You cannot always prosecute bad government, but you can expose it. For the government actors whose conduct is criminal, let’s take them to a court of law. For the government actors whose conduct is bad, let SC DOGE take them to the court of public opinion.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Alan Wilson is the attorney general of South Carolina.
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6 comments
Our IG’s office is staffed with a bunch of former FBI employees that many times lack an understanding of the agencies they’re investigating. Our state’s political subdivisions and school districts undergo annual audits by independent auditors. The State, on the other hand, is audited by the State Auditor’s Office. They say they “serve as the independent audit function for the State of South Carolina”. Their definition of “independent” must be different than mine.
“Our state’s … school districts undergo annual audits by independent auditors.” Were that, that was true. RCSD1, Lex2 and many others are virtual slush funds of misapplied funding, waste and outright fraud and graft. Maybe 1/3rd of our school districts (and we have 80 some) wold survive an outside audit by a competent auditor.
In dollar terms, I think most waste will be found at the county level. When state funding lands in their coffers, under current law the IG has little authority to see what gets done with it. The law will have to be changed to allow OIG to do anything meaningful. People go to them as well as the AG’s office to report fraud, waste and abuse at the county level but little gets done. It’s not necessarily a criticism of them per se (but in some cases it is), because they just don’t have the level of manpower and funding to really dig into county level corruption involving state funds sent to them, but if they ever got that fixed, I’d predict with confidence that they would find rampant misuse of local option penny tax funds and accommodations tax funds – the latter in particular because the nonprofits that get funneled that money have zero compulsory accountability in the places where the complaints are the strongest. There are literally employees and board members of these nonprofit entities who go out and set up their own internet advertizing/marketing companies that then get no-bid vendor contracts from the nonprofit they serve…all they are doing is buying ads from google, meta, etc. and then marking up their invoices by shockingly high profit margins. It would be a major scandal if anyone with real access and accounting expertise were ever able to open the hood on this stuff. But no-one wants to go after the people that throw the best parties and golfing outings in the state – funded by tax dollars.
We also need a real whistleblower law… in federal matters, a whistleblower can receive up to 30% of the funds recovered with no cap. There are quite a few people who have been awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars – even millions for exposing fraud at the federal level. Under SC law there is a cap at a paltry 2k for state employee whistleblowers (there is no whistleblower reward to private citizens). While they are supposed to be protected, they probably know that it is not worth the stress and headache of calling out fraud for such a pittance. There was apparently a bill introduced in the House back in 2019 that would have removed the reward caps, but it never went anywhere.
Elon Musk’s DOGE is making waves because: 1. It is using innovative AI discovery tools, and 2. It enables young, brilliant data investigators with no conflicts of interest in the outcome. Transparency is the enemy of Fraud. If the SC version of DOGE mimics Elon Musk/Trump version, we may be surprised at the results. What if we learn how to redesign our data tools, policies and procedures to catch Fraud before it happens?
No, that is not what his happening. He and his former hackers are downloading all the information the government has on us, including our SSNs, tax returns, bank accounts, investment accounts, and CC numbers. These will all be downloaded to Musk’s new AI program, GROK3. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. But at a minimum, they will be able to track you and your spending and shut down your accounts, if they choose to do so.
This is all information the Chinese spend billions a year trying to steal and to date, the US has spent billions trying to protect. And it will all be given to a man whose wealth the Chinese government could take away tomorrow by shutting down his Chinese manufacturing facilities. Over half of Tesla’s production capacity is in China and XI could shut it down tomorrow. In normal times this man would never have the security clearance to get this information. What if China threatens to bankrupt Tesla if Elon does not give them the information they want?