Haley's cleared after threatening legislators

Corey Hutchens of Columbia's Free Times fills us in:

South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley’s defense against an ethics probe into alleged improper behavior as a lawmaker could be summed up succinctly: Clear me or I’ll throw you all under the bus.

According to a copy of Haley’s defense obtained by Free Times, the governor’s lawyer wrote on March 30 to the chairman of the House Ethics Committee that was investigating her that Haley’s “business activities and conduct are commonplace in the Legislature.”

The lawyer also wrote, “To find otherwise would not only impugn the integrity of many other members of the General Assembly, but also that of many of South Carolina's best corporate partners: BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, Michelin, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and several others.”

Haley has been under investigation by the secretive legislative ethics panel for a month. Yesterday, the House voted to allow ethics inquiries to become public if the panel finds probable cause for an investigation.

The panel investigated whether Gov. Nikki Haley broke any laws as a House member either by lobbying a state agency on behalf of her employer Lexington Medical Center or by doing secret consulting work for Wilbur Smith and failing to properly abstain from legislation benefiting the engineering firm. Both occurred during the time she represented Lexington County as a Republican in the S.C. House prior to becoming governor in 2010.

Longtime Republican fundraiser John Rainey filed the complaint.

Members of the committee voted 5-1 today to clear Haley of wrongdoing. The lone holdout was the only Democrat serving on the six-member panel.

The committee essentially took Haley’s attorneys and an attorney for the Lexington Medical Center at their word, said House Ethics Committee Chairman Ronald Smith, an Aiken Republican, during an interview with Free Times.

“Were they pleased with everything? No. Did they find cause to proceed further for example to the attorney general’s office … or law enforcement? The committee didn’t find that.”

Smith said the committee didn't do much in the form of an independent investigation into the claims.

"Do we have an investigator on our staff who can go out there and do an investigation like the State Ethics [Commission]? No," he said. "We have one full-time employee."

The State newspaper is reporting the same outcome, but its report includes none of the details of Haley's defense. It offers an anemic quote from Ethics Committee chair Roland Smith, and an explanation from the dissenter, Rep. Laurie Slade Funderburk:

"We found no evidence that she lobbied," said Rep. Roland Smith, R-Aiken and chairman of the committee.

Rep. Laurie Funderburk, D-Kershaw, said a hearing is needed to further dig into the issue, but she was overruled. She cast the sole dissenting vote against dismissing the complaint.

"I was not comfortable dismissing without more facts," Funderburk said. "A hearing would have determined whether there was any wrongdoing."

Score one more against transparency and due process.

Haley attacks Rainey, hides behind secrecy rules

Despite his service as chairman of the state's Board of Economic Advisors, John Rainey is likely best known in South Carolina politics as the man who recruited Mark Sanford to run for governor in 2002. To put that decision in context, Sanford's reputation in 2002 was as a principled ultra-conservative -- even Libertarian -- Republican who was famous for limiting himself to three terms in Congress and sleeping in his Congressional office to save federal dollars.

As Sanford's mentor, Rainey cemented his reputation as a conservative godfather. So, say what one may about Rainey, but no sentient being would ever accuse him of being liberal, even progressive.

Yet Governor Nikki Haley has attacked Rainey this week in the most vicious political and personal terms to date. Through her mouthpiece, Haley called Rainey "an embittered old man with a political vendetta."

Haley is lashing out at Rainey in large part because of his principles on ethics -- principles that were, unfortunately for her, reinforced by Sanford when critics questioned his use of public funds during her term in office. At that time, Sanford waived his rights to confidentiality throughout the ethics investigation, ensuring that the media and the public would have access to findings.

Now that Haley is the focus of ethical questions -- questions posed by Rainey in the form of litigation -- her legislative critics have asked Haley to follow Sanford's lead and cooperate fully and openly.

But Haley has chosen a very different pair of strategies: First, stonewall and hide; second, attack Rainey.

Gov. Nikki Haley on Tuesday rebuffed House Democrats’ call for her to waive confidentiality in a possible ethics investigation, calling questions about work she did for a pair of her pre-gubernatorial employers a “waste of time.”

Through a spokesman, Haley said she would abandon confidentiality only if lawmakers want to change state law so that all past and future ethics complaints are public.

Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Harry Ott of Calhoun, said the first-term Republican governor who made increasing transparency a central plank in her 2010 campaign should “let some sunshine in.”

“Nobody is here to say that any laws have been broken, but the public has a right to know,” he said.

“It is time that we hold ourself to a higher standard.”

Democrats are pushing Haley to drop confidentiality after a circuit judge last week dismissed a complaint by GOP activist and former state Board of Economic Advisers Chairman John Rainey.

The complaint alleged that Haley used her state office during her time as a state representative from Lexington County to lobby in violation of state law while serving as a fundraiser for the Lexington Medical Center foundation.

Let's keep in mind that when she was hired by the Lexington Medical Center as a fundraiser, she had no experience as a corporate fundraiser and no background in the health care industry. Her only qualification for the job seems to have been that she occupied a seat in the state legislature.

The filing also accused the governor of failing to disclose her work for another pre-gubernatorial employer on state campaign disclosure forms.

The judge didn’t rule on the merits of Rainey’s complaint, instead deciding that under state law, the House Ethics Committee must handle ethics issues involving a current or former state House member.

Any investigation of Haley by the committee would have to be triggered by a formal complaint, which any South Carolinian can file.

But the public is kept in the dark throughout much of the process.

By law, committee members and anybody who’s filed a complaint cannot comment on any investigation or complaint or face penalties.

Rainey cited that law in declining to comment Tuesday on whether he’s filed a complaint with the committee.

The longtime committee chairman, state Rep. Roland Smith, R-Aiken, said Tuesday that the subject of any investigation can drop confidentiality, making the process “open.”

Democrats said Haley should follow in the footsteps of her one-time political mentor, former Gov. Mark Sanford, in waiving confidentiality in the event of a committee investigation, which would likely center on the charges presented in Rainey’s lawsuit.

A spokesman for Haley said Tuesday that Rainey is “an embittered man with a political vendetta.”

“He has already wasted the time of the courts,” Rob Godfrey said in a statement. “He can try to waste the time of the General Assembly. He will not waste any of the governor’s time.”

Godfrey said questions about the allegations lobbed by Rainey already have been answered and that the regular procedures should be followed if there is an ethics complaint.

This response fits the definition of a "fig leaf." Go back to the date that these questions were originally asked, and you'll find that Haley and her ilk dismissed the questions as baseless, just political theater. Now, when questions are raised, the response is that the questions are old and were addressed long ago. This is taught in Basic Political Obfuscation 101.

“We’re confident that the ethics committee will come to the same conclusion as every other entity that Mr. Rainey has shopped this nonsense to — that it is entirely baseless,” Godfrey said.

House Democrats unveiled a package of bills last week that included a measure to eliminate the state House and Senate ethics committees and turn investigations of previous and current lawmakers over to the State Ethics Commission.

Reporter Robert Kittle of WSPA added a bit more to the day's coverage, further illustration of the obfuscation strategy:

"If there is an ethics complaint about matters that took place years ago – and that have already been answered again and again – the regular procedures should be followed," Godfrey wrote in a news release Tuesday. "Regular procedures" mean the public won't know whether a complaint has been filed.

In other words, it's the same-old, same-old -- the very status quo that Haley campaigned against, when transparency was her favorite word.

The possibility of an ethics complaint stems from a lawsuit against the governor by John Rainey, a leading Republican fundraiser and former chairman of the Board of Economic Advisors under Gov. Mark Sanford. He filed the lawsuit in state Circuit Court, but Judge Casey Manning dismissed the suit last week, saying the matter was for the State Ethics Commission or legislative Ethics Committees to decide.

The suit alleges Haley illegally lobbied state lawmakers and the state Department of Health and Environmental Control while she was a member of the House and was working for Lexington Medical Center, which was trying to get state approval for a new open-heart surgery center.

The suit also claims she failed to disclose on her campaign filings that she also worked for Wilber Smith, an engineering firm with state contracts. Haley has denied any wrongdoing, and said previously that state law did not require her to report her work for Wilbur Smith.

Since the lawsuit was dismissed and the judge explained the proper venues for the complaints, it's expected that Rainey will file a complaint with either the State Election Commission or House Ethics Committee.

House Democrats on Tuesday afternoon called on the governor to waive confidentiality.

"Nobody is here today to say that any rules were broken, but we are here to say that the public has a right to know," said Rep. Harry Ott, D-St. Matthews, House Minority Leader. "We believe Gov. Haley, particularly after running on a platform of transparency in government, needs to be the transparent governor that she wants to be and say to the people of South Carolina, 'I have nothing to hide. I'm going to waive my confidentiality clause and let the public know what is or is not going on.'"

It has happened before. Then-governor Mark Sanford waived confidentiality when he faced ethics charges before the State Ethics Commission over his use of state airplanes and state travel money.

When asked by 7 On Your Side Tuesday morning whether she would waive confidentiality, Gov. Haley said she wouldn't talk about it unless there was a complaint. When told there was no way to know whether a complaint had been filed, she said, "Well, when there is one you can let me know."

This is laughable. Our state's chief potentate does a two-step around the media, inviting them to let her know if a confidential ethics investigation is initiated against her.

Why are ethics complaints confidential? Rep. J. Roland Smith, R-Warrenville, chairman of the House Ethics Committee, says it's state law. Don't taxpayers have a right to know whether the elected officials being paid by their tax dollars have ethics complaints against them?

"I will not disagree with you, but we have to abide by the law and the law says that it's confidential," he says. "I can't even acknowledge if there is a complaint at any time or if there's not a complaint."

Godfrey, Haley's spokesman, says of the lawsuit and possible ethics complaint,

"John Rainey is an embittered man with a political vendetta. He has already wasted the time of the courts. He can try to waste the time of the General Assembly. He will not waste any of the governor’s time. If there is an ethics complaint about matters that took place years ago – and that have already been answered again and again – the regular procedures should be followed, and we’re confident that the ethics committee will come to the same conclusion as every other entity that Mr. Rainey has shopped this nonsense to – that it is entirely baseless."

Baseless.

As baseless as were Haley's qualifications for South Carolina's highest public office?

Could Glenn McConnell become Governor?

If John Rainey gets his way, it will be so: Glenn McConnell -- now less than a week into his service as Lieutenant Governor -- may succeed Nikki Haley before her first term ends in January, 2015.

As widely respected as McConnell is for his whipsmart political mind, today's news from Columbia may show that McConnell is also the cleverest person in the entire legislature.

The news? It comes from Columbia's Free Times, which broke the story last fall of Lt. Governor Ken Ard's ethical challenges.

A judge heard oral arguments on March 12 in a public corruption lawsuit brought on behalf of a prominent GOP fundraiser against Republican Gov. Nikki Haley.

Fifth Circuit Judge Casey Manning has yet to make an official ruling on whether the case will move forward.

If ever answered prayers might prove beneficial to the people of a state, now is the time to pray that Judge Casey Manning grants time and space for justice to blossom in his courtroom. In the spirit of last year's Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans, let's pray for a Carolina Spring.

Reached by phone, Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said the governor's office had no immediate comment on the matter.

Of course she hasn't. That doesn't stop the rest of us from considering it aloud, in public places.

Former Board of Economic Advisors chairman John Rainey, who recruited Mark Sanford to run for governor in 2002, filed the lawsuit in November. It asks whether Haley broke any laws as a House member either by lobbying a state agency on behalf of her employer Lexington Medical Center or by doing secret consulting work for Wilbur Smith and failing to properly abstain from legislation benefitting the engineering firm. Both occurred during the time she represented Lexington County as a Republican in the S.C. House prior to becoming governor in 2010.

Regardless of how the judge rules, a complaint could still be filed with the S.C. House Ethics Committee, a six-member panel of House members that regulates the conduct of current and former House members and candidates.

Complaints brought before the committee can end up in front of Republican State Attorney General Alan Wilson. On March 9, Wilson indicted former Lt. Gov. Ken Ard, a fellow Republican, on public corruption charges.

“I believe Governor Haley is the most corrupt person to occupy the Governor’s Mansion since Reconstruction,” Rainey has said. “Put it another way: I think she is corrupt to the core of her being.”

To the core of her being.

I don't know for sure about Haley's anatomy, but I believe that when the House proposed improving its appropriation to public schools, she excoriated House members and demanded they use that money instead for corporate tax breaks. If that represents being corrupt to the core of her being, then she's corrupt.

Rainey's lawsuit also alleges that Haley filed false claims on her ethics reports, failed to disclose her association with lobbyists; neglected to disclose conflicts of interests when voting on bills; illegally voted to benefit a business she was associated with; and used her office to solicit money from lobbyists.

Whew. That's a lot of failing and using.

The House Ethics Committee is charged with regulating its own members and former members. The State Ethics Commission does not have jurisdiction over current or former state legislators.

Oh, no, no -- this is too big an issue to leave to the House Ethics Committee. That's a recipe for delay, distraction, disappointment and dissatisfaction. A Haley investigation would be buried there, and we'd never hear of it again.

Aiken Republican Rep. Roland Smith chairs the House Ethics Committee. The retired rural mail carrier and minister says he is not aware of any complaint against Haley before his committee.

If his committee received one, Smith says, he would refer it to staff attorney Emma Dean to determine if it’s valid. Dean has been there about a year, he said. She is also assistant counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. If Dean decides the complaint deserves an investigation then she would refer it to the committee for a vote on whether to proceed.

The committee has a staff of two, according to its researcher Adam Anderson. After staffers make recommendations on a complaint, the committee members serve as “the judge and jury,” Smith said.

See? Recipe for disappointment. When was the last time the House Ethics Committee ruled against a sitting governor and called into question the legitimacy of his (or, now, her) claim to the office? I wager it's never happened.

Smith says his committee could be fair and impartial if it had to investigate a sitting governor – and a fellow Republican.

“We would certainly have to entertain that,” he said March 16 about what would happen if he received a complaint about Haley. “We have to be fair … that's our motto: to see that House members are treated fairly as well as people in the public that may be dealing with whatever is being dealt with.”

Smith said if the committee found probable cause in an investigation it would refer the findings to the attorney general.

Five Republicans make up the six-member panel.

“We’ve got honest people on the Ethics Committee that really take their job seriously,” Smith said.

We had an honest governor who cheated on his wife and lied to South Carolinians about leaving the country to be with his mistress.

We had an honest state treasurer who was using and dealing cocaine.

We had an honest agriculture commissioner who held illegal cockfights.

We had an honest 66-year-old assistant attorney general who was caught on a Monday at 3:15 in the afternoon sitting in his car with some adult toys, some little blue pills and an 18-year-old stripper in Columbia's Elmwood Cemetery.

We have two honest state representatives serving today, one under indictment for failing to file tax returns, and another arrested for harrassment; and a third state representative suspended from office, under indictment for failing file state tax returns.

Our government is full of honest people. They're so honest, they rarely seem able to find fault in the crimes and ethical lapses of others like them.

Which, luckily, our judicial system is designed and empowered to do for them.

As it related to any complaint against Haley, Smith said in November, “I’m interested if there is substance … If that’s brought before the committee.”

He also said his Ethics Committee doesn’t comment on any investigations -- or about whether it is even conducting them.

Common Cause of South Carolina director John Crangle, whose watchdog group has observed state government for decades, doesn't have much faith in the panel.

“The House Ethics Committee in my opinion is little more than a fraud,” he says.

Little more than a fraud. I don't know John Crangle, but I respect his intelligence and judgment. He seems to know a bit about our state government.

Crangle says the panel has historically accomplished little more than receiving reports filed by House members related to their campaign fundraising and says anything it does is confidential.

Options for sanctions against a House member under the committee could include a private or public reprimand, depending on what the members find.

“Historically I can't recall a single case in which they have publicly disciplined a House member, and that even goes back to Operation Lost Trust where a number of House members were indicted and convicted of bribery,” Crangle says.

Not a single case, he says, in all these years. There's been just too many honest people serving in government, obviously.

Lawmakers are proposing a bill that would abolish the respective House and Senate ethics committees and instead put legislators under the jurisdiction of the State Ethics Committee.

“Right now you have the fox guarding the hen house,” says bill sponsor Rep. Boyd Brown, a Fairfield County Democrat. “It's like delivering lettuce by way of the rabbit. It's anything but ethical.”

Candidly, I don't see this proposal going far. South Carolina doesn't have a good record of abolishing bad ideas.

As for John Rainey and his corruption charges: After what happened this week to our former Lieutenant Governor, momentum would seem to be on the side of investigation and resignation.

Onward!

Haley makes heroes of local lawmakers

Following in former Governor Mark Sanford's footsteps, Governor Nikki Haley has accomplished a tricky feat: She has made heroes of local lawmakers across South Carolina who voted to override her vetoes.

Today's edition of the Aiken Standard offers one example of the phenomenon:

On Tuesday, S.C. Rep. Roland Smith, R-Warrenville, said he couldn't predict how the House members would react to 34 budget vetoes from Gov. Nikki Haley. About 24 hours later, he was expressing surprise by the huge margins that the House overrode 26 of those vetoes.

The Senate also overrode all but one of those vetoes, leaving funds in the budget for K-12 education, higher education, ETV, the S.C. Arts Commission and much more.

Smith said Lexington lawmaker Kenny Bingham was frustrated with Haley over her veto of $6 million going to ETV to cover the agency's education programming and training for law enforcement and other programs. In effect, Bingham felt the governor had vetoed a funding plan for ETV that she herself had requested.

"He was very upset, and that's putting it mildly," said Smith. "At a meeting this morning, (Haley's) staff people did a briefing, and some legislators felt they (the staffers) didn't have the information they should have. That was somewhat surprising, but the governor has been in for six months with a totally new staff. They are still learning."

But she seems unaware of what's she done: "The Associated Press reported Haley stated the overrides of her vetoes indicate that legislators are overspending."

In addition to counting their local representatives as saviors, local officials are counting the benefits from all those overridden vetoes.

The overrides of education funding means a swing of about $3.6 million for the Aiken County School District, said comptroller Tray Traxler. The General Assembly reinstated $56 million toward raising per-pupil allocations statewide. Aiken County had budgeted $1,860 per student in anticipation of the increase. If Haley's veto had been sustained, the amount would have been $1,788, a loss of about $1.6 million, Traxler said. With the override, however, the district will get an allocation of $1,880, which will mean about $2 million overall.

In addition, state lawmakers put back supplemental funds for several districts, which will mean another $1.6 million for the Aiken County school system. Traxler said the School Board didn't budget that amount in anticipation of a change in a school funding formula that wold reduce the allocation in that amount. However, the House and Senate will provide $20 million overall for Aiken and other districts, "holding them harmless" for that prospective loss of funds.

"This is great news," said board member Levi Green. "We have to make sure we use that money wisely. If something happens and we get a hit (in funding) next year, we can tap those funds."

When the House members saw all the governor's vetoes directed at education, Green said, "I think they had a clear understanding of what she was doing. They couldn't let her take money off the table that's desperately needed for education."

It's good news for all public schools in South Carolina, said another board member, Keith Liner. The money is not a windfall, he said. Under the state's own funding formula, school districts should be receiving nearly $2,800 per student.

"This really sends a message that at least the House and Senate are supportive of public education."

Seeing the backlash against the vetoes -- and against lawmakers who voted to sustain them -- even Haley's supporters have to say something to keep them in local voters' good graces:

S.C. Sen. Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, voted to sustain the veto of the $56 million for K-12 education, opposing one-time funding for ongoing needs. However, he agreed to override the other $20 million, because those funds were preventing the loss of formula funding for Aiken County and other districts. Overall, however, Massey wasn't happy with the governor, either.

"The vetoes she issued were relatively insignificant," he said. "The big money items where there is significant growth in spending, she didn't touch. A lot of conservatives thought she would try to trim down things. We're very disappointed."

Those who have been around since Haley was in college are managing the matter with deftness.

S.C. Rep. Bill Clyburn, D-Aiken, agreed that the Wednesday session was one of the most unusual in his 15 years of service.

"I feel so much better about the education spending," he said. "Everybody knows how important ETV is and public safety training. This is not a party thing."