Sunday, May 19, 2024
Local and state officials are sending a lot of mixed messages about the Atlantic Beach Bikefest next year.
So far this week, Atlantic Beach Mayor Jake Evans said the town supported the Atlantic Beach Bikefest and it would continue. The next day, Governor Nikki Haley reiterated the Atlantic Beach Bikefest was bad for South Carolina and it needed to end.
Each admitted they had not talked to the other. Is picking up a phone so hard?
The S.C. Ethics Commission and its executive director Herb Hayden have been sued by The South Carolina Public Interest Foundation for violating the FOIA law by “responding with a falsehood.”
The foundation, a Greenville based government watchdog organization, and its founder Ned Sloan have been very successful over the years filing lawsuits against government agencies and officials for violating state law.
The lawsuit evolves from an attempt by internet media outlet TheNerve.org to obtain a copy of a letter that ethics commission attorney Cathy Hazelwood sent to Gov. Nikki Haley directing the governor to reimburse the state for travels costs associated with a fundraising event.
Sen. Vincent Sheheen, the presumptive Democratic nominee to challenge Gov. Nikki Haley for the governor’s seat in the upcoming November general election, called out New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for hypocrisy.
Sheheen sent a letter to Christie calling on the N.J. governor to explain why the Republican Governors Association, which Christie chairs, financed an ad attacking Sheheen for Sheheen’s stance on Medicaid expansion.
Sheheen’s reasoning? The ad attacks Sheheen for taking a position, regarding federal dollars for Medicaid expansion, that Christie shares and has already accomplished in New Jersey.
The move of the S.C. State Farmers Market to Lexington County in 2010 is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with S.C. politics.
The battle between Richland County and Lexington County over the new site for the market included allegations against then Rep. Nikki Haley of concealing income from a state contractor on her Statement of Economic Interests.
Haley was exonerated of ethics charges associated with that income by the S.C. House Ethics Committee in June 2012 in what can only be described by anyone who watched the proceedings as a “rigged” hearing.
Pre-filed bills for an upcoming session of the SC General Assembly always provide interesting reading, especially in an election year.
Three definitely caught our eye in recent weeks.
Sen. Katrina Shealy is evidently trying to give her friend Gov. Nikki Haley a campaign issue by filing a bill that proposes to eliminate the state’s income tax over a five-year period.
A recent story in The Nerve detailed the internet publication’s difficulties in obtaining a letter from the SC Ethics Commission to Gov. Nikki Haley.
According to the story, a freedom of information request was sent September 5, 2013 to the commission requesting a copy of an August 28, 2013 letter commission attorney Cathy Hazelwood wrote to Gov. Nikki Haley directing the governor to reimburse the state for travel costs incurred by her and her campaign staff during a June trip to North Carolina.
Initially, commission executive director Herb Hayden responded by saying no such letter was sent.
Sen. Vincent Sheheen got in the middle of the ethics reform debate in South Carolina with a letter to Sen. Luke Rankin, chairman of the S.C. Senate Ethics Committee.
In his letter, Sheheen, a Democrat who is expected to oppose Gov. Nikki Haley next fall in a rematch of the 2010 gubernatorial election, advocates stopping “constant abuses in order to clean up our state government.”
Specifically Sheheen advocates barring the use of the state airplane, state cars or any other state vehicles from being for political purposes including carrying political staff to events or for conducting fundraising activities.
Gov. Nikki Haley was in Horry County Monday pumping the benefits of the I-73 project and her re-election campaign.
Speaking to the Coastal Carolina Association of Realtors, Haley said I-73 is hugely important for this area.
It’s so important she said someone else would have to pay for it because the state wasn’t about to.
And that is the crux of the I-73 contradiction.
There is no ethics reform this year for South Carolina politicians because the S.C. Senate wasn’t interested in changing the way the ethics of its members is monitored.
Last summer, Gov. Nikki Haley ran around the state, accompanied by Attorney General Alan Wilson, trumpeting the need to tighten ethics laws in the state and overhaul the way in which ethics oversight is accomplished.
That no bill was passed in the General Assembly this year says everything that needs to be said about the way in which the state is governed.
The 1895 Constitution, which governs the state, places all real power in the General Assembly. If it doesn’t want to act, no force on earth can make it.
A bill South Carolina legislators say will close the current loopholes in state gambling laws making internet sweepstakes games illegal is awaiting Gov. Nikki Haley’s signature to become law.
After failing to pass a similar bill last year, legislators wasted no time in this new legislative session getting the ban in place.
The legislation clarifies what has been a messy situation throughout the state where the games were considered illegal in some jurisdictions and legal in others. In Horry County it was both with Myrtle Beach allowing the games, until SLED raids closed several parlors in the city recently, while the games were considered illegal in the unincorporated areas of the county.
Speak Up…