Tag: SC Attorney General

Bob Kelly Alleges Conspiracy By Opponents

Bob Kelly, the loser of the recent Horry County District Three special general election, attempted to set a new low in Horry County politics during the campaign.

Shortly after securing the Republican nomination for the election, Kelly filed papers with the SC Attorney General, Horry County Solicitor and SC Ethics Commission alleging a criminal conspiracy among all of his primary opponents and various other politicos in the county.

According to those papers, Kelly was assisted by his campaign manager Jim Wiles in these attempts to spur investigations.

Kelly told us many times during the campaign that he was a 25 year veteran of law enforcement in New Jersey and, according to Pennsylvania Bar Association postings, Wiles is a suspended former lawyer.

However, the attempt to describe a conspiracy in Kelly’s submission to the above named agencies reads more like a plot line for a new “Dumb and Dumber” sequel.

The alleged conspiracy revolves around robocalls that claimed to be sent by “The Friends of Bob Kelly” during the primary election.

Robocalls to cell phones are illegal by federal statute (although that didn’t seem to stop the Republican presidential candidates from making them during the recent SC primary campaign). Violations of the federal statute come under the investigative purview of the Federal Communications Commission.

Robocalls are not illegal according to any South Carolina statute.

Nevertheless, Kelly asked the Attorney General and Horry County Solicitor to bring a “charge of felony conspiracy with multiple counts … of misdemeanor harassment” against a list of people including all of his Republican primary opponents.

It must be noted that Kelly offered no evidence, other than supposition, that his opponents were involved with the robocalls and his alleged criminal conspiracy.

It’s almost as if Kelly is saying, I had a dream the other night that my opponents were involved in a conspiracy against me. Therefore, they should be charged with criminal conspiracy.

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Skydive Myrtle Beach FOIA Deadline Passes

The deadline for the Federal Aviation Administration to provide Skydive Myrtle Beach with copies of the alleged 112 investigated safety complaints against the company passed yesterday with silence.

The FAA issued a 73 page report, allegedly based on the safety violation documentation from Horry County Department of Airports. Horry County officials used the FAA report to shut down operations of Skydive Myrtle Beach at the Grand Strand Airport.

Skydive Myrtle Beach initially sought to get the documentation on the alleged safety violation reports through an FOIA request to Horry County. The response from Horry County attorney Arrigo Carotti was that the only information the county had was the 73 page FAA report.

According to Horry County officials, none of the underlying documentation, upon which the report was allegedly based, was available from the county, the governmental agency that supposedly documented the 112 safety violations in the first place.

Beginning last August, Skydive Myrtle Beach sent an FOIA request to the FAA for all documentation related to the 112 safety violations and any other documentation used to generate the 73 page FAA report.

The FAA denied the first FOIA request in October 2015 stating the request was too broad. A second FOIA request was sent by Skydive Myrtle Beach to the FAA, which was accepted.

The following FOIA status report was sent by email from Duke Taylor of the FAA to Skydive Myrtle Beach owner Aaron Holly on January 21, 2016:

“On Jan 21, 2016, at 3:49 PM, duke.taylor@faa.gov wrote:

“Mr. Holly by statute your response is due February 2, 2016.

“At this time our tracking system shows the status as Search and Review.

D”

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Supreme Court Rules Bobby Harrell Investigation May Continue

The S.C. Supreme Court ruled earlier today that the state grand jury, Attorney General Alan Wilson and SLED may continue with an investigation into possible ethics and criminal violations by S. C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell.

This reverses a ruling made after a May 12th hearing in District Court, by Judge Casey Manning, which ordered the investigation halted and the grand jury disbanded.

In his ruling, Manning stated that the S.C. House Ethics Committee has exclusive jurisdiction over investigation of ethics violations by Harrell or other members of the House and only the Ethics Committee can refer an investigation to the AG or grand jury.

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Bobby Harrell vs. Alan Wilson – An Uneven Fight?

The ongoing legal challenge over whether S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson can use the State Grand Jury to investigate ethics violation allegations against S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell will go a long way to answering the question of whether Harrell is the most powerful individual in the state.

Attorneys representing Harrell challenged Wilson’s right to investigate Harrell during a March 21, 2014 hearing before S.C. Circuit Court Judge Casey Manning.

Should Manning rule in Harrell’s favor, he will effectively establish in law what has been long established in fact, namely, S.C. legislators are above the law.

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Curtis Loftis Criticizes Underperforming SC Pension Fund

South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis again criticized the underperformance of the pension funds controlled by the S.C. Retirement System Investment Commission recently.

Speaking of the year end results for 2012, Loftis said, “It is unfortunate that the SC Investment Commission chooses not to tell the whole story about the state’s $27 billion pension fund. Our fund performs in the bottom third compared with our peers. That low performance is costing us big money. By being below average, South Carolina is leaving $175 million on the investment table.”

Since assuming the office of treasurer, Loftis has been a critic of the SCRSIC for poor performance, wasteful spending, lack of transparency and conflicts of interest.

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Loftis and the High Cost of Political Courage

What happens when a newly elected South Carolina official tries to bring openness and accountability to the management of the state’s retirement system investment commission?

He finds himself in the news after “documents” are leaked, to the Associated Press, in which a possible “pay to play” scheme is mentioned and a SLED investigation is requested by the SC Attorney General’s office.

Looking at it another way, S.C. Treasurer Curtis Loftis finds himself in a political knife fight for trying to buck South Carolina’s “good ol’ boy” system.

Loftis has been a critic of the management of the state’s pension fund for much of his 13 months as treasurer. On January 31, 2012, Loftis outlined problems associated with the pension fund during testimony to the Senate Finance Retirement Committee.

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