Ethics inquiries could open up, but not for all

South Carolina residents would get more information about ethics charges filed against public officials and get it more quickly as a result of a bill passed this session.

Information would become public when the state Ethics Commission finds probable cause to bring charges. Under the current law, the public has to wait until the commission makes a final decision unless the person being investigated waives confidentiality.

That precludes meaningful public oversight of how ethics charges are handled in South Carolina. If lawmakers override Gov. Mark Sanford's veto of the bill, we can find out about the charges when investigators have determined there is enough evidence of wrongdoing to warrant continuing an inquiry. (The House overrode his veto 102-2 on Tuesday. A Senate vote had not been reported as of late Wednesday afternoon.)

The bill came in the wake of the legal tussle with Sanford over release of information coming out of the ethics investigation into his actions as governor. Sanford had waived confidentiality, but then sought to keep preliminary investigation documents from the public. The S.C. Supreme Court settled the issue in the public's favor.

Sanford vetoed the bill, but not for the reasons you might think, and his reasons are worth noting.

He rightly points out that the openness brought by this bill does not apply to members of the General Assembly, who have placed themselves outside the purview of the Ethics Commission.

"... what is good for the goose is good for the gander," Sanford wrote in his veto message. "We shouldn't have two ethics processes, one for legislators and another for everyone else in the state. Allowing this bill to become law would perpetuate this inequitable dual system."

Sanford also objected to the second section of the bill, which takes away from the Ethics Commission the responsibility for determining whether mistakes in legislators' campaign finance reports are technical violations or more serious errors. That job falls to the House and Senate ethics committees.

Again, he points out that this lets lawmakers police themselves.

There is no reason, as Sanford states in his veto message, for ethics investigations of lawmakers to remain confidential, while every other public official must follow more open and transparent rules.

Indeed, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Legislators should hold themselves to the same standards they hold other public officials to. They have more work to do.