It’s your money, taxpayers. Demand full accounting of SC government spending

Imagine balancing your checkbook and finding that $500 is missing from your account. The bank tells you the money has been earmarked for a special project. End of story.

Chances are you’d be pretty angry, demanding to know where your hard-earned dollars went.

For all intents and purposes, that’s how earmarks have long worked in the South Carolina State Legislature and that’s why South Carolinians should care.

Earmarks are taxpayer dollars - your money - being spent on projects that may never come with an explanation or full accounting of where the money was spent.

Now on Wednesday, the State Fiscal Accountability Authority — an all-Republican body whose members include Gov. Henry McMaster, state Treasurer Curtis Loftis, Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom , Sen. Hugh Leatherman, and Rep. Murrell Smith — unanimously agreed (Leatherman was absent) that agencies need to ensure that organizations report how money was spent after it has been handed out, something already required by law.

McMaster’s spokesman Brian Symmes said Thursday, “Nobody has done more to increase transparency in the state budget than Governor McMaster – he’s vetoed every budget earmark since he’s been governor and has provided a pathway towards investing these funds in a transparent way. In July of this year, he required every agency that receives these funds to report an explanation of how the funds will be used and the accountability measures they’ve put in place.”

However, the accountability authority made no provision or requirement that an audit be done to examine where millions of dollars have gone.

“There’s a long tradition of scratching each others’ backs,” said University of South Carolina Political Science Professor Robert Oldendick as he talked about the state’s history of using earmarks.

“Really it has been part of the political culture for a long time,” he said, explaining that earmark spending became a way for legislators to provide things for their districts that may not have passed the scrutiny of being included in the state budget.

Reporter Andrew Caplan noted in his latest story that “In years past, lawmakers have quietly sent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to community projects with little-to-no public debates through the hidden earmark process.”

Wednesday’s move to require reporting what was spent doesn’t do anything to improve accountability for the money already handed out.

“It’s just closing the barn door after the horse has bolted,” state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D- Richland, told Caplan. “Their vote today was amnesty for people who took the state’s money and misspent it. That’s not how government is supposed to work.”

Meanwhile, Smith, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, recognized the system is flawed.

“We need transparency and we need accountability,” he told Caplan. “We need some uniformity.”

Mind you, Smith was the force behind getting the state’s largest hidden earmark last year: $3 million for the Sumter Behavioral Health Services clinic.

Other examples of earmarks include Democratic Rep. Todd Rutherford steering more than $500,000 of taxpayer money to organizations connected to his girlfriend, now his wife, her mother and his ex-wife’s business partner.

Harpootlian said Thursday that transparency around public spending is key, particularly when government funds go to non-governmental entities, often the recipients of earmarked funds.

“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have an accounting of what happened with publicly-funded taxpayer money,” Harpootlian said.

This isn’t a new issue.

Earlier this year, The State’s reporters surveyed all 170 of South Carolina’s state senators and state representatives, asking them if they would support legislation that requires all earmark requests be published on the State House website and legislation that ensures the organizations receiving earmarks publicly account for how that money is spent.

More than 80 percent of those that responded said they would support both measures.

That’s all well and good, but has that level of support translated into action? Are we any closer to an audit of past spending?

Sadly, the answer is no on both counts.

Why no movement when they seemingly agree something needs to be done?

Perhaps it’s good old-fashioned self-interest.

“I don’t see a great willingness to change because (earmarks) help them achieve their goals of doing things for their districts and in turn getting re-elected,” Oldendick said.

Oldendick noted that in the scheme of things earmarks barely register for most South Carolinians. They are busy coping with daily life and its troubles including a raging pandemic.

“People don’t perceive it to have much of an impact on their daily life,” Oldendick said. “People just aren’t that aware.”

In 2020, however, $44 million was spent on 180 of these earmark projects, few details of which are known.

Now, politicians will tell you all this is legal, but taking advantage of poorly-written laws hardly makes for great leadership.

It appears the only way to put the stopper on the secrecy surrounding earmarks is public outcry. If nothing else, politicians listen to polls.

So, let the groundswell start right here and now.

This is South Carolina’s money, your money. Tell your elected officials that if they want another term in office they better tell you how your money, every single penny, is being spent.

If South Carolinians don’t demand transparency and accountability, politicians won’t offer it on their own.

This story was originally published September 10, 2021 at 8:30 AM with the headline "It’s your money, taxpayers. Demand full accounting of SC government spending."