South Carolina’s spending transparency bill finally reaches a hearing

Senator south carolina Scott Talley hasn’t done much to impress me lately. For a start, he was very comfortable with the chairman of the über-liberal Senate judiciary committee Luke Rankin – one of the main architects of the failed status quo of the State of Palmetto.

Talley is also using his newfound influence on a judicial selection panel to push the appointment of one of his legal partners to the bank – a tried and tested internal power game.

Shannon Phillips – a member of the Talley Law Firm – is about to become the next master-in-equity for Spartanburg County. This means that she will be in a position to issue decisions on any number of real estate and foreclosure cases – two key areas of practice for Talley’s law firm.

Governors technically appoint equity masters with the advice and consent of the SC Senate, but in practice these selections are made by county legislative delegations. Thanks to Talley’s lobbying efforts with his local delegation, Phillips is the only candidate in this race.

As soon as it became clear that she had the support of the majority of the delegation, the other candidates withdrew from the dispute.

Talley’s proximity to the Phillips nomination was first questioned in December by a reporter Rick Brundrett in The nerve (Columbia, SC). Talley told Brundrett at the time that he “did not participate” in the selection process for his law partner, however, several lawmakers in the upstate suggested that this technical refusal was accompanied by a furious backstage campaign on behalf of Phillips.

And Talley made it clear that he saw no legal problem with Phillips hearing cases involving his company.

These are just a few of the whispers related to Talley that I have heard recently … (stay tuned for more on this in future posts).

While it is a great pleasure to continue to wear down Talley, there is one area where he has been useful to taxpayers since his election to the SC Senate in 2016.

I am referring, of course, to your continued support on behalf of a government transparency initiative – the creation of a searchable online spending database.

Regular readers of this medium will remember that South Carolina has an irritating lack of transparency when it comes to spending at all levels (here and here) And it is not surprising that judges appointed by the legislature have done little or nothing to compel the disclosure of taxpayer-financed expenses.

In fact, they went in the opposite direction.

To his credit, Talley sought to reverse this trend. Specifically, he has advocated for several years the creation of a “searchable budget database website detailing where, for what purpose and what results are achieved for all taxpayer investments in the state government”.

The latest bill proposed by Talley – S. 373 – would oblige all state agencies to participate in this searchable budget database, providing a public record of all recipients of funds, the amounts spent and the purpose of the expenditures.

The bill would also require state agencies to document “the expected performance result for the financing action” as well as “previous performance results achieved for the financing action”.

Finally, agencies would be required to post a link to the database on their home pages … making the portal easy to access.

Good right? Absolutely …

This is the kind of spending transparency that state leaders should have demanded years ago … an integral part of a top-down re-prioritization of central government functions (also known as a zero-based budget). Unfortunately, lawmakers have shown absolutely no appetite for transparency when it comes to spending other people’s money (also known as yours). This is probably why it took more than four years for Talley’s spending database project to receive a hearing from the subcommittee.

Clearly letting you see how your money is being spent is not a priority for the SC General Assembly …

Will Talley’s account be approved? Doubtful …

The more lawmakers can keep these details shrouded in secrecy, the longer they can continue to manipulate the process. Hopefully, Talley will focus more attention in the coming weeks on advancing this legislation (rather than promoting the interests of his law firm within the judiciary).

Maybe then this project would have a chance to fight to become law …

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