South Carolina now has a way to investigate fraud, waste, corruption and mismanagement across all of state government, after Gov. Nikki Haley signed into law Thursday a bill creating the state Inspector General's office.
The state already has an Inspector General, Jim Martin, but his office was created by an executive order by Gov. Haley, so he was limited to investigating only the 16 state agencies in the governor's cabinet. Now his office can investigate cases in all state agencies and at state boards, commissions and committees.
The law also gives him subpoena power, which he didn't have before.
"With subpoena power, now we can, of course, require their cooperation," Martin says. "Also, we have powers to petition to court to give us to hold those individuals in contempt if they refuse, so that gives us a lot of, you know, basically leverage to follow through on our investigations." His office has already investigated more than 100 cases. One investigation started after a complaint from an Upstate resident, who was looking online at spending records at the state Department of Transportation. He found $5,500 spent at Waffle House on a state credit card, $1,300 at another restaurant and $600 at a shoe store. Martin says at first glance the spending did look like a problem. But then his investigators found that it happened in January 2011, when then-Gov. Mark Sanford had declared a state of emergency because of ice and snow. When that happens, SC DOT has special rules and regulations that take effect. "They invoked those rules and regulations because it's a state of emergency, set up eateries around so that these individuals that were out clearing roads from snow and ice and trees had a place to go in that they could eat, because they were working them just about around the clock," Martin says. The money spent at the shoe store was for safety boots for some of the employees. "Did that save taxpayers dollars? No, but it gave citizens some satisfaction that what appeared to be some very concerning expenditures proved to be perfectly authorized," Martin says. His office has also investigated things like excessive use of state vehicles and state cell phones. He's turned over some cases to the State Law Enforcement Division when it appeared that there may be some criminal wrongdoing. And he says that's why the governor and lawmakers created an Inspector General, when the state already has SLED, the state Attorney General's office and the State Ethics Commission. His office can investigate cases that don't fall under those agencies' jurisdictions. He says the AG's office is concerned with prosecution and has a limited capacity to conduct investigations. SLED deals with criminal cases and the Ethics Commission deals with possible ethics violations, not things like waste, mismanagement or fraud. Now that the duties of his office have been expanded, he'll also get state funding as a separate agency, but he doesn't know how much yet. He hopes to be able to post online all the reports from his office. "I hope to put them out there so that the average citizen can sit down at their leisure, read our detailed investigative reports about what people were alleged to have done, what we found, what we're recommending. That is a great deterrent, number one, for anything like that to reoccur. But it gives the citizens a sense that someone is here to hear their allegation, their complaint, their concern and we are going to follow up on it." His office has a statewide hotline to report complaints of waste, fraud, abuse, corruption and mismanagement. That toll-free number is: 1-855-SC-FRAUD (1-855-723-7283). You can also file complaints by email at oig@oig.sc.gov.
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