How Conflicted Can One Senator Get?

“Perhaps they weren’t reading the paper that day, or perhaps they don’t read at all,” said Rankin, who also chairs the standing Senate Ethics Committee. “But I found it kind of curious that there was no hue and cry there that particular day.”

What Rankin, an attorney who’s been in the Senate since 1993, didn't discuss during the public hearing was his own legislative history as it relates to his occupation. The Nerve’s review of legislative records and Rankin’s annual income-disclosure forms filed with the State Ethics Commission found that:

• Rankin has received more than $2.8 million in legal fees from workers’ compensation cases from 2007 through last year, or an average of more than $478,000 per year. Under state law, the seven-member state Workers’ Compensation Commission, which approves attorney fees in workers’ compensation cases, is appointed by the governor with consent of the Senate. Rankin has been a longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which screens Workers’ Compensation Commission candidates.
• Since 2007, Rankin has co-sponsored at least nine bills dealing with workers’ compensation issues and was a member of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that debated at least seven other workers’ compensation-related bills.
• In 2007 when the General Assembly passed a workers’-compensation reform bill that became law (Act 111), Rankin co-authored three floor amendments in the Senate’s initial version of the bill, voted for the final third reading of the Senate’s initial version, and later voted for a House-Senate compromise version of the legislation.
• Last year, Rankin voted for the second reading of a House bill, which became law (Act 183), dealing with attorney and doctor fees and hospital charges in workers' compensation cases, when the bill came to the Senate floor.

Under state law (Section 8-13-700 of the S.C. Code of Laws), a public official can’t “knowingly use his official office, membership, or employment to obtain an economic interest for himself, a family member, an individual with whom he is associated, or a business with which he is associated.”

Another section of that law says a public official can’t “make, participate in making, or in any way attempt to use his office, membership, or employment to influence a governmental decision in which he, a family member, an individual with whom he is associated, or a business with which he is associated has an economic interest.”

But there’s a huge loophole (Section 8-13-100) in the law that lawmakers facing potential conflicts of interest routinely use: Known as the “large-class exception,” legislators can vote on anything that helps their businesses so long as it also benefits other members of their industry or occupation.

The 46-member Senate and 124-member House police their own members for ethical violations through their respective ethics committees. The State Ethics Commission has jurisdiction over the state’s nine constitutional officers, including the governor; local elected officials; and lobbyists and their clients.

Read the full story at TheNerve.org.