Martin: Inspector General “Very Important” Position

When the legislature reconvenes from its summer recess, Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, hopes that they will take up some unfinished business, including the government restructuring bill.

“We got to the last day of the session, didn't quite get it over the finish line,” Martin told Easley Rotarians recently. “That was probably one of my biggest disappointments in a very, very long time.”

But legislators were able to pass portions of that bill, he said.

“We got the governor and lieutenant governor on a ticket,” Martin said. “You can vote on that this fall.”

Legislators also approved confirmed the state's first Inspector General, Patrick Manley, Martin said. The Inspector General and his office is charged with detecting, exposing and preventing fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement and misconduct in all of the executive agencies,” according to Gov. Nikki Haley.

“It's a very important new position that was created,” Martin said. “We're probably one of the few states that didn't have that. We had what was called the Legislative Audit Council. The Legislative Audit Council would go out and investigate abuses or inefficiencies in state agencies, that type of thing.

“But the Inspector General would be an office that would go out and look for cases of fraud, embezzlement, those types of things,” he continued. “And we've seen that in the newspapers, in the headlines. It's very important to have a position like that, and invest in that position the power and the resources to go after cases, where cases like that exist.”

Sometimes the unexpected throws off the legislature and its goals, Martin said.

“In your business, you spend a lot of time in your day dealing with the unplanned, the unexpected,” he told club members. “Well, we do that. Unfortunately, when we do it, you read about it in the newspapers. It's like, 'Why can't those guys get it right? Why can't they do what they said they were going to do this session? Why can't they get it right?'”

He used as an example a bill aimed at stopping thieves from selling stolen cars for scrap.

“It was sort of expected and unexpected,” Martin said.

Scrap yards and metal recyclers are required to ask for a car's title or receipt from auction – but only if the car is less than eight years old.

Thieves could steal cars older than that and drive the car straight to the crusher – without having to show a title, Martin said.

“Before the police report could be made, it'd be gone,” Martin said.

The original law establishing the requirement that titles be presented on vehicles be eight years old or less before being recycled was passed to clean up junkyards.

“It was designed to make it easier for folks to dispose of those junked automobiles, all the bad environmental stuff that can come from that,” Martin said. “That was done.”

Legislators at that time did not imagine the lengths criminals would go to regarding stealing and selling off scrap metal, he saud.

“But now, the prices of used , scrap metal (having) gone up, (thieves) were actually driving them off used car lots and driving them straight to the crusher,” Martin said.

Martin was one of the sponsors of a bill that requires a three day waiting period before a car can be crushed, as well as lifting the age of the vehicle from eight years to twelve.

“We got busy and got a bill passed that strengthened not only the number of years required before they could just take a vehicle like that (and crush it),” he said.

The original waiting period was 15 days, Martin said, but recyclers told legislators they didn't have facilities large enough to house all the vehicles for such a long period of time.

In addition to the three day waiting period, the bill also requires that vehicle's VIN numbers must be checked with a federal DMV database before the vehicle can be crushed.