BRACK: Griffin, henchmen should pay for stupid $50,000 audit

From left: Mayor John Tecklenburg and councilmen Harry Griffin and Bill Moody.

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher  |  In 35 years of attending and covering public meetings from rural towns to major halls of power, I’ve never encountered a stupider meeting than last week’s audit committee of Charleston City Council.

Apparently, the point by various city councilmen who want to be mayor (those running and those who are puppeteers) was to find something awry in spending by Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg and his office.  Unfortunately for these baldly political operatives working against the common good, the draft findings of the $50,000+ audit were a nothingburger — nothing worth wasting any time over and no evidence of intentional wrong-doing.  Sure, there may have been some administrative oversights, but there was nothing in the audit worth spending more than an average city employee’s annual salary.

This whole ugly episode was a bogus attempt by Nerf mayoral candidate and bully of a councilman, Harry Griffin, to try to “get” Tecklenburg.  Let’s hope it backfires and sends his piddly campaign into the gutter. Better yet: Perhaps he should resign for embarrassing everyone involved and showing how completely inept he is.

The whole mess got started when nimrods on council called for an audit to get behind why the name of the mayor’s wife was printed on his business cards.  She, they said, wasn’t a city employee. Why should the city have spent $10 on that printing?

Then it devolved.  Draft “findings” after a two-month audit by a very eager beaver found nothing related to the mayor’s office worth writing home about — some business cards ordered, some travel expenses late, some forms not filled out properly.  The findings complained that the city paid $1,000 to fund a party to honor 90-year-old jazz saxophonist Lonnie Hamilton III and to pay for an ad promoting it. So what? Hamilton is a Lowcountry treasure and it’s fully appropriate for the city of Charleston — which enjoys his music during Piccolo Spoleto — to give him the key to the city.

To highlight how silly and time-wasting the whole episode has been, listen to the words of Columbia attorney Michael R. Burchstead, who was brought in to review the draft findings and whether there were any state ethics law violations:

“I found no self-dealing by the Mayor or any actions or conduct showing the Mayor or Mrs. Tecklenburg have personally financially benefitted [sic] from their actions.  No action of Mayor Tecklenburg or his family appears to be borne out of desire to use the Office of the Mayor for financial gain, but rather they appear to be motivated by their interest in representing the citizens of the City.”

The above summary likely was a blow to Griffin and his co-conspirators.  More than likely, they’ve been spending hours since last week’s meeting trying to figure out how to spin the draft findings to their advantage when the final report is released later this week. 

Stop wasting our time.  Tecklenburg’s foes knew they wouldn’t find much.  They were just trying to embarrass the mayor. Instead, they need to start picking the egg off their faces and get down to city business.  Better yet: Citizens should demand that they pay for the audit.

Run, Mark Sanford, run

Our most recent Statehouse Report commentary focused on the possibility of a presidential campaign by former S.C. Gov. and U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, who is in a dither because of the country’s growing $22 trillion debt:

Sanford in 2004

“Rather than toying with a direct run against Trump, he’d be better suited to emulate the 1992 campaign of Ross Perot, who passed away earlier this month.  The billionaire maverick snared almost 19 percent of the popular vote by talking in frank, easy-to-understand language about – guess what — government spending and debt.  While Perot didn’t win any electoral votes, he changed the trajectory of the 1992 race and made it possible for Bill Clinton to beat incumbent George H.W. Bush at the polls.

“If Sanford runs for president as a Republican, he’ll lose in a heartbeat.  He’ll be a blip on the screen because his Republican Party is gone. No longer the party of limited government and fiscal conservatism, it’s been drowned in a Norquistian bathtub by the blustering party of Trump where milquetoasts and yes-men thrive in a lapdog splendor, doing nothing for regular Americans.

“As an independent presidential candidate, Mark Sanford can stretch his anti-debt message through November 2020 and make a much bigger impact than getting drowned in a tsunami of red-hat-wearing Trump lemmings who won’t hear what he’s saying.  As an independent, he could be a spoiler like Perot and get the whole country focused on something important — the national debt that is slowly crippling us.” Read the full commentary here.

Andy Brack’s new book, “We Can Do Better, South Carolina,” is now available for $14.99 in paperback via Amazon.

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