Financial Integrity - how important?

How important should the personal financial integrity of School Board Trustees be?

Should it be squeaky clean? Above reproach? Should all Trustees be keeping very high standards of personal financial integrity?

And what happens when they don't?

Well, if you're a Richland 2 School District trustee, apparently nothing happens.

For insight to this question, refer to the South Carolina State Tax Lien Registry at dor.sc.gov/liens  Search the Lien Registry for "Individual".
Enter the name of your favorite trustee and inspect the results.

A second place to look is the list of Debtors on the website of the South Carolina Ethics Commission at ethics.sc.gov  Near the top right of the homepage click on "Debtors". After you read about the (unsuccessful) efforts of the Ethics Commission to squeeze payments out of the debtors, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Debtors List (PDF)"

The Ethics Commission apparently has trouble alphabetizing names, because it has put McK before Mah. Look for Amelia McKie. Her $51.750 debt shows a Default Year of 2016. That was halfway through her first term as a trustee. You would have to read the Commission's Decision & Order dated July 3, 2018 to get the whole picture.

When McKie had not made any payment toward her debt, in July 2019 the Ethics Commission filed a judgment with the Richland County Common Pleas Court (Case No. 2019CP4003809). You can inspect the court entry here.

The South Carolina Department of Revenue is the collection agent for the Ethics Commission. Apparently, it's pretty busy, because no entries appear in the court record after July 2019.

Is it any wonder that the List of Debtors on the Ethics Commission website, dated 1/13/2020, is 28 pages long and that the uncollected amount of debt is $2,762,979?

McKie's debt isn't the largest or the oldest. I think it was in January 2019, after her ethics' woes were reported publicly, that she said it wouldn't happen again. She meant "filing late" wouldn't happen again. Yet it did! She filed Campaign Disclosure Reports late not once, not twice, but three times! The Reports due 4/10/2019, 7/10/2019, and 1/10/2020 were filed late.

She did file her 10/10/2019 report on time (10/10/2019), but she amended it on 3/4/2020. See the next article about her amended Campaign Disclosure Report, filed 3/4/2020, for her Report filed on 10/10/2019.

Maybe someone should ask Gov. McMaster why the DOR isn't doing a better job collecting these debts?