Critical Election June 25

On June 25, 2019 the Richland 2 School Board will elect its officers for the next school year. This election occurs annually, and it was placed on the Agenda for the June 25, 2019 School Board meeting.

The three officers to be elected are Board Chair, Board Vice Chair and Board Secretary.

Should the "high school club" atmosphere of the current "majority" be allowed to continue?

The impact of last year's election has been felt through this school year. Last June Amelia McKie was elected by the board to serve as Board Chair from July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019. That choice has resulted in long, disorganized school board meetings; dissension among board members; constant calls for compliance with State law; resignation by the Board Secretary (officer); failure to sanction a board member who violated Board Policy by launching a personal and false claim of harassment against a community member with the Richland County Sheriff's Department.

It is the Board Chair and the Superintendent who set the agendas for future meetings. Dissenting board members find it very difficult to get unpopular issues on the agenda for a meeting.

Did the board bother to conduct any due diligence before electing McKie?

If it had, it should have uncovered that she had failed to file required annual Statement of Economic Interests Reports with the South Carolina Ethics Commission for 2015, 2016 and 2017. Those were violations of Board Policy and a violation of State law. A search of the Public Index of the Richland County Fifth Judicial Circuit would have revealed personal information that should have been taken into consideration.

Will McKie seek a second term as Board Chair? She owes $51,750 in fines and penalties to the South Carolina Ethics Commission (as of 6/11/2019). The Ethics Commission should be turning that debt over to the S.C. Department of Revenue for collection.

If she does seek re-election as Chair, what significance with the board give to her current debt to the South Carolina Ethics Commission, on which no meaningful payments have been made?

The board tried to adopt a new Board Policy earlier this year that might have caught up McKie. That proposed policy would have given the board authority to remove an officer; not remove the person from the board, but remove that person as an officer. The vote was 3-4 (including Nay votes of McKie and Holmes). Without those two votes (and there is good reason to omit both votes), the result would have been 3-2 - a Passing vote!

The board could, but won't, remove her from the board. S.C. Code of Laws §59-19-60 reads,

"School district trustees shall be subject to removal from office for cause by the county boards of education, upon notice and after being given an opportunity to be heard by the county board of education. Any such order of removal shall state the grounds thereof, the manner of notice and the hearing accorded the trustee, and any such trustee shall have the right to appeal to the court of common pleas, as provided in Section 59-19-560. Vacancies occurring in the membership of any board of trustees for any cause shall be filled for the unexpired term by the county board of education in the same manner as provided for full-term appointments.

There is no "county board of education" for Richland County. Richland 2 is that board of education. Richland 2 School Board Policy is that a vacant trustee position will be filled by special election conducted by the the Richland County Council. There have been two vacant positions since November 6, 2018.

What "cause" could the board use? How about failure to file required annual forms with the State Ethics Commission? Former Gov. Nikki Haley removed a Richland County Councilman for failure to pay S.C. income taxes for three years. Mrs. Haley referred to that as an act of moral turpitude.

When the school board gets ready to elect its officers for the coming year, it must select three with impeccable integrity, character, honesty, ethics, principles and responsibility.

As it happens, there are three on the board with those qualities who will be eligible for election as an officer for 2019-2020. And it's not the majority that McKie refers to so often as supportive of the superintendent.

McKie still owes $51.850

Amelia McKie still owes $51,850 to the South Carolina Ethics Commission. She is past any period of appeal. This is how much she owes and must pay.

There won't be any "deals" now. The Ethics Commission will attempt to collect from her, as it no doubt has already tried. Next step will be to turn the debt over to the South Carolina Department of Revenue.

The Department of Revenue has two programs for collecting debt - the Set Off Debt Program and the Governmental Enterprise Accounts Receivable Collections (GEAR) Program. How far could the DOR go in collecting a debt? The DOR has a wide variety of debt-collection methods and tools, including court action and seeking judgments.

It would be a lot cleaner to work out a payment plan with the Ethics Commission and comply with it.

McKie continues to act as Chair of the Richland 2 School Board, in spite of issues raised about the legitimacy of her position on the board.

She was elected to the board on November 6, 2018, and she took the oath of office on November 13 in violation of S.C. Code of Laws §8-13-1110(A). She was not eligible to take the oath of office on that day because she had not filed the required Statement of Economic Interests Report with the South Carolina Ethics Commission. The law is crystal clear.

She did file that required Statement on December 4. Upon doing so, she became eligible to take the oath of office. But she has not taken the oath of office since becoming eligible.

Thus, she is not legally on the board. Because she is not legally on the Board, she cannot serve as Board Chair.

Yet the five legal members of the board allow her to do so.

What's important here? Integrity. Responsibility. Transparency.

The right action for Mrs. McKie would be to step away from the Board Chair role and even step off the board until she cleans up her financial mess. The five legal members of the board shouldn't have to force her to do, but they may have to.

Who is for transparency and accountability?

I'm so glad I came across Brad Warthen's blog today. I got an education on the election race for the Richland 2 School Board in 2014. Remember that one? That's where race surfaced as an identity issue in the School Board race.

In case you forgot, check out Brad's blog right here.

In the linked article Brad leads off with "I really, really hated to see the first sentence of this story about the Richland School District 2 election:  'Race has become the defining issue in the Richland 2 school board election, as rumors circulate of a shift in power from a white-majority to a black-majority board.' "

Well down in the body of the article appears this "Because if Amelia McKie .. is elected, we’ll have a strong voice on R2’s school board who’ll fight for students, communicate with parents and demand real transparency and accountability."

Now that was back in 2014. Fast forward to 2018-2019.

Amelia McKie is the one who didn't file Campaign Disclosure Forms and Statements of Economic Interest Reports with the South Carolina Ethics Commission for several years. Amelia McKie now owes over $51,000 in fines and penalties to the Ethics Commission.

Amelia McKie is the one (well, one of them) who took the oath of office illegally on November 13, 2018 for her second term of office, 2018-2022.

How's that for transparency and accountability?

Who will demand "real transparency and accountability" from Amelia McKie? The Richland 2 Black Parents' Association has said that McKie's problem with the Ethics Commission is not about race; it's about ethics.

Will the BPA step up and put some pressure on McKie to obey S.C. Code of Laws 8-13-1110(A) and now legally take the oath of office?

McKie and the S.C. Ethics Commission

Amelia McKie, who sits in the position of Chair of the Richland 2 School Board, owes more than $51,000 to the South Carolina Ethics Commission.

In February the Ethics Commission told me that there would be no hearing on her matter that month, but there would be one in March.

Early in March the Ethics Commission told me that there would be no hearing on McKie at the March regular hearing date.

Will McKie just get lost among the 300 debtors on the multi-page list that is posted on the Ethics Commission website? They are "so busy" at the Ethics commission that the debtor's list, dated 1/3/2019, has not been updated. That ought to be somebody's job there. After all, it could bring in much-needed revenue to run the Commission.

Prominently displayed on the homepage of the Ethics Commission is this headline:

"Restoring Public Trust in Government"

Lucas Daprile, a reporter at The State, wrote an interesting article on March 6, 2019 about the deadbeats on the Ethics Commission's debtor's list. You can read it here.

It seems that McKie isn't even a legitimate member of the Richland 2 School Board, except she has been sitting in the position as Chair after being sworn in on November 13, 2018. The problem is that she violated S.C. Code of Laws Section 8-13-1110(A), when she took the oath of office on that date. So she is not really sworn in and is not really a Board member. There are six other members of the Board (well, really only five legitimate members) who are not doing anything about McKie's illegal participation on the Board.

Could I take the oath of office for a School Board member and just sit down at the front of the room twice a month. You say that I wasn't elected and haven't filed a Statement of Economic Interests? So what? I took the oath. How fast would Richland 2 security or a deputy sheriff remove me?

A Richland 2 parent told me that she believes McKie wasn't even entitled to be on the November 6, 2018, ballot. Seems McKie had a "little problem" and didn't file campaign disclosure reports. See Note below for viewing McKie's past-due campaign disclosure reports.

So, tell me once more about "Restoring public trust in government"?

The Ethics Commission should turn McKie's debt over to the S.C. Department of Revenue. If the DOR can't collect it in three months, they should turn it over to a private collection agency with instructions to sue within three months. Then hope that there is a judge in some court around here who won't let it languish on his docket for 5-6 years.

NOTE: To find Amelia McKie's campaign disclosure reports, all the way back to 2015, follow these steps:
Go to ethics.sc.gov
On the hompage, click on the link near the top "Public Reporting"
On page for Public Disclosure and Accountability Reporting Welcome, click on "Individual Financial Reports"
On page for Public Disclosure and Accountability Reporting Individual Reports, click on "Candidate Reports"
For Individual Reports Candidates, enter McKie; select office of School Board Trustee; select Year of 2018. Click "Next"
Select District as RICHLAND #2. Click SEARCH
Click on the Name, "McKie, Amelia B"

In that long list, you'll see all the campaign disclosure reports that she filed late. You'll also see the Statement of Economic Interest Reports that she filed late. You'll also see one filed 8/15/2014 for Year 2014, so she can't say that she didn't know she was supposed to file them.

Ethics - do they matter?

How important are ethics in business? in personal lives? to you?

In the Columbia, S.C. news since late last year have been items of ethical issues involving members of the Richland 2 School Board members.

Most of these matters have now been cleared up.

There is one major matter outstanding. It involves the fines and penalties assessed against Amelia McKie, Chair of the Richland 2 School Board. She owes more than $51,000 to the South Carolina Ethics Commission.

Mrs. McKie's first term on the Board was 2014-2018. She ran for re-election and was successful on November 6, 2018. In the latter half of 2018 she served as Chair of the Board, having been elected to that position by the Board members serving at the time of the election of officers of the board.

On November 13, 2018, Mrs. McKie was administered the oath of office and commenced her duties as Board member for the term of office 2018-2022.

Mrs. McKie had failed to file numerous required documents with the South Carolina Ethics Commission. These required documents included quarterly campaign financial disclosure filings and annual Statements of Economic Interests.

Other media have reported the details of the missing reports and the starting levels of fines. As Mrs. McKie refused to pay the fines that were being levied against her, the amounts increased. Other media have reported that, when she failed to make a payment by December 31, 2018, a large penalty was added, and her fines and penalties now total over $51,000.

Where is the outrage over the Chairperson of a public School Board owing this sizable sum of money to the Ethics Commission?

Only a handful of parents have spoken up at school board meetings. There has been, up until now, no way for one parent to know of another parent's complaints.

There is, on the part of some parents, a feeling that Mrs. McKie was not legally entitled to have her name on the November 2018 General Election ballot, due to her lack of compliance with required filings at the S.C. Ethics Commission. I have not researched that myself.

It was a close election for the four open seats (seven Board members). The top five vote-getters were

• Amelia McKie (I) 26,033
• James Manning (I) 21,740
• Teresa Jones Holmes 20,398
• Cheryl Caution Parker (I) 19,182
• Craig Plank (I) 17,313