Dec 31 2008
We can now celebrate a great New Years Eve with Mark Sanford finally doing the right thing.
We can now celebrate a great New Years Eve with Mark Sanford finally doing the right thing. He took it down to the wire but is actually coming through for the 70,000 South Carolina citizens who have been waiting for it.
The post on Mark Sanford’s website “December 31, 2008 - Saying that he won’t allow the state’s unemployed to be punished for one agency’s utter disdain for accountability, Governor Mark Sanford announced today that he will continue aggressively pushing for transparency at the state Employment Security Commission (ESC) and will apply for a federal unemployment benefits loan.”
The official statement from Roosevelt Halley (Executive Director, SCESC) said “The S.C. Employment Security Commission certainly believes it is not exempt from scrutiny and has nothing to fear from an audit. We are unable to request an audit from the Legislative Audit Council as that must come from the state legislature itself. In fact, the Agency and the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund is audited annually by a qualified accounting firm, which has the added advantage of being both independent and free of political influence. The latest audit showed no questioned costs. Not only that, the Unemployment Insurance division has regularly been honored by the Department of Labor for its timeliness and efficiency.”
We will all see if these two can work together in a more timely fashion in the future. As always one is blaming the other. How do we know who to believe in such a case as this? My thoughts are if SCESC has nothing to hide, why not turn it over to an audit. With the money coming in now, there should be no problem in an audit taking place within a timely fashion.
