Hunley setup defies constitution

By LEE SPENCE

Guest columnist

Having just read John Monk’s revealing piece, “Hunley Audit Unlikely,” and previously read Sen. Glenn McConnell’s unwarranted attack on Mr. Monk and the senator’s disparagement of his recent articles on the Hunley Commission, I would like to offer my opinions. I feel I have a special right to be heard because I discovered the Hunley in 1970.

Also, in 1995, at the official request of Sen. McConnell and the Hunley Commission, I donated my rights to the wreck to the state.

I believe Mr. Monk’s articles were extremely well-researched and the facts properly reported. If anything, Mr. Monk went too easy on the senator and the commission.

Sen. McConnell is an attorney and is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. One would assume that he has read South Carolina’s constitution, but perhaps the senator hasn’t. He certainly hasn’t followed it with respect to the Hunley.

Our constitution has certain checks and balances placed there to protect the people. An important one, Article 1, Section 8, states: “In the government of this State, the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the government shall be forever separate and distinct from each other, and no person or persons exercising the functions of one of said departments shall assume or discharge the duties of any other.” However, this has been violated in the case of the Hunley Commission.

By law, all commissions report annually to the secretary of state. The Hunley Commission never has. It seems the Hunley Commission isn’t a commission after all. Attorney General Henry McMaster’s written opinion and the very language of its creation say that the Hunley Commission is a committee of the General Assembly.

The attorney general is correct. With its mandatory makeup of one-third of its membership appointed from the House and one-third from the Senate, the commission is clearly meant to be controlled by the General Assembly (i.e. the legislative department), not the executive department.

In direct violation of the constitution, Section 54-7-100 of the South Carolina Code gives the “Commission” the exclusive right, with respect to the Hunley, to assume the duties and responsibilities of the state archaeologist and the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, (both offices of the executive department).

Those offices initially protested the assumption of their powers until Sen. McConnell threatened to take away all of their funding. Suddenly, they were on his side. That was the beginning of the slide. Sen. McConnell recently said, “The discovery of the Hunley was one of the most important events in the modern annals of marine archeology.” So why did the senator take control out of the hands of the state’s archaeologists and place it in the commission’s hands? There had to be a reason, but not necessarily a good one.

I believe a thorough audit of both the Hunley Commission and the Friends of the Hunley will find that reason.

The establishing law also exempts the commission from the State Procurement Code, which is administered by an office of the executive department; that is another assumption of duties. This unconstitutional assumption of those duties by the Hunley Commission, a committee of the General Assembly, is why the Legislative Audit Council has a conflict of interest and cannot audit the commission. In other words, Sen. McConnell set the commission up so he would have personal control of the Hunley by removing the state’s normal checks and balances.

Regardless of what he might say, it is a violation of the constitution, it removes the checks and balances, and it isn’t justified. Although these are just my opinions, and I am not an attorney, our constitution isn’t that difficult to understand. And it should be clear that Sen. McConnell has ignored the constitution and run roughshod over our collective rights by unconstitutionally circumventing and avoiding the state’s normal checks and balances and by focusing so much power in his hands as chairman of the Hunley Commission.

To me, the senator is completely devoid of credibility, and the Hunley Commission should be shut down. All control should be immediately turned over to the proper office within the executive department.

John Monk’s articles have been right on point. And it should be clear to the General Assembly, the governor, the attorney general and the state’s judiciary that the Hunley Commission is unconstitutional. The measure of their own credibility will be what they now do about the Hunley Commission’s unconstitutionality.

Dr. Spence is president of the Sea Research Society. He lives in Summerville.