The group charged with preserving the Hunley paid one of its former board members $70,000 to research and write a book about the Confederate submarine that has not been published.

That’s just one of several deals and decisions by the Friends of the Hunley being questioned in various venues. The directors of the Friends are named by the Hunley Commission, headed by state Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston.

McConnell, head of the S.C. Senate, says the Friends has done a good job.

But some decisions and deals by those associated with the Hunley project have raised eyebrows.

The board of the government watchdog group Common Cause voted 5-0 Wednesday to ask state Attorney General Henry McMaster to look into the Hunley project.

“There’s something fishy about it,’’ Common Cause executive director John Crangle said.

A review of tax records and campaign finance reports by The State found:

• The Friends group has spent more than $277,000 with a Columbia firm, Richard Quinn and Associates, for marketing of the Hunley.

Quinn and Associates also does work for McConnell’s Senate re-election campaign.

Richard Quinn said his firm has saved the Hunley money, specifically in Internet costs. The Web site Quinn’s company runs for the Friends of the Hunley earns it $50,000 a year, he said.

• In March, the Friends signed a deal with Myrtle Beach developer Burroughs & Chapin to operate a Hunley exhibit.

Burroughs & Chapin and two of its executives have given $2,250 to McConnell’s re-election campaign. Burroughs & Chapin made its contribution in May 2003. The two executives made their contributions earlier this year, McConnell’s campaign reports show.

A spokesman for the development company said the contributions were unrelated to its deal with the Friends of the Hunley.

“The contributions were given in support of candidates who are good for South Carolina, and that is the basis on which they were given,’’ Burroughs & Chapin spokesman Pat Dowling said.

• In August 1998, McConnell wrote a state agency to recommend that a firm headed by Friends chairman Warren Lasch be allowed to use a pier at the former Charleston Naval Shipyard. Lasch’s firm was given use of the pier at no cost but was to split its profits with the State Ports Authority.

Lasch and his wife since have given $2,000 to McConnell’s campaigns.

QUESTIONS RAISED

The Friends’ deals and the decision-making of those associated with the Hunley project have been getting increasing public scrutiny:

• Common Cause’s board said Wednesday it will ask McMaster to look into the Hunley deals.

Board members said they want McMaster to determine whether the Friends group is subject to the Freedom of Information Act, which requires taxpayer-funded groups to open their records to the public.

Common Cause also wants to know whether the Friends group is required to send revenue from the Hunley to the state treasury.

And it wants McMaster to investigate whether government officials or private individuals have conflicts of interest because of their participation in the project.

• Charleston lawyer Justin Kahn, McConnell’s Democratic opponent in this fall’s state Senate District 41 race, has raised many of those questions as he attempts to unseat the Senate leader.

• Retired Greenville businessman Edward Sloan has filed a lawsuit to get the Friends declared a public agency.

The Friends group has received more than $8 million in federal and state taxpayer money. However, the group says it is a private charity.

CREATING THE FRIENDS

The Hunley Commission was created in 1996 with McConnell as its chairman. The commission does not have a staff or budget.

A year after the commission was created, it formed the Friends of the Hunley to raise money and oversee the sub’s preservation.

The Hunley Commission selects the Friends’ board. Spokesman Quinn said Friends directors are not paid for their work but are involved because of their interest and the submarine’s historical importance. (The Hunley was the first submarine to sink a ship.)

According to a 1996 agreement binding the Hunley Commission, the U.S. Navy and the federal General Services Administration, all revenues from the Hunley are to go to the state.

However, the Friends has not given that money — more than $1.3 million — to the state. Quinn said the group has put the money back into the Hunley. He says it is incorrect to interpret the 1996 agreement as requiring all Hunley revenue to go to the state.

McConnell said he is happy with the way the Hunley project has been conducted. Detractors criticize the project, he said, because of the sub’s tie to the Confederacy.

The marketing of the Hunley has been a big success, justifying its costs, McConnell said.

Quinn said more than 200,000 people have gone to the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston, where the sub is housed in a protective tank. State tourism officials say the Hunley is a tourist draw and will be a bigger one when a museum housing the sub is built.

But the project has been dogged by questions from its start.

It is a personal passion for McConnell, a Confederate memorabilia shop owner. And few members of the General Assembly, mindful of the influence the Senate leader wields, have raised questions about it publicly.

‘MY OWN DECISION’

While the Friends says it is a private group — and not bound by the open-records laws that govern public agencies — it did provide documents requested by The State newspaper.

Those documents show former Friends director Mark K. Ragan was paid $40,000 to research the Hunley and another $30,000 to write a book about the sub.

Ragan said the research and book have been completed, but the book has not been published yet. Ragan signed a contract with the Friends in December 1999, two months after he resigned from its board.

Friends tax records for 1999, filed in 2000, list Ragan as a board member. However, Ragan said he resigned from the board to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. “It was pretty much my own decision.”

Of his work, he said: “It was a very comprehensive analysis. Believe me, I did a lot more than $40,000 worth of work.”

The Friends did not put the research and book up for bid.

McConnell said Ragan was uniquely qualified to do the work because he already had written about the sub.

MYRTLE BEACH EXHIBIT

Both the Friends and Burroughs & Chapin hope to profit from the deal they struck.

That deal followed one of many speeches McConnell has given on the sub and its historical importance.

The speech — Quinn said he can’t remember when it was given — stirred the imagination of Douglas Wendel, Burroughs & Chapin’s chief executive officer.

After hearing McConnell talk about the sub, Wendel decided Burroughs & Chapin should get involved in the project, said Dowling, the development company’s spokesman.

Wendel and the Friends exchanged ideas about what the Myrtle Beach company could do. The Friends decided it liked the idea of an interactive exhibit built at Burroughs & Chapin’s Broadway at the Beach entertainment and shopping complex in Myrtle Beach.

In March, Burroughs & Chapin and the Friends struck a deal: Friends would get a guaranteed $74,000 a year from the Myrtle Beach exhibit — $20,000 from a “gold patron” Hunley sponsorship purchased by Burroughs & Chapin, and $4,500 a month in payments from the firm. Burroughs & Chapin also agreed to give the Friends 20 percent of the gross merchandise sales from the Myrtle Beach exhibit’s gift shop.

The exhibit opened in August. Dowling said Burroughs & Chapin eventually expects it to draw about 180,000 visitors a year — with children paying $5.95 each, and adults paying $8.95.

The Friends did not request bids on a Hunley exhibit. But McConnell said it is a good one for the Friends and for S.C. taxpayers.

“They (Burroughs & Chapin) could have built it without paying us one nickel or dime,” McConnell said.

‘SAME OLD NEGATIVE ALLEGATIONS’

The deal that Friends chairman Lasch had with the State Ports Authority — after Hunley Commission chairman McConnell’s letter — did not work well.

Lasch’s Charleston International Ports was supposed to split its profits from a Charleston pier with the Ports Authority. But a Ports Authority audit criticized Charleston International. While the company was reporting multimillion-dollar losses, it was spending more than $200,000 on charitable and political contributions, the audit said.

A lawyer for Charleston International said the audit was biased, but the Ports Authority pulled out of its contract with Lasch’s firm.

Lasch would not comment for this article.

“He doesn’t want to do yet another interview on the same old negative allegations that have been repeatedly asked and answered for the past several years,” Quinn said.

McConnell could not be reached Wednesday to discuss the letter he wrote on Lasch’s behalf.

In an earlier interview, McConnell said there was nothing improper about the contributions that Lasch, his wife and others have made to his campaigns. Those contributions make up only a small portion of the more than $300,000 McConnell has raised.

“I don’t run a test on who I get campaign donations from,” McConnell said.

Reach Washington at (803) 771-8385 or wwashington@thestate.com.