Date Published: June 1, 2006   

Lawmakers ask for Hunley Commission audit

The Associated Press

A group of state lawmakers on Thursday asked the Legislative Audit Council to examine the finances of the South Carolina Hunley Commission.

"I don't anticipate anything negative coming of it at all," said state Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-Laurens, one of the lawmakers who made the request.

But "any commission with that type of budget" should have its finances reviewed, he said.

The Confederate submarine was the first in history to sink an enemy warship. It was raised from the ocean floor in 2000 and brought to a conservation lab at the old Charleston Navy Base where it sits in a tank of cold water.

Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, chairman of the commission, has said about $17 million has been spent during the past eight years on the Hunley project.

Raegan Quinn, spokeswoman for the nonprofit fundraising group Friends of the Hunley, said Thursday that about half of the $17 million was provided by government sources. About $4 million has come from the state, and the most recent state money came in 2002, she said.

State Auditor Tom Wagner Jr. recently said Hunley accounts have never been independently audited by the state but that transactions from an account used for donations are sampled like others during larger audits.

Michael Sponhour, spokesman for the state Budget and Control Board, has said all commission accounts are within the state's public financial accounting system and "fully subject to regular, independent audits like all other public funds."