COLUMBIA – While rushing to redraw Congressional district maps for partisan gain during an ongoing primary election, South Carolina lawmakers called a special meeting to rewrite the rules of debate — and failed to notify the public in the process.
“By ignoring open-meetings rules in their quest to rig Congressional election maps, lawmakers reveal utter and naked contempt for the voters they claim to represent,” said Allen Chaney, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina. “’Might makes right’ is the stuff of dictatorships, not a representative democracy.”
The violation took place on the evening of Monday, May 18. While the State House of Representatives was in session debating a bill to shuffle voters into new districts across the state, the House Rules Committee held a special meeting at 7:15 p.m. to pass new rules about debate, specifically limiting lawmakers’ ability to offer amendments.
The public was not properly notified about the meeting. The South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, Section 30-4-80(A), states, "An agenda for regularly scheduled or special meetings must be posted ... at least twenty-four hours prior to such meetings."
A meeting agenda for the special Rules Committee meeting was posted to the Statehouse website at 7:07 p.m., eight minutes before the meeting was to start. Journalists covering the debate on the House floor did not arrive at the committee meeting until after it had started.
The South Carolina Freedom of Information Act (SC FOIA) was originally passed by the South Carolina legislature in 1978 to ensure public access to public meetings and records. The Act begins with a statement of purpose: “The General Assembly finds that it is vital in a democratic society that public business be performed in an open and public manner so that citizens shall be advised of the performance of public officials and of the decisions that are reached in public activity and in the formulation of public policy.”