Back in 2019, Post and Courier reporters spent five months sifting through more than 5,000 pages of bank statements, receipts, lawsuits, campaign filings and IRS records to uncover numerous examples of S.C. sheriffs dipping into public funds for chauffeurs, first-class airline tickets, parties, new clothes, club memberships and luxury accommodations.
Before and afterward, criminal charges were brought against 15 of the state’s 46 sheriffs — some for misusing government funds, others for misusing government employees and a variety of other crimes. Others faced political repercussions after voters got wind of their profligate spending.
Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright wasn’t about to make that mistake.
Unfortunately, his plan wasn’t to avoid spending tax dollars freely on items that he had no business spending tax dollars on. It was to avoid leaving as detailed a trail as other sheriffs had done.
As The Post and Courier’s Christian Boschult reports, Sheriff Wright used a county credit card rather than filing detailed expense reports for $53,000 in purchases over the past six and a half years. And unlike most government employees, he wasn’t required to turn in receipts for his purchases, so he didn’t.
Some of the expenditures almost certainly were allowed by both the policy the county put in place for regular employees and state law, which prohibits government employees from using their position for private gain.
Several of the hotel stays, for instance, coincided with meetings of the S.C. Sheriffs Association — which like other government employee groups holds regular gatherings, in resorts, of questionable value to the taxpayers. There were a lot of gasoline purchases, which would not violate state law as long as he was gassing up his county-issued vehicle and not a personal one. The nearly $6,000 in restaurant meals — from Chick-fil-A to the upscale Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Columbia — wouldn't be allowed for other Spartanburg County employees with these so-called procurement cards, but they don’t necessarily violate state law.
But we can’t think of any way a sheriff’s official expenditures would include accounts with Sirius XM or OnStar or Amazon Prime or the video-streaming service Pure Flix, let alone orders from a diet supplement company, fitness apparel sites and an online fitness site.
Suddenly, it seems, South Carolina has a new poster child for the need to reform our anything-goes laws and attitudes toward sheriffs.
Sheriffs, of course, ought to know better than to bill the taxpayers for what are clearly personal expenditures. They should know that not just because it’s wrong. They should know it because state law prohibits anything more than the “incidental use” of public resources.
But Sheriff Wright pretty clearly doesn’t know better than to do a lot of inappropriate things. Recall that he hired his own son as a deputy, and then went through the charade of pretending there’s no conflict of interest by having his son report to an underling — who works at the sheriff's pleasure; the State Ethics Commission is investigating. Recall too that he had to be sued to release public records about 144 warrantless searches, then waited six months to release them after he had agreed to do so.
Spartanburg County officials should have learned by now that their sheriff needs a bit of oversight. And county governments across the state should have learned by now that their no-questions-asked approach to sheriffs is unwise.
Spartanburg County did not require Sheriff Wright to turn in his receipts or limit his use of the procurement card like other county employees have to — perhaps because the money was coming out of the sheriff’s budget. Or perhaps because sheriffs like to argue that as separately elected officials, they don’t have to answer to county councils. That’s true — but county councils have the right and responsibility to oversee the expenditure of county funds.
Clearly, the Spartanburg County Council needs to put some rules on how the sheriff spends such money — and other county councils need to do the same. Sheriffs who spend tax money appropriately will have no objection to this.
Given how aggressive some sheriffs have been toward local attempts to provide oversight, we also need legislative oversight — which the Legislature still hasn’t provided despite sheriff after sheriff after sheriff who spent money inappropriately and in too many cases illegally.
That could start by authorizing the state inspector general to investigate sheriffs or at least requiring routine independent audits of all sheriff expenditures, requiring sheriffs to follow state procurement regulations, giving county officials clearer authority to deny sheriffs’ office expenditures and requiring sheriffs to post details about all their spending online.
On that last note, Mr. Boschult has posted 77 months’ worth of Sheriff Wright’s credit card statements on our website and is asking readers to contact him if they know anything about any of the expenditures. Check it out. And then urge your lawmakers to require more detailed online reporting for all sheriffs.
Click here for more opinion content from The Post and Courier.
