JULY 17, 2009 -- A big part of a two-year process came to a head quietly on Thursday when the state Legislative Audit Council sent draft findings to the state Department of Corrections of an investigation of into embattled state agency.
It’s likely, though, that things won’t be so quiet when the report becomes final – and public.
Two years ago, the state Senate began the process of reviewing the management and administration of the department. But senators felt thwarted by political interference. So they asked the award-winning audit council to step in and investigate.
LAC audits have carried considerable weight in Columbia. For example in 2006, the LAC reported the state Department of Transportation squandered upward of $100 million through past improper management decisions. Subsequently, the DOT experienced a department-wide overhaul.
In May of last year, the council began its investigation of the Department of Corrections to much media fanfare. Then the department’s director, Jon Ozmint, went on the public offensive by criticizing the council and its efforts as unfair, biased and worse.
The department has had rough time publicly over the last few years. It has run annual budget deficits of several millions of dollars for multiple years. Last year, an inmate was able to grab a prison guard’s gun during a visit to an outside hospital and shoot herself in the head. And just last week, a federal district court upheld a verdict against high-ranking department officials who had been found guilty of civil conspiracy against a former warden. At this point, those officials, not the department, will have to pay $510,000 in damages.
Within the next week, Ozmint’s office is expected to respond to the draft audit report, which was not made public per state policy. One person familiar with the process said initial findings didn’t rise to the level of the Transportation audit.
Three areas of concern
The final Corrections report should be available to the public in four to five weeks, according to LAC head Tom Bardin, who added the report would include findings about three basic areas at Corrections:
Fiscal practices. These have been highlighted by battles between Gov. Mark Sanford and the legislature. Sanford, backed by Ozmint, has accused the legislature of woefully under-funding the department, which houses more than 20,000 inmates.
Legislators have responded that the agency is the only one in state government that routinely runs a deficit. Coupled with Ozmint’s attack on the LAC’s efforts last year, the department‘s actions, some have criticized, seemed to fly in the face of two of the governor’s favorite topics: governmental transparency and fiscal responsibility.
Incidents. The report will highlight controversial incidents that have happened in and around the prisons, and the events that led up to them and the department’s planning and responses to the events.
Manpower. Finally, the report will highlight the department’s hiring and firing practices, including the possibility of recruiting problems.
Run-ins with Ozmint
Sen. Phil Leventis (D-Sumter) said was eager to look at the report because he was working on a draft letter to the governor to ask for the removal of Ozmint as the agency’s head because of his temperament and management style.
Leventis, who has had a series of run-ins with Ozmint in the past, said he expected Ozmint to “do everything he can to change the focus to the whole thing about him being victimized by the process and singled out.”
Corrections spokesman Josh Gelinas said his agency and Ozmint would “honor the process” and refrain from commenting on the draft report until the final report is made public. He would not say if the department had instituted any policy or procedural changes as a result of the audit.
Gelinas even declined to comment on how many pages the report was. “Stay tuned,” he said.
Considering how forthcoming the agency had been in criticizing the LAC audit in the past, including maintaining a webpage with links to all of its gripes (http://www.doc.sc.gov/news/lac.jsp), the relative quiet at Corrections has been welcomed by some as a sea change.
Sen. Mike Fair (R-Greenville), the chair of the Corrections and Penology Committee in the Senate, said he was glad to see a passing of the “false pride” he believed has typified Ozmint’s past public responses.
Fair said he was not trying to “put a smiley face on the situation,” but that he hoped the audit would provide an opportunity to bleed out of the process what he referred to as “the pretentiousness of it all.”
Fair said some of the quiet at Corrections might be a result of a similar sea change happening within Sanford, as he has attempted to win back the state after revelations of his trysts with a South American paramour.
Sanford has always favored Ozmint among others in his cabinet, according to multiple sources. But with Sanford politically crippled, the governor may not be able to cast his considerable protective shadow over Ozmint.
Leventis said he hoped his colleagues in the legislature wouldn’t overreact to some of the findings when they become public, and instead “stayed true to their responsibility of oversight.”
In a separate matter related to the civil conspiracy verdict mentioned above, Gelinas declined to comment on whether the cash-strapped agency had identified any part of its own budget to cover the damages for its two employees. Last year, a proviso was inserted into the House’s initial version of the 2008-09 budget to cover the two Corrections administrators should they lose on appeals. It was not included in the final budget. “We haven’t decided what we are going to do yet,” he said.
Crystal ball: If there are no bombshells in the audit, Ozmint will survive. If there are, then Ozmint will be gone, as a weakened Sanford can no longer protect his “golden child,” as some have derisively referred to Ozmint. Regardless, expect Ozmint to break ranks and become aggressive. A tiger, we’re told, doesn’t change his stripes.