Senate panel says Haley did not pressure board

COLUMBIA -- A Senate panel determined Thursday that Gov. Nikki Haley did not pressure a state environmental agency to approve a dredging permit allowing Georgia to expand the Savannah port, though Democratic senators contend her request to the board chairman swayed the outcome.

The Senate committee voted 7-3 along party lines that Haley did not unduly interfere with the Department of Health and Environmental Control’s decision on a water quality permit for the dredging of the Savannah River. The decision came after four members of Haley’s staff testified under oath. Senators voted 9-3 last week to subpoena the four after Haley and her staff refused to appear before the committee voluntarily.

It is believed to be the first time legislators have invoked a 25-year-old law to force the governor’s inner circle to testify.

“If the staff had appeared before us when I asked, we wouldn’t even be here today,” Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, R-Gaffney, said after the vote. In light of comments by Haley’s spokesman after last week’s vote, he added: “Whatever rhetoric we hear after today, don’t say this committee wasted time and money.”

Haley fired back with her own warning. She called a news conference immediately after the hearing, but took no questions.

“If you mess with them, you’re messing with me,” she said, blasting legislators as only “liking decisions when they’re their decisions.

“What we saw happen today was unprecedented and sad,” she added, praising her staff. “You can shoot at me all you want to. I’ll take it every time. They don’t deserve what happened today.”

DHEC staff initially denied the permit Sept. 30. Minutes before the board was set to hear an appeal Nov. 10, staff reached an agreement with Georgia and the Army Corps of Engineers, which the board approved unanimously with no debate. Agency leaders and the six board members, all of whom Haley appointed earlier this year, testified last week that Haley did not pressure for approval.

The board did not have to hear the appeal, but Haley asked the chairman to hear Georgia’s case.

Legislators contend the agency’s actions on Georgia’s $650 million dredging project put the Charleston port at a disadvantage and scuttled plans to develop a shared port in poor, rural Jasper County, 14 miles closer to the Atlantic. Haley argues the Corps was threatening to proceed without the permit, and the agreement provided additional wetland protection and 50 years of guaranteed funding to maintain devices that are supposed to pump oxygen in the river – devices that environmentalists question whether they’ll work.

Haley’s deputy chief of staff, former Rep. Ted Pitts, said he sat in on Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal’s meeting Oct. 4 with Haley. Deal flew to Columbia to meet with Haley for about an hour. But Pitts said the meeting was simply a neighborly discussion between two first-year Republican governors and the dredging permit happened to come up toward the end. Deal asked that Georgia’s case be heard.

“Gov. Haley said absolutely, that seems like a reasonable request, and a courtesy that she would expect to be afforded to her in a similar situation,” her chief of staff, Tim Pearson, told senators.

Pearson and Pitts said Haley called board chairman Allen Amsler into her office and asked that the board hear the case, but did not ask for approval. While Pearson said discussions between state boards and the governor’s office are routine, he acknowledged Haley’s direct request to Amsler was a first.

Sen. Joel Lourie, D-Columbia, contends the request itself led to the approval.

“We all know how that works. We are not so naive to believe that when Gov. Haley says all I did was as a courtesy to have a hearing – boom, that was it,” Lourie said.

Pearson did not disagree that without the request, the hearing would not have happened.

Senators questioned staff about a fundraiser for Haley in Atlanta on Oct. 28. Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, pointed out it was held at a law firm that handles port business. Pearson responded it was scheduled in June and had nothing to do with the dredging project.

“There is no smoking gun. We’re not going to find evidence of direct correspondence,” Hutto said before the vote. “But sometimes actions speak for themselves and when the governor interjected herself into this, that said something.”

Also on Thursday, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed the appeal in the state’s Administrative Law Court, arguing the permit was improperly approved. The appeal contends the dredging will deplete dissolved oxygen, destroy habitat of the endangered shortnose sturgeon and destroy hundreds of acres of fragile freshwater marsh.

It was filed on behalf of the Savannah Riverkeeper, based in Augusta, Ga., as well as the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League and the South Carolina Wildlife Federation.