Sen. Stephen Goldfinch, R-Murrells Inlet, asked for an ethics investigation into a representative over money received from the state budget during a meeting Tuesday, April 7, 2026. This photo comes from a Senate Finance subcommittee meeting in April 2024. Sen. Larry Grooms is on the far left of Goldfinch. (Photo by Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — After senators called for an investigation into the House’s longest-serving member over state money directed to her nonprofit, the Orangeburg Democrat said she has nothing to hide.
Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter heads CASA Family Systems, an Orangeburg-based nonprofit focused on helping victims of sexual and domestic violence and neglect.
Its services have been funded through a directive in the state budget since 2002. Those tax dollars, which have increased from $175,000 to $350,000 annually, attracted no attention until this week. Now they’re the focus of potentially multiple investigations.
The new scrutiny came with the attorney general’s race. For 24 years, the budget clause has sent money specifically to the 1st Judicial Circuit, which includes Calhoun, Orangeburg and Dorchester counties. A three-way GOP primary contest June 9 features Sen. Stephen Goldfinch and two solicitors, including 1st Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe.
“It’s really unfortunate our agency has gotten caught up in a political campaign,” Cobb-Hunter told the SC Daily Gazette on Wednesday.
The money that flows through the Department of Juvenile Justice for community services, she confirmed, has nothing to do with Pascoe. The budget specifies the 1st Circuit because that’s the region her nonprofit primarily operates in, she said, though CASA also works in rural Bamberg County.
“He thought he had a gotcha moment,” Cobb-Hunter said of Goldfinch. “He doesn’t, but what he’s done is cast aspersions not just on me but the work we’ve been proudly doing for over 40 years.”
Ahead of the Senate budget-writing committee meeting this week to put together its spending package, Goldfinch said the clause titled Juvenile Arbitration/Community Advocacy Program newly caught his eye. Budget clauses are technically one-year laws, but they roll over year after year until legislators decide to remove or change them.
The Murrells Inlet Republican questioned why such a big chunk of money went to only one of South Carolina’s 16 judicial circuits, which led Senate Finance staffers to start digging.
Goldfinch presented their findings to the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday, which led to senators agreeing to send the allegations to the State Ethics Commission and House Ethics Committee to investigate.
On Tuesday, Goldfinch called the spending a “really bad look,” regardless of whether Cobb-Hunter broke any laws.
On Wednesday, Senate Finance Chairman Harvey Peeler sent a letter to the chief of the State Law Enforcement Division seeking a review.
“These allegations raise serious questions regarding potential conflicts of interest, compliance with state ethics law, and the integrity of the legislative appropriations process,” the Gaffney Republican wrote to SLED Chief Mark Keel. (SLED declined to comment.)
Cobb-Hunter, first elected in 1992, said she follows House rules regarding potential conflicts of interest “religiously every budget cycle,” to include not voting on budget sections with any ties to her nonprofit. Like many legislators who abstain from voting on parts of the budget, she fills out a form to explain that.
“It may well look bad, but I complied with the rules,” she said.
“I’m an open book. My agency is an open book,” she added about the nonprofit she’s led since 1985. “I just hope Goldfinch and other members of the General Assembly can withstand this sort of scrutiny.”
In 2002, the budget clause required DJJ to contract with all 16 solicitors and disburse up to $45,000 to each for arbitration programs that keep youth out of jail, plus send $175,000 to the 1st Circuit’s community advocacy program. The amounts increased over two decades. Since 2022, the budget has directed DJJ to send each circuit up to $60,000, plus send $350,000 to the 1st Circuit program.
Pascoe, first elected the 1st Circuit’s chief prosecutor in 2004, said Tuesday his office receives only the $60,000.
According to public financial filings, Cobb-Hunter received a salary of $134,078 from CASA Family Systems in 2024.
That’s just a little more than the $130,643 she reported on her 2024 economic disclosure form as a state-paid salary.
That’s not necessarily against any laws, senators said.
Cobb-Hunter, first vice chair of the House budget-writing committee, acknowledged Wednesday her salary is state-funded, adding she reports that on her annual Statement of Economic Interest.
While the form doesn’t name the nonprofit, the level of detail elected officials give on their annual disclosure varies.
“My SEI is public information,” Cobb-Hunter said, adding that “nothing has changed” in how she fills out the form.
Sens. Ronnie Cromer, R-Prosperity, and Darrell Jackson, D-Columbia, cautioned against jumping to conclusions about whether Cobb-Hunter did anything wrong.
“This could be a case of a legitimate business performing legitimate services,” Cromer said.
Although he couldn’t speak to the specific work CASA Family Systems did, Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, an attorney in Orangeburg, said programs in the area have supported youth involved in the criminal justice system to keep them from spending time in the juvenile justice’s facilities.
“I get the issue you’re raising, but the actual people that are counseling these troubled youth and their parents and their people — they’re actually doing real work,” Hutto told Goldfinch.
The services provided by CASA Family Systems, which initially stood Citizens Against Sexual Assault when founded in 1979, include crisis counseling and a domestic violence shelter that can house up to 21 women and children at any given time, according to its website.
Those types of services “should be funded, and we should support those things,” Goldfinch said.
“But when a sitting legislator is the one receiving the funds, I think we all have to take a break and think about what that means and what that means to the institution,” he said.
Under a change Goldfinch proposed Tuesday, the Senate’s spending plan would ban using any of the money for salaries and split the $350,000 equally among the 16 circuits. Senators said they wanted to keep the important program in place while ensuring no money went to Cobb-Hunter’s salary.
Sending taxpayer money to nonprofits is nothing new for legislators. In recent years, they’ve doled out tens of millions of dollars to nonprofits through budget earmarks, though the Legislature suspended all earmarks last year.
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And Cobb-Hunter is far from the only legislator to receive some sort of taxpayer money.
After Sen. Wes Climer, a Rock Hill Republican, proposed a sweeping budget clause disallowing any payment of state funds to legislators, his fellow senators chimed in with their own sources of income from state agencies.
Hutto, for example, gets paid for teaching classes from time to time at the University of South Carolina, a publicly funded university, and he gets paid through state funds to work as a public defender. Cromer, a small-town pharmacist, gets reimbursements from Medicaid from some of his patients, which comes from the state.
Even something as small as the Chick-fil-A sandwich and bottle of water Clemson University gives Sen. Tom Corbin on weekends he volunteers as security at football games might count as a contribution paid for in taxpayer dollars, he said.
“I don’t think any of those present an ethical conflict,” Climer said.
Legislators, who make an annual salary of $10,400, plus a yearly stipend of $12,000 for legislative business outside the Statehouse, need to make money, and not every job can stay completely removed from taxpayer dollars, said Sen. Larry Grooms.
The Berkeley County Republican questioned whether he should put up signs outside the chain of convenience stores he owns telling state employees not to shop there, since that would technically mean a portion of his income came from taxpayer dollars. Or should he stop selling lottery tickets, he asked, since those come from the state?
“We’re citizen legislators,” Grooms said. “We all work to make a living in many different professions. If you’re working, you’re probably touching some form of government at some point along the way.”
What set the money to Cobb-Hunter’s nonprofit apart, Goldfinch said, was that it came not incidentally through a legal case or agency but directly from a spending clause in the state budget.
“It’s a really bad look for a legislator to put a proviso or a line item that directly benefits them or their family,” Goldfinch said. “That’s what this looks like.”
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
