Last year, Trent Kernodle filed a complaint with the South Carolina Ethics Commission accusing me of using my Town email and the Town website to influence the 2014 James Island Public Service District election. He complained that I used my Town email to ask the candidates questions and then evaluated their answers and shared the results with voters.
These accusations were false. I did not use my Town email for these purposes. My Town email was mayorwoolsey@jamesislandsc.us. (It is now bwoolsey@jamesislandsc.us.) I used my gmail account, mayorwoolsey@gmail.com. This is a free gmail account that I created in 2010, shortly after being elected Mayor. It does not belong to the Town.
I did not use the Town website to influence the JIPSD elections. I used my personal blog, "Mayors Corner." This is a free blog that I created in late 2010. It does not belong to the Town.
The Ethics Commission investigators agreed that Mayors Corner is my personal property and that I have a first amendment right to speak out on matters that I consider of concern to the citizens of the Town. They agreed that I did not use the Town email to write the candidates to ask them questions or communicate the answers or my evaluation of the answers to voters.
However, the investigator discovered a link on the Town website to my personal blog. If you went to the Town website, and then went to the section of the website for elected officials, and then went to the section for the Mayor, you would find my picture, my Town email, my personal cell phone, and a link to my personal blog, Mayors Corner.
The investigator also claimed that there was a link on the Town's website to my campaign facebook page. However, that was false. The link on the Town's website was to the Town's facebook page. The investigator most probably found something shared from my personal facebook page, "Mayor Woolsey" to the Town facebook page. And there was a link on my Mayor Woolsey facebook page to my campaign facebook page. The investigator admitted that he wasn't very familiar with facebook and this accusation was dropped.
The Ethics Commission decided that because Mayors Corner included posts that were aimed at influencing the result of the election, and that during the 2014 JIPSD election campaign, I had left a link to my personal blog on the Town website, I was in that way using the public property, that is, the Town's website, to influence an election. For that violation, they fined me $1000 and imposed a $250 administrative fee.
Kernodle's false accusation turned up a single link on an obscure section of the Town's website, and so I had to pay a hefty fine.
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