A S.C. Senate sub-committee Tuesday made major changes to an ethics reform bill the House had rushed through last week to meet the May 1 crossover deadline for legislation.

The amended bill would make major changes to the way in which ethics violations against members of the General Assembly are investigated as well as requiring new income source disclosure for public officials throughout the state.

The amended legislation takes investigation of allegations of ethics violations against House and Senate members out of the hands of legislative committees and puts a revamped state Ethics commission in charge of all ethics investigations.

The House bill proposed elimination of the House and Senate Ethics committees, replacing them with a Joint Committee on Ethics, a body that would include eight legislators and eight members of the public chosen by legislators.

Ethics investigations of legislators would have effectively remained in the control of legislators with this committee.

Republican Mark Sanford will be returning to Washington to again represent the citizens of the South Carolina 1st Congressional District after a nearly 12 ½ year break.

Sanford easily defeated Democratic opponent Elizabeth Colbert Busch in a special election to fill the seat after former representative Tim Scott was elevated to the Senate earlier this year when Jim DeMint resigned to head up the Heritage Foundation.

Despite turning off some voters with his 2009 antics of disappearing for several days to visit his Argentinian mistress while serving as governor of South Carolina, Sanford was never really in danger of losing this election.

Grand Strand Daily and SC Hotline predicted over a month ago a Sanford victory in the vicinity of 8-10 percentage points despite all the media hoopla about Colbert Busch holding a double digit lead at the time and the candidates being deadlocked as the polls opened.

The voters were never deadlocked over these two candidates.

Colbert Busch did about everything right in her campaign. The Democratic Party sank a lot of money into media ads for her. She at least held her own in the campaign’s one face-to-face debate between the two candidates.