Governor Mark Sanford recently vetoed a bill that would have made state Ethics Commission probes of public officials more transparent. That was a bad call.

Current law mandates that commission probes remain secret until they are concluded. The bill, introduced by Sen. Jake Knotts, would have required confidentiality only until a finding of probable cause was made.

That sits a whole lot better with us.

The more light shone on these probes the better.

This is because we pay the salaries of public officials and because their work affects many lives. If nothing else, taxpayers want to believe that in exchange for their money, they’re getting an honest day’s work.

To his credit, Sanford notes in his veto message that the law for public officials does not apply to legislators.  

Ethics probes of lawmakers are handled by legislative ethics committees, and those are confidential.

“In 2008, I vetoed S. 1085, which sought to expand the enforcement powers of legislative ethics committees because I believe that the current system of legislative law enforcement is fundamentally flawed when it puts legislators in the awkward position of having to enforce ethics laws against fellow legislators and their own staff,” Sanford writes.

“We’re vetoing this bill [in 2010] on the grounds that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. We shouldn’t have two ethics processes, one for legislators and another for everyone else in the state.”

And that’s all true, of course. Legislators shouldn’t be investigating legislators, and we should not have two ethics processes for our public leaders.

But its equally true that Ethics Commission probes, as they currently exist, could do with more transparency.

The governor had the chance to right this wrong.  And he dropped the ball.