UPDATE: Ultimate Insider Catherine Templeton is in the news for grandstanding once again. She's trying to pretend that she cares about the taxpayers, claiming she won't accept her salary if she somehow gets elected governor of South Carolina.

Progress South Carolina believes that if she really cared about the taxpayers, she would refund the money she took for the no-show job she created for herself before she left her position with the Department of Health and Environmental Control.

We demand that Catherine Templeton return the $86,500 that she gave herself before she left office.

It’s time to end the culture of entitlement in Columbia

This summer we found out that Catherine Templeton gave herself a nice little going away gift of $86,500 in taxpayer money when she left the Department of Health and Environmental Control.

According to the Post and Courier, “Templeton signed a no-bid consulting contract with the state’s main environment and health regulator for $17,300 a month, which was 28 percent more than she earned as director.”[i]

Instead of outrage, GOP legislative leaders shrugged their shoulders and pointed to the fact that her predecessor, Earl Hunter, received a similar consulting contract after he left the agency.

Templeton tried to defend herself by saying that Gov. Henry McMaster got $550,000 in consulting fees from USC.[ii]

And of course, there is the ongoing, growing scandal among GOP legislators that is now being investigated by the FBI, “raising the specter of potential federal charges in an investigation that already has ensnared four South Carolina lawmakers and exposed allegations of money laundering, influence peddling and other misconduct.”[iii]

All of this is the direct result of an entrenched one-party state, where elected officials think they are entitled to take whatever they can while they are in office, taxpayers be damned.

It’s time to end the culture of entitlement in South Carolina. Progress South Carolina will be demanding a series of actions from our elected officials to change this culture. Here’s the first:

We demand that Catherine Templeton return the $86,500 that she gave herself before she left office.

Templeton wants to be our governor, but her self-dealing raises questions about her fitness for office. If she returns the money she gave herself, it will show that she is serious about trying to restore her trustworthiness.

Join Progress South Carolina and demand that Templeton pay back the people of South Carolina.