Charleston mayor’s real estate connections spawn heated ethics debate

Furman University’s Glen Halva-Neubauer weighed in on a piece appearing in The Post and Courier about how elected officials separate their personal, professional and public lives. In a hotly contested back-and-forth between Charleston City Council and Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg over a real estate deal, Halva-Neubauer, a politics and international affairs professor who specializes in state and local government, said, “It’s an age-old question. Is the appearance of impropriety equal to impropriety itself?”

Citing the mayor’s decision not to recuse himself in a real estate transaction that might impact the mayor’s family, Halva-Neubauer said, “There’s old adage in politics, ‘If you are explaining, you’re losing.’ And I think here there is a lot of explaining that you have to do when a recusal isn’t legally necessary.”

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