My first version of today’s column originally started out with a summary of what Gov. Sanford considered to be most important in his State of the State speech. But I took so many words setting up that list, and then had so much trouble deciding where to go after listing those items, that I scrapped it and started over with what you see on today’s page.
Here is that first rough draft/outline, as far as I took it, anyway:
One of the great challenges in making the most of the governor’s annual pre-State of the State briefing luncheon for editorial page editors is that you don’t get a copy of the speech until you get there.
So you find yourself trying to eat, read the speech (which is on your lap with your notebook, there being no room on the table), ask the governor questions about it as you’re reading it, hear other people’s questions, and take notes simultaneously.
(By the way, this is not a complaint aimed at our current governor; it was ever thus. Or at least, ever since I started going to these in 1994.)
So after a lot of scattershot questions based on things haphazardly gleaned from the text on the run last Wednesday, Charleston Post and Courier Editor Barbara Williams had the good sense to make this request: You tell us what you consider to be the main points of your speech, governor.
His answer, as near as I could write down while trying to get some salad into my mouth, was as follows:
- Workers compensation
- Restructuring
- Holding the line on spending, and paying back trust funds.
- Leverage private-sector investment in rural South Carolina (broadband access).
- Education.
On education, he said he had three main points to stress:
- Early childhood.
- Charter schools, for the in-between-aged kids.
- Tuition caps at the higher-education level.
That’s as far as I got. Anyway, I thought you might find this helpful if you try to wade through the speech itself. Or maybe you won’t. Anyway, there it is.
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The State paper and the so-called “business leaders” will put Workers Compensatin reform on a list, but that is as far as they dare go, because real reform begins with removing the lawyer-legislators from representing clients before the boards they appoint.