Sen. Vincent Sheheen disagrees with me on DOT reform. He thinks it’s possible to have reform with a commission; I believe it has to go, in favor of its becoming a Cabinet agency.
But either way, he and I agree on one thing: There’s no one in charge of state government, neither the governor nor the Legislature:
I have served three years in the state House of Representatives and three years in the state Senate. During this short time, I have reached the inescapable conclusion that our legislative branch not only does not control the government in South Carolina but is incapable of meeting its appropriate and necessary roles. The problem is not with individual legislators; the problem is how our Legislature has historically been structured and operated.
Our Legislature consists of part-time legislators who have traditionally focused almost entirely on lawmaking. They have little or no full-time staff. Even the major committees have just enough staff members to stay one step ahead of bills under immediate debate. As operated and structured, our Legislature performs almost no — I repeat, almost no — oversight of the operations of state government.
The closest thing to oversight that we regularly engage in is the budget process, during which each agency is appropriated money based on its stated needs. Truthfully, however, the budget process is not designed to evaluate critically the functions of each agency and program.
He groks the fullness. He suggests it took him three years to understand this. It also took me three years. It was late summer or early fall 1990 when I finally realized how out of control South Carolina was, and how it was designed to be that way. Actually, I should say it was designed for legislators to run, but that had become impossible.
Ever since then, we’ve been pushing for fundamental restructuring of South Carolina government, all branches and all levels. To put it simply, we have wanted the governor to be firmly in charge of the executive branch; for the Legislature to live up to its responsibilities to pass laws for the WHOLE state, and to be an effective check on the governor (advice and consent, oversight of agencies); and for the judiciary to be independent of the other two, as well as from the immediate passions of the electorate. And we wanted state government to leave local governments alone to run things as local folks saw fit.
Since the governor’s weakness is the easiest to see and understand, most folks think of "government restructuring" as being about taking away power from the Legislature and giving it to the governor. Yes, we want the governor in charge of executive functions, partly because that’s the natural and proper form, but also because NOBODY is in charge now.
Lawmakers have some limited power at DOT, to exert influence here and there on local projects — but NOBODY has any oversight of the entire agency and its scope of operations. The battle between folks like Sen. Sheheen and those like John Land, who wants NO reform, is to a great extent over whether the agency will operate coherently for the benefit of the whole state, or remain a haphazard favor bank for powerful lawmakers.
Anyway, it’s good that Mr. Sheheen sees the overall problem. When we launched this campaign with a massive, year long project in 1991, we didn’t call it "Power Failure: The government that answers to the Legislature." We called it "Power Failure: The government that answers to no one."
God bless Vincent Sheheen for getting it. Now we just need 169 other lawmakers to get it. I wonder how long it’s going to take them?
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While I agree with the good senator that our state’s government is indeed out of control, I wonder if his implied fix, a full-time professional legislature is the correct solution.
I distrust, as a matter of principle, professional politicians. And, although out legislature only sits in session part-time, its members (at least the ones who hold sway over the rest) are surely full-time politicians. So, Senator Sheheen’s stated cause, a lack of full-time legislative staff to allow detailed oversight of operations just doesn’t convince me.
It seems to me that the cause of our problem is too much control by lawmakers (not too little). These are folks who have subordinated the executive’s authority and run our state’s operations from backrooms and shadows, doing deals behind closed doors and serving their own agendas, the “good ol’ boys’ network” gone wild.
Our state’s government is certainly out of control, out of the control of its citizens, that is.
However, if Sen. Sheheen needs some more staff in order to redress this problem, I’m all for it. At least he talks the talk. Maybe he can also walk the walk.
What this state needs is an active and energetic press that is honor bound to delve into the affairs of state, and ferret out fraud and waste and illegal activity. All the silliness we see is a direct result of newspapers becoming “ad rags” and TV and radio being more interested in Lohan than Leatherman.
The 4th estate has left us …and we are much poorer for it.