Category Archives: Government restructuring

Taking the ‘Pulse’ of our mystery friends

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This morning, I got this e-mail from the anonymous folks over at The Pulse of Columbia:

To: Our Friends in the City of
Columbia

From: THE PULSE OF
COLUMBIA

With “Charles in Charge”… it begs
the question “What About Bob”?

The
State
says we need the “Strong Mayor” system, but could Mayor Bob really run the City
of

Columbia

?

You tell us what you think at The Pulse of
Columbia!!

As
always,

Your Friends at THE PULSE

… to which I responded:

Who says Bob would be
the mayor? And would we even consider a change that would take effect before the
next mayoral election?

Here’s the reply I got:

Completely agree with
you on that one, Brad. We’re pushing right along with
you!!!

 

We’d really like to
see Council take the lead and give the voters a chance to decide what form of
government is best for

Columbia

. If we can educate the voting populous
out there about the importance of a good government structure, it would
dramatically improve the way the City does business and give Columbia the
fighting chance it needs to really be a fantastic
city.

The rally for change
is exciting. We need to continue moving the balls forward. Eventually they will
begin to roll on their own.

As long as you keep
pushing the message, we’ll continue posting it!!

In case you’re wondering who our "friends" at the Pulse might be, we’re in the same boat. Back when I first started hearing from them, I asked, and here’s the answer I got:

We’re are a group of
Columbia-area residents and business owners who’d like to see the City’s
leadership step up to the plate, like we have to do every day with our families
and businesses, and help our Capital City reach its potential. There’s so much
out there that we’d like to City to address, and we just hope to be a voice that
does that.

Kind of a long name, huh?

Will Sanford take next step, and actually WORK with Rex?

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Check out Cindi’s column today. It seems Gov. Sanford was somewhat taken aback to learn that he and Supt. of Ed. Jim Rex have some reform goals in common — this, despite the fact that I (and others) have made that point to him since right after last year’s election. Here’s video of my asking the governor about this in January.

Unfortunately, the governor has put all his education-related energies into the effort to pay people to desert the public schools, rather than into making those schools better.

Like Cindi, I, too, am encouraged that — thanks to his laudable efforts to get his hands around the budget process — the governor has at long last had a conversation with Mr. Rex regarding these matters. (It’s also great to see the first lady working with Mr. Rex on another front.) He asked Mr. Rex whether he would actively advocate some of these reforms. What I want to know is, will the governor break precedent and do something he never did with Inez Tenenbaum, and has failed for a year to do with Mr. Rex — seize upon areas of agreement, and get some worthwhile things done.

As you know, we believe that the governor should appoint the education superintendent, and have direct control over how that half of the state budget is spent. So, to hear him tell it, does the governor. But up to now, he has stiffened resistance to that idea among those who care about education by swinging back and forth between negligent apathy and outright hostility toward public schools. It’s time he helped the cause of government restructuring — not to mention the crucial cause of universal education — by showing he can be a force for positive change.

But seriously, folks: Land on Sanford and Workers’ Comp

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Just to show that this morning’s event wasn’t all fun and games — well, OK, it was all fun and games for the Democratic Party luminaries Dwight Drake had invited to the roof of his law firm’s fancy digs, but set that aside… here’s a clip of me asking Sen. Land a question that he, of all people, would take in utmost seriousness.

Sen. Land is an attorney who represents workers in Workers’ Comp cases, so the recent controversy over the governor’s efforts to influence the administrative law court’s standard is a sober subject for him.

(Please excuse the occasional disappearance of the senator’s chin; the glare on that rooftop was considerable, and I had trouble seeing what was on the little monitor screen on my camera.)

His-a culpa

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Tom1

Just received this mea culpa from Tom Davis, regarding the infamous fund-raising letter for ReformSC:

It was a big mistake…
… for me not to have included a reference to restructuring in that email piece
I sent out a few weeks ago for Reform SC.  Not sure what else to say.  I made a
mistake.

This reminds me of something Tom had said to me about this before, and which Chad Walldorf mentioned again at lunch yesterday (the post about which was probably the impetus for Tom’s e-mail): Tom wrote that letter in a huge hurry during preparations to go on an ecodevo trip to China. Make of that what you will.

Whatever my suspicions of the governor, his anti-government fraternity brothers, and such, I remain convinced that Tom means well. But no matter how sincere he and Chad are, if the money behind ReformSC is about less government, without regard to better government, it will bear watching.

Tom2

Lunch with Chad Walldorf

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Following up on this conversation from last week, I had lunch with Chad Walldorf today. And I pulled Cindi Scoppe along with us, so that someone would remember the details of the conversation. (I’m a, you know, Big Picture kind of guy. And as I’ve said before, I don’t take notes and converse normally at the same time.)

I pretty much came away from it with the same impression I had of Chad before, which is that he is a really earnest guy who wants to be a force for positive change and truly believes he is going about it the right way.

He thought I had some other impression of him, based on the things I’ve said about movements and entities with which he has been associated — school choice, Gov. Mark Sanford, the Club for Growth and ReformSC. Of all those, the most relevant one for discussion here is ReformSC.

Chad wanted to get across to me that ReformSC is first and foremost about government restructuring, and it’s hard to find anything nearer and dearer to my wonkish heart than that. I have no doubt that as far as he is concerned, that is completely true. My problem is with things that are outside the purview of what Chad can control or what ReformSC may or may not intend.

Chad was really upset at the reaction I had to this fund-raising letter, written by one of my favorite people in the Sanford administration. That was one of my problems with it — the person who wrote it. If Tom Davis, of all people, wrote a fund-raising letter for ReformSC that ignored government restructuring and emphasized the whacky anti-government stuff that Sanford is for, that group is going to have a big hole to climb out of to get my trust. In other words, if Tom Davis has gone over to the Dark Side, all Jedi are in danger.

I figured that if Tom wrote that, somebody must have deeply impressed upon him the idea that he needed to push the anti-government stuff, rather than the good-government stuff. For Tom to forget to talk about restructuring in selling ReformSC, it would have to have been crowded out of his head by an awful lot of talk about the other stuff.

Furthermore, even if that was just a mistake on Tom’s part, if people gave money to the organization as a result of that letter, it would be reasonable to believe that they fully expected the group to use their money to push its anti-government planks (from the Web site: a Newt Gingrich video on "Why can the private sector accomplish what government can’t?"), not the restructuring. And what is that likely to make me think the group will eventually do, no matter what its original intentions may have been? Money talks, and that other stuff walks, you know. From what I’ve seen, people who give money for anti-government reasons generally don’t want to see good government. First, they don’t believe there’s any such thing, and second, if government got better, fewer people would hate it, and their cause would lose ground.

Finally, there is the record of the last few years. Here we have a group that is unabashed about its desire to remake the Legislature in the governor’ image, and what is our experience with that? SCRG and CIA, which have spent remarkable amounts of out-of-state money in an effort to replace some of the best and brightest in the Legislature with pretty much any doofus who promises not to stand in the way of tuition tax credits.

All of that made Tom’s letter very ominous.

The upshot? I believe Chad is a fine fellow. I don’t think he wants to destroy public schools, even though he favors a policy that I firmly believe would profoundly undermine the already-weakened consensus in our society that supports universal education. And I don’t believe he wants to arbitrarily shrink government small enough to drown it in a bathtub, even though he is a leading member of the local Club for Growth.

And I believe he fully intends for ReformSC to be an instrument for restructuring state government to make it a better servant to the people of South Carolina. As to whether I believe that will be the outcome … I will have to see something positive that I haven’t seen since Mark Sanford was elected in 2002 before I am convinced.

In South Carolina, we keep talking about the wrong things

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
We always seem to be having the wrong conversations in South Carolina. Sometimes, we don’t even talk at all about the things that cry out for focused, urgent debate.
    Look at this joke of a commission that was assigned to examine whether the city of Columbia should ditch its ineffective, unaccountable, “don’t ask me” form of government. It was supposed to report something two years ago. And here we are, still waiting, with a city that can’t even close its books at the end of the year. Whether its that fiscal fiasco, or the failure to justify what it did with millions in special tax revenues, or the rehiring of a cop who was said to be found drunk, naked and armed in public, there is no one who works directly for the voters who has control over those things.
    But as bad as it is to have no one to blame, there is no one to look to for a vision of positive action. A city that says it wants to leap forward into the knowledge economy with Innovista really, really needs somebody accountable driving the process.
    Columbia needed a strong-mayor form of government yesterday, and what have we done? Sat around two years waiting for a panel that didn’t want to reach that conclusion to start with to come back and tell us so.
    It’s worse on the state level.
    What does South Carolina need? It needs to get up and off its duff and start catching up with the rest of the country. There are many elements involved in doing that, but one that everybody knows must be included is bringing up the level of educational achievement throughout our population.
    There are all sorts of obvious reforms that should be enacted immediately to improve our public schools. Just to name one that no one can mount a credible argument against, and which the Legislature could enact at any time it chooses, we need to eliminate waste and channel expertise by drastically reducing the number of school districts in the state.
    So each time the Legislature meets, it debates how to get that done, right? No way. For the last several years, every time any suggestion of any kind for improving our public schools has come up, the General Assembly has been paralyzed by a minority of lawmakers who say no, instead of fixing the public schools, let’s take funding away from them and give it to private schools — you know, the only kind of schools that we can’t possibly hold accountable.
    As long as we’re talking about money, take a look at what the most powerful man in the Legislature, Sen. Glenn McConnell, had to say on our op-ed page Friday (to read the full piece, follow the link):

    South Carolina can only have an orderly, predictable and consistent growth rate in state spending by constitutionally mandating it. It cannot be accomplished on a reliable basis by hanging onto slim majorities in the Legislature and having the right governor. The political pressures are too great unless there is a constitutional bridle on the process.

    The people of South Carolina elect 170 people to the Legislature. In this most legislative of states, those 170 people have complete power to do whatever they want with regard to taxing and spending, with one caveat — they are already prevented by the constitution from spending more than they take in.
But they could raise taxes, right? Only in theory. The State House is filled with people who’d rather be poked in the eye with a sharp stick than ever raise our taxes, whether it would be a good idea to do so or not.
    All of this is true, and of all those 170 people, there is no one with more power to affect the general course of legislation than Glenn McConnell.
    And yet he tells us that it’s impossible for him and his colleagues to prevent spending from getting out of hand.
    What’s he saying here? He’s saying that he’s afraid that the people of South Carolina may someday elect a majority of legislators who think they need to spend more than Glenn McConnell thinks we ought to spend. Therefore, we should take away the Legislature’s power to make that most fundamental of legislative decisions. We should rig the rules so that spending never exceeds an amount that he and those who agree with him prefer, even if most South Carolinians (and that, by the way, is what “political pressures” means — the will of the voters) disagree.
    Is there a problem with how the Legislature spends our money? You betcha. We don’t spend nearly enough on state troopers, prisons, roads or mental health services. And we spend too much on festivals and museums and various other sorts of folderol that help lawmakers get re-elected, but do little for the state overall.
    So let’s talk about that. Let’s have a conversation about the fact that South Carolinians aren’t as safe or healthy or well-educated as folks in other parts of the country because lawmakers choose to spend on the wrong things.
    But that’s not the kind of conversation we have at our State House. Instead, the people with the bulliest pulpits, from the governor to the most powerful man in the Senate, want most of all to make sure lawmakers spend less than they otherwise might, whether they spend wisely or not.
    The McConnell proposal would make sure that approach always wins all future arguments.
    For Sen. McConnell, this thing we call representative democracy is just a little too risky. Elections might produce people who disagree with him. And he’s just not willing to put up with that.

Reform SC: Translucent, or just plain opaque?

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Chad Walldorf of ReformSC has promised the movement to stack the Legislature with Sanford drones will be "transparent." After getting shut out of a ReformSC soiree featuring not one, but two, governors, a reporter at the Spartanburg paper estimates that it’s no better than "translucent:"

With rampant speculation that ReformSC is a tool to target legislators on a rumored "hit list," this did nothing to help the group’s image. Despite their talk of transparency, ReformSC seems to be translucent at best.

It’s not that I don’t trust these people — though most reporters maintain a healthy dose of skepticism — it’s that so much of the information was second-hand.

As Jason Spencer notes, "chances are, when someone or something political isn’t comfortable with scrutiny by the press, there’s a reason why."

Anyway, that’s Jason Spencer’s complaint. Here’s mine…

Sanford’s latest money pitch

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This was shared with me by a certain person who removed the name of the source who sent it to her, because she doesn’t trust me with such information.

This is an encouraging message, because the governor is actually advocating reform in this pitch, as opposed to what I got out of the previous one from Tom Davis, which emphasized the governor’s strange belief that government in South Carolina is overly blessed with resources.

This message, paired with the promise of Reform SC to disclose its sources of income, has calmed me down a tad on this subject, for now.

Anyway, here’s the message:

From: Mark Sanford [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 3:09 PM
To: DELETED/crs
Subject: Reform SC Fundraiser with Governor Jeb Bush

I hope the weekend treated you well.

I am writing to ask for your help.

We are now three weeks out from our one fundraising push on behalf of Reform SC, and if you could help us I would appreciate it.

From a South Carolina perspective, this is really important because there is no way our government’s structure will change until enough people are talking at a grass roots level on the need for it. I have said to a number of friends that until someone is asking their cousin in Hampton why we are the only state in the country with a Budget and Control Board – and in turn they are talking to someone else about how that drives up the cost of our state government – change will be exceedingly tough. We have a fatally flawed governmental structure that costs all of us in a variety of ways and changing it is the lynchpin to changing many of our government’s outcomes.

So all this makes our current push toward October 16th very important, and indeed its why I would ask that you join in if this currently isn’t on your radar screen – and that you redouble your efforts if it is.

If you could scrape up the $500 an individual, $1000 a couple, to attend one of the events in Spartanburg, Columbia or Charleston, it would help very much – and I think you would be in for a treat. Jeb has a very unique vantage point on the need for reform in government.

If you can’t I would still ask that you help financially at some level and talk to friends about doing the same because a little help from a lot of friends adds up. There will be plenty of additional ways to help beyond that, but again this is our one big push in trying to fill the gas tank financially so that the important work of educating on reform can begin.

In either case we need to be getting checks in so we know how many people to expect and plan for on the 16th. So if you can help us please send any checks to Reform SC, P.O. Box 123, Columbia SC 29202.

Thank you for your consideration on this – I appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Mark

P.S.  If you are interested in one of the events and need further details, please let me know.

Budget and Control Board lawsuit

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Here are the court filings in the lawsuit Cindi Scoppe wrote about today challenging the constitutionality of the Budget and Control Board.

That Cindi is such a grind. Now, back to fun stuff…

Who is this Converse Chellis, and why are we letting him hold all our money?

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Well, as everyone knows by now — even those of us at the beach and doing our best to be as far out of the loop as possible — state Rep. Converse Chellis will become our new treasurer tomorrow.

So how do we feel about that? I don’t know; how about you?

I don’t know much about the guy, beyond the facts that:

  • He managed to sew up the House vote, which Nathan Ballentine acknowledged last week by bowing out. (Ken Wingate indicated his lack of interest at about the same time.) And, of course, the guy with the House votes is generally the guy who wins in these joint-assembly things there being fewer senators, and the loyalty divide between House and Senate being a far sharper distinction than between GOP and Dem.
  • What this indicates, although does not prove, is that Danny Cooper, and therefore by extension Bobby Harrell, feel confident that Mr. Chellis will be their boy, and not the governors — which is why they put the provision in the sine die resolution to come back and do the picking themselves in the event young Thomas resigned. While Mr. Chellis might be a fine man, and while I often prefer Bobby Harrell’s priorities to the governor’s, this is a bad thing in good-government terms, because  everything that the Budget and Control does is considered an executive function in sane states, and the Legislature already holds 40 percent of this executive agency — with the other 60 percent fragmented among three executive officers elected separately, and often with competing agendas. This gives lawmakers a solid 60 percent — if they can retain solidarity, in light of that Senate/House rivalry thing. But when it’s a matter of fighting with a true outsider like the governor (and to the General Assembly, any governor is an outsider, not just this one), suddenly House and Senate are quite capable of melding minds.
  • He is a CPA, which may mean that he’s better qualified than Sen. Greg Ryberg, who would be my choice among the candidates I’ve actually had a chance to interview at length on the subject. So maybe that means he’d do a better job. At the same time, Ryberg would be a reliable ally of the governor on the B&C Board (even more so than Mr. Ballentine might have been), which is a good thing in my mind but a very bad one in those of Mr. Cooper and Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, and what they prefer will count for a heap more than what I think when the  voting starts Friday.
  • His name — Converse A. Chellis III — sounds like it would belong to a character whose homework Dobie Gillis might have been tempted to copy, if Dobie hadn’t been an essentially good person at heart. No, wait — actually, I’m thinking of the obnoxious rich guy who was a regular character. In any case, Maynard G. Krebs he ain’t.
  • His picture in the legislative manual is completely unfamiliar to me. I’ve probably seen him, maybe met him, but don’t recall. I wouldn’t mention this, seeing as how I’m awful with names and faces, except that people who are better with such things say they don’t know him either.
  • Mr. Chellis was the subject of a lawsuit a few years back — this was reported this morning in the Charleston paper  — arising from the breakup of an accounting firm of which he was a part. Allegations flew involving both sex and money, which I guess sort of covers the waterfront. Someone who was on the other side of the report. Plaintiff said, "Disputes arose between the members of CBA, concerning Chellis’s conduct
    toward female employees, Chellis’s work ethic, and financial rewards." I don’t know much about accounting, and might not be in a position to judge even if I had more details. But I probably could have understood the conduct toward female employees part, had there been more info to go on. For the record, I don’t hold with ungentlemanly conduct toward ladies. But the lawsuit was settled out of court, and Mr. Chellis is likely justified in saying "I want to reassure you that these attacks are totally without merit,
    and are merely an attempt by our opponents to derail the election
    process."

Which isn’t much. Me, I’ll be making like a Cubs fan and cheering for Sen. Ryberg, but we could be OK with Rep. Chellis. What do y’all think?

My exchange about the governor with ‘Pollyanna’ Scoppe

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Yesterday my uncle brought a copy of The State from Florence and let me look at it. When he saw me looking at this story, he asked whether I had expected that. I said certainly not, and started launching into a tirade on the subject before reminding myself I was on vacation and shutting up.

Cindi Scoppe also brought it to my attention, and we had the following exchange. To put it in language that young folk can understand, she was like:

—–Original Message—–
From: Scoppe, Cindi
Sent: Mon 7/30/2007 5:14 PM
To: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Subject: FW: E-Release – Gov. Sanford Names Buck Limehouse to ContinueLeading DOT

interesting …

—–Original Message—–
From: Joel Sawyer [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 4:03 PM
To: Joel Sawyer
Subject: E-Release – Gov. Sanford Names Buck Limehouse to
ContinueLeading DOT

STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNORe
MARK SANFORD, GOVERNOR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:        Joel Sawyer

Gov. Sanford Names Buck Limehouse to Continue Leading DOT
LIMEHOUSE TO SERVE AS FIRST SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION

Columbia, S.C. – July 30, 2007 – Gov. Mark Sanford today nominated Buck Limehouse as his Secretary of Transportation under the new authority given by recent Department of Transportation restructuring legislation.

Limehouse, 68, is a former chairman of the DOT board and currently serves as director of the agency. Limehouse will run the day-to-day operations of the agency. Gov. Sanford said Limehouse’s wealth of institutional knowledge of the agency made him the right person for the job while the DOT transitions from its previous management structure to the new restructured model.

"First off, I want to thank Buck for being willing to continue his service to the state as this agency transitions to a more accountable structure," Gov. Sanford said. "Whether it’s been his time as chairman or in his current role as director, I think Buck brings a unique skill set and perspective to this job as we sort out what works and what doesn’t under this new management model. This appointment will give us through the next legislative session to not only see what works and doesn’t work within the agency, but to clearly determine whether or not Buck is the right fit with this administration to bring those changes. Our administration will work closely with the DOT and with Buck to make that agency more accountable and a better steward of taxpayer dollars."

Gov. Sanford signed a DOT reform bill last month that in addition to creating an at-will director appointed by the governor, is also aimed at encouraging sound infrastructure investments by requiring that decisions be made in the context of a statewide plan. It also gives the new Secretary of Transportation the ability to hire and fire down to the deputy director level. The legislation was passed in response to an audit that found a number of problems at the state DOT, including overpaying by tens of millions of dollars for contracts, purposefully manipulating account balances, and violating state law on hiring practices for temporary employees. All told, the report found more than $60 million wasted by the agency that could have been used for infrastructure needs in South Carolina.

Limehouse will be officially named the state’s first Secretary of Transportation upon Senate confirmation.

"It’s an honor to be named the state’s first Secretary of Transportation, and I appreciate the governor picking me for the job," Limehouse said. "I think this legislation is a step forward, but at the same time there are clearly some unworkable components that need to get addressed. In addition to continuing to focus on accountability and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars, part of my role will be to continue looking for ways to improve upon this new legislation, and to work with the legislature toward that goal."

Joel Sawyer
Office of Gov. Mark Sanford

And then I was like:

—–Original Message—–
From: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 8:54 AM
To: Scoppe, Cindi
Subject: RE: E-Release – Gov. Sanford Names Buck Limehouse to
ContinueLeading DOT

Actually, it’s just plain weird. First — at the very moment when he had leverage to reform an agency that badly needed it, and had just been re-elected saying that THIS time, he really MEANT it about restructuring — he goes in with an inadequate compromise as his demand, and comes out with next to nothing.

Now he not only capitulates to, but positively affirms, the status quo by naming the official Commission Man to the only position he has any kind of say over.

It’s nothing short of perverse.

And then she was like:

Or perhaps he’s trying to be pragmatic.

1. He has to get the Senate to confirm his choice for secretary, and Limehouse is popular in the Senate.

2. He wants the law changed to give the secretary more power, and Limehouse is saying the law needs to be changed to give the secretary more power, and he has pull in the Legislature.

So why not keep Limehouse in place to see if HE can get the Legislature to improve the law (we know the Legislature isn’t going to FIX the law) to give the secretary more power and the commission  less. If it turns out that Limehouse really is a status quo guy, Sanford can replace him after he gets the law changed (or after it becomes clear that the Legislature won’t change it). If, on the other hand, it turns out that Limehouse is merely someone who does the bidding of whoever he works for, and that now that he works for the governor he actually works to reform the agency to the extent that the secretary can, then Sanford can keep him, and it’s a win-win.

So, is it a good thing or a bad thing that we discuss stuff before we do editorials about it, rather than going with our respective individual guts?

We won’t have Thomas Ravenel to kick around any more

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Treasurer

Well, he’s resigned. He should have done so before, but now it’s done. Appearing in the protective custody of his sisters, he read the following statement today after his court hearing:

"I would like to say I’m deeply disappointed in myself for the
circumstances surrounding my presence here today due to the personal
mistakes I’ve made in my life.

"Second most important, I want
to offer a heartfelt apology to the state of South Carolina. To the
people of South Carolina and to my family, I am deeply sorry.

"Now,
in the best interest of our state, I believe I must resign the position
of treasurer of the state of South Carolina, and I have so informed the
governor.

"Effective as of today, I do resign. Thank you."

I was struck, as you might as be, by the way this experience has changed the man, as well it might. The raw video I found on the WIS-TV site provides a marked contrast to the know-it-all persona that was his ever-present mask back during the election.

Now the jockeying for the position of Treasurer can begin in earnest. The Legislature reserved the right to come back into session to deal with such an eventuality (anything but leave such a matter in the governor’s hands, you know), although at the moment I’m not sure when that will be.

Thoughts?

If they won’t reform DOT, what WILL they reform?

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By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
ABANDON hope, all ye who seek common-sense reform from the S.C. General Assembly.
    You think maybe they’d raise the state’s cigarette tax, the lowest in the nation at 7 cents a pack, especially considering that more than 70 percent of poll respondents say do it?
    You’re not from around here, are you?
    So how about this ridiculous business of the voters having to elect all these functionaries whom most of them couldn’t name if their lives depended on it? The indictments (and in one case, guilty plea) of two of these poorly vetted politicos over the last couple of years should make changing this situation a no-brainer, right? Or how about putting some of these agencies run by virtually autonomous boards under someone who is elected?
    Dream on, Pollyanna.
    I’ll confess that I dared to dream thus, just a few short months ago. It looked like this was the year for reforming at least one chunk of our fragmented, unaccountable state government.
    For 15 years, this editorial board had been saying we should follow the advice of every commission, study or casual observation of our system by anyone who was not vested in the status quo: Put the elected chief executive in charge of the executive branch, and have the Legislature tend to legislating.
    But not since the partial restructuring of 1993 that was pushed by a very determined governor dealing with a scandal-weakened Legislature had the idea made headway against the host of insiders who make it their business to resist change.
    Then at the end of 2006, we were faced with something that was not a civics-textbook abstraction: A critical mass of voters understood that the state Department of Transportation was a mess, and that the way things were, no one could hold it accountable for its sins.
    The director answered to the Transportation Commission, and the commissioners did not clearly answer to anyone. They were elected by lawmakers, which is bad enough — when you owe your job to 170 people, who’s accountable? No one. The flow chart was further sliced, diced and scrambled by having each commissioner elected by a different subset of lawmakers — those who represented a particular congressional district (and we all know how crazily those are gerrymandered).
    But couldn’t a conscientious director with a clear vision for setting and sticking to rational statewide road-building priorities rise above all the horse-trading parochialism inherent in such a system? Theoretically?
    Sure. But in the real world, a legislative audit of just a third of the agency’s spending found tens of millions of dollars wasted on questionable contracts. It found high-level nepotism and cronyism. It found that the agency had manipulated the books in order to deceive the Legislature.
    Some lawmakers had tried to stick up for the agency’s director, but that was an untenable position. She resigned. Some lawmakers then said: Behold! The problem is solved! She’s gone!
    But that didn’t work, either. So there was much rumbling about bringing this maverick agency into line for once.
    Even better, a governor who had first been elected on a government-restructuring platform had just been re-elected promising that this time (unlike the first four years), he was actually going to get the job done.
    For the first time in years, there was reason to hope that most autonomous, least accountable of agencies would be turned over to the governor, one person whom all the state’s voters could hold responsible for its performance. Lawmakers were in no position to defend the status quo this time, not if the governor really pushed them on it. For once, he had the leverage.
    But he didn’t push them on it. The man who was legendary in his first term for ticking off legislators with his capricious ideological rigidity decided that in this situation — with all the political and moral force clearly on his side for once — he would meet lawmakers halfway before the dickering even started.
    And halfway, with a Legislature that collectively didn’t really want to change anything, is a long way to go — especially when the lawmakers are constantly backing away from you.
    He said, just give me a director I can hire and fire, and you can keep your governing commission. Just please have the commissioners elected by the whole Legislature, so that there’s a chance that they’ll consider broader priorities.
    The short explanation of what happened over the next six months was that lawmakers nodded and backed away, nodded and backed away, until we ended up with this: The governor will be able to hire and fire a director, and can even call that individual a secretary, just like in a sure-enough Cabinet.
    But the governing board will still be picked by lawmakers broken up into congressional districts, keeping the agency firmly grounded in down-home back-scratching.
    Speaking of the commissioners, what were they doing during all this backing and shuffling? Lying low? No way; not these boys. They were electing one of their former brethren to replace the “disgraced” director who had left with a sweet severance package, and openly lobbying lawmakers not to change the setup.
    The Legislature doesn’t come back for six months. That’s plenty of time for us starry-eyed types who want to see our beloved South Carolina get its act together to get over our disappointments and start hoping for positive change again. But today, with the next chance for action so far off and fiasco so recent, I thank you for indulging me in this sad consideration of the way things actually are around here.

What about Ken Wingate?

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When I first heard Ken Wingate was being appointed to fill in as interim treasurer, I had these thoughts:

  • He’s a good guy, a good choice. I first came to know him during the epic battle to outlaw video poker; he helped run the "vote No" campaign on the referendum that never happened. I believeWingate
    that campaign’s efforts is what caused video poker to panic and sue to stop the vote — which backfired and ended up in the industry’s being banned. He then ran for governor, which was overreaching for a guy who hadn’t held public office before. But when he was knocked out in the 2002 GOP primary, he got behind nominee Sanford, and eventually headed the governor’s MAP commission, in the early days when we still had hopes for the Sanford administration.
  • He’s a morally and socially conservative family guy — a real one, instead of the phony one that Thomas Ravenel tried to project in last year’s election — and there’s one thing I can say with certainty: We won’t see Ken Wingate rolling up our money to snort stuff up his nose.
  • What was the hurry? The governor should not have acted so precipitously; it seemed like he was picking the first guy who said "yes." This was a great opportunity to show that the governor would do a better, more thoughtful job of hiring a treasurer than we could get through popular election, and rushing the job was no way to give that impression. But I was apparently wrong (remember, I’m describing first impressions here). Somebody had to be in that seat to sign checks, starting right away. So, good one there, governor.
  • One other concern, and this one remains. The governor didn’t necessarily need to pick one of the people who had run for the office; in fact, this was a good opportunity to go beyond that self-selected group — even though Greg Ryberg would have been fine for the job. But what about a professional — someone who already knew the workings of the office and could keep it running smoothly during this temporary period, thereby avoiding upsets to the important but highly routine work it must do? Why an outsider? I could see if you had specific plans for changes, and wanted a new broom. But you don’t do that with a temporary appointment (the Legislature could appoint someone as early as today if Ravenel resigns). Why introduce two jarring disruptions in a brief period? That’s not good management. As fine a pick as Wingate is personally, the message sent by such a decision is troubling. Here’s the connotation: Someone from the private sector is always better than an experienced public servant (read that "bureaucrat," and make a face like you smell something), whether he knows anything or not, and even if he doesn’t have time to learn where the men’s room is before he’s gone. It suggests a carelessness with regard to the public good, the making of an ideological point ahead of efficiency and accountability. This is just a small caveat right now, and I suspect Mr. Wingate will do a fine-enough job that he will soon put it out of my mind. But for now, I make note of it.

I’ll come back later and comment on the nasty things the Democrats are saying about Ken. (NOTE: Earlier, this paragraph said "later today." The way the day’s been going — those videos took a while — it might be more like tomorrow.)

Ravenel problem taken care of

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Well, we can rest easy now. Never mind that it’s more than disconcerting for the guy responsible for signing all state checks to be indicted on drug charges. It’s all taken care of.

No, I’m not talking about Ken Wingate being named as a sort of interim interim treasurer. That’s all very well and good on the part of the governor, but over in the Senate they’re talking about attacking the real problem.

It has come to my attention that Sen. Harvey Peeler has proposed a bill to require that all candidates for constitutional office be drug-tested.

The Senate can’t bring itself, after all these years and the last two indictments of such politicians, to face the fact that such purely ministerial officials as, say, the agriculture commissioner should not be elected to begin with, but hired — with all the resumes and interviews and reference-checking that process requires.

No, we won’t let the elected chief executive run the executive branch, but by golly, we’re gonna check and see if these jokers are puttin’ anything up their noses. Yessirree Bob.

Our fan, Alex Sanders, on BIPEC vs. judicial elections in the OLD days

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Sanderstoal

Continuing to play with audio…

I was talking to Alex Sanders on the phone yesterday, and still had my little audio-recorder setup handy from the conference call with John McCain the day before.

He started praising our editorial criticizing BIPEC’s attempt to influence our state Supreme Court election, but before he got more than a sentence into it, I said Hold on, do you mind if record this?

He said no, and the conversation drifted from his condemnation of BIPEC’s action, to the failed CIA plot, to how much better — kinda — things were in the old days. More genteel, anyway, if a tad … uh … incestuous.

In case you don’t recall all the background, before Judge Sanders was a U.S. Senate candidate and before he was president of the College of Charleston, he was the first chief judge of South Carolina’s Court of Appeals.

Anyway, here’s the clip. Enjoy. (Oh, and for some of our more literal-minded guests, I should point out that conversations with Judge Sanders tend to be highly enriched with irony, much of it self-deprecating.)

Here’s the cutline for the above photo: South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal, second from left,
has a laugh with Alex Sanders, left, after Toal received an honorary
degree during the Charleston School of Law’s first graduation Saturday,
May 19, 2007 at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C. Sanders and Edward
Westbrook, second from right, are two of the schools founders. (AP
Photo/The Post and Courier, Alan Hawes)

How was your Confederate Memorial Day?

92 Replies

S.C. political culture
keeps flag up,
DOT unreformed

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
RECENTLY, I said state lawmakers refuse to find the time to deal with the Confederate flag’s implications for our state.
    I was wrong. They’ve saved so much time by not reforming the Department of Transportation this session that they managed to take off a whole day Thursday to honor the flag and all that it stands for. They also paid state employees several million dollars to do the same.
    They know just what they’re doing. They don’t declare state holidays for every failed insurrection that comes along. There’s no Stono Rebellion Day, for instance. That was when some black South Carolina slaves rose up violently to assert their right to live as they chose, and lots of people died horribly, and the rebels suffered much and gained nothing. Whereas the War Between the States was when a bunch of white South Carolina slave owners rose up violently to… OK, well, the rest of it’s just the same.
    But you see, we have a Confederate Memorial Day holiday because the General Assembly had to do something for white people after it gave black folks Martin Luther King Day.
    It was a tradeoff. Our leaders think in those terms. Something for you people in exchange for something for us people. The idea that Martin Luther King might be worth a nod from all of us just didn’t wash.
    The Legislature’s refusal to reform the Department of Transportation is actually related. That agency is governed according to the principle of something for you people in exchange for something for us people, leaving out the needs of the state as a whole.
    The power lies in the Transportation Commission. The governor appoints the chairman; the other members are chosen by legislators. Not by the Legislature as a whole: Each member represents a congressional district, and only the legislators who live in that district have a say in choosing that commissioner. Therefore the people in a position to set priorities on road-building have parochial notions of what roads need to be built — all except the chairman, who can’t vote unless there’s a tie.
So how are priorities set? Something for you people in exchange for something for us people — the balancing of narrow interests, rather than a statewide strategy.
    Lawmakers as a whole aren’t even seriously considering giving up that commission. Even the idea of giving greater power over the commission to the governor — who in almost any other state would be running that executive agency outright — is utterly shocking to some of the most powerful legislative leaders.
    “This Senate would rue the day that you turn that billion-dollar agency over to one person,” said Sen. John Land, who represents a rural district.
    The scandal at the Transportation Department didn’t arise from former Director Elizabeth Mabry being a bad administrator. She was a bad administrator, but she was part of a system. A job for your relative, commissioner, in return for indulging the way I run my fiefdom ….
    Something for you in exchange for something for me. It didn’t even have to be stated.
    When I say the “Legislature” is like this, it doesn’t apply to all lawmakers — just to the decisions they make collectively.
    There are some who want to fix the agency, and others who want to take down the Confederate flag. But the status quo runs right over them without breaking stride.
    Sen. John Courson proposed to do away with the commission and put the governor in charge. He got support, but not enough; the idea was dropped.
    After I wrote about “the Legislature” not wanting to talk about the flag recently, Rep. Chris Hart called to say he wants to talk about it, and that he and Reps. Todd Rutherford, Bakari Sellers and Terry Alexander have a bill that would take the flag down — H.3588. But it’s sat in committee since Feb. 27.
    My grand unifying theory is not a simple matter of good guys and bad guys. Sen. Glenn McConnell is a champion of the monument for you, flag for me system. But he’s pushing the plan to give the governor more say over the Transportation Department.
    What  matters is how it comes out, after everybody votes. This legislative session will end soon. Significant reform of the Transportation Department is looking doubtful, while action on the flag is politically impossible.
    Rep. Rutherford has some hope for next year on the flag, especially after recent comments from football coach Steve Spurrier, and the protest by United Methodist clergy. If that blossoms into a movement of the breadth of the one that moved the flag in 2000, H.3588 could have a chance.
    But he warns that if it does start to gain support, a moribund proposal to declare a Confederate Heritage Month will likely be revived. Something for you people, something for us people.
    The Transportation Department won’t be reformed until the culture changes, until the notion that there is such a thing as statewide priorities replaces the traditional balancing of the interests of narrow constituencies.
    The flag won’t come down unconditionally until the notion sinks in that it’s not about whether your ancestors were slaves, or slaveholders, or neither. This is the 21st century, and the Confederacy hasn’t existed since 1865. “I’m not trying to disrespect anybody’s heritage,” Rep. Rutherford said on Confederate Memorial Day. “It just shouldn’t be there.”
    That’s true no matter who your kinfolk were, and no matter what day it is in the year 2007.

Poor Betty

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One of the great benefits of reading this blog is that you sometimes get little glimpses into really choice stuff coming up on the editorial page, such as this letter on tomorrow’s page, which I hereby quote in its entirety:

    Get off Elizabeth Mabry’s back! She deserves a retirement party as much as anyone. The money collected is for the cost of the party. I had one when I retired, and a fee was charged.
    What’s the big deal?

Anybody want to tell this gentleman what the big deal is?

What gentleman, you ask? Well, for that, you’ll have to read the paper. One thing I won’t use this blog for is to hold people up to ridicule for writing letters to the editor. At least, not personal, specific, individual ridicule.

Although that one really is a corker.

Let’s see — she took full advantage of the unaccountable commission system to run her own little queendom over at what we euphemistically call the "state" Department of Transportation, and resigned last year in disgrace over such trifles as having deceived the Legislature to the tune of millions of dollars.

Then the Budget and Control Board "spent $40,074.57 to buy the remaining service time Mabry needed to be eligible for full retirement benefits," which I think means that we taxpayers spent over 40 grand for the privilege of pretending that she’s worked more time than she has, so that we might have the further privilege of sending her pension checks for the rest of her life. I’m not smart about money matters, but I think that’s right.

Then lawmakers who had defended her strenuously and said any reports of less-than-admirable conduct at DOT was purely a matter of that scoundrel the governor trumping up nonsense changed their tune to: She’s gone now, so that solves the problem, we don’t have to reform the agency.

Then … oh, I don’t even want to go again into all the machinations that have occurred in the House and Senate to try to protect the status quo, except to point out this quote from Sen. John Land in today’s paper:

    "This Senate would rue the day that you turn that billion-dollar agency
over to one person, and that’s what this bill does. It would be
terrible for South Carolina."

Mind you, he was reacting to a lame compromise that would keep the commission — which, with its multiple members provides multiples of multiple ways for powerful people to reach in and influence the agency’s running without leaving fingerprints — but give the governor the ability to get rid of members who really get out of hand a way that it can’t be missed. It most assuredly does not do what any sane state would do, which is put the elected chief executive in charge of this huge, expensive executive agency, so that voters can hold somebody responsible to some extent.

We wouldn’t want to put anybody in charge, oh no. Things are much better without that — better for Sen. Land and his peers, that is.

That’s all I can stand on this subject for today. By the way, here’s a copy of the invitation to Ms. Mabry’s party, in case you didn’t get one. I didn’t get one either. I guess that‘ll teach me to stay off that poor woman’s back. (And remember, folks, that RSVP address is [email protected].)

Here’s the bottom line: I don’t care about that. Throw her a party. Build her a palace, as long as you do it with your own money. May she live 1,000 years of pure ecstasy, day after day, while the rest of us and our descendants work for our livings.

What I care about is that we fix the problem with the way we run this agency — and plenty of other state agencies, this is just the mess we’re focused on at the moment. And that — fixing it — continues to seem highly unlikely.

McConnell on why NOT to reform

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Just wanted to make sure that you read Glenn McConnell’s otherwordly explanation as to why real reform of DOT is anathema to him, and therefore to his instrument, the S.C. Senate.

Then read the column by Cindi Scoppe that eerily foreshadowed this argument from Sen. McConnell. She says it ironically and critically; the senator from Charleston says it with utter sincerity and deadly certainty.

Fortunately for him (but not for the rest of us), the S.C. Senate is immune to lampooning.

Remember, children, here in the Palmetto Dystopia:

  • War is Peace
  • Freedom is Slavery
  • Ignorance is Strength
  • Glenn McConnell is a Champion of Restructuring

Don’t believe that last one, UnParty members? He just said he was. Can’t you read?

DOT reform prospects dismal

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Tom Davis put it well on the phone this morning when I asked how his world was going in general. The
governor’s chief of staff said some things were going well, but:

"DOT was a disappointment, obviously."

Tom_davisNo kidding. Tom said maybe it would be possible to get something halfway decent out of conference committee, but he shouldn’t hold his breath. With the Senate bill being less than useless and the House bill being, as he put it, "not as much as we would want, and not as much as y’all would want," we’re pretty close to being able to chalk up the DOT issue as a huge missed opportunity to improve the quality and accountability of government in South Carolina. My words, not Tom’s. He’s slightly kinder to the House plan than I am. For me, if you’ve still got a commission, you don’t have reform.

For a view that is a lot kinder to the House than either mine or Tom’s here’s the latest memo from Patty Pierce, who has been lobbying on behalf of the Coastal Conservation League‘s transportation reform coalition. The House approach is more or less just what the coalition wanted, which is one reason we don’t have reform. Both the private group wanting reform and the governor went to the table unwilling to fight for a straight Cabinet arrangement.

Anyway, that’s water under the crumbling, neglected bridge. Here’s what Patty had to say to supporters:

DOT
Reform Team,
In the
Senate: The Senate completed its work on S.355, the
Senate version of DOT reform, after four weeks of debate, and the bill has been
forwarded to the House for its consideration.  S.355 includes four of our DOT Reform
Coalition’s priorities, but overall this bill is NOT as strong the House DOT
Reform bill, H.3575, by Representative Annette Young (R-Dorchester).

In
terms of justifying and
prioritizing transportation projects, S.355 requires the DOT to craft
a “methodology for determining how to design the Statewide Transportation
Improvement Program (STIP) that includes the schedule of priorities for all
major construction and funds allocated to complete those projects”. In crafting the methodology the following
criteria—which our Coalition supports—must be
considered:

a)
Financial viability, including the life cycle analysis of estimated

Maintenance and repair costs over
the expected life of the project;

b)
Public safety;

c)
Potential for economic development;

d)
Traffic volume;

e)
Truck traffic;

f)
The pavement quality index;

g)
Alternative transportation solutions;

h)
Consistency with local land use plans;

i)
Environmental impact; and

j)
Federal requirements for designing and setting priorities for the
STIP.

We are thankful that S.355 includes the above criteria, but the
bill does not clearly state that all projects will be justified and prioritized
according to the criteria as our Coalition has advocated. Also, the methodology will be a DOT internal
policy document as opposed to a regulation as required in H.3575, the good House
bill.  H.3575, requires the DOT to
“establish a priority list within the STIP…when compiling this list of projects
or changing this list, the department shall use” the criteria that
our Coalition has advocated.

Public
hearings
are required in S.355 prior to adopting the “prioritization” methodology, prior
to adopting the STIP, and prior to moving forward with large road and bridge
projects; this last item was not included as a separate item in the bill as was
suggested to staff, so this section needs to be further improved. The additional public hearings required in
S.355 are great opportunities for the public at-large and individual communities
affected by major transportation projects to voice concerns/praise about the
proposed methodology, the STIP, and individual projects. Having real public
hearings where the public can address a panel and/or hearing officer regarding
projects is a great improvement over current DOT practices.

The
most troublesome aspect of S.355 is the creation of a new legislative review
process through the establishment of a Joint Transportation
Review Committee (JTRC)—a 10 member committee composed of 6
legislators and 4 public members. The
JTRC will review and comment on the “prioritization” methodology and the
STIP. After review of the STIP, the DOT
is then required to promulgate the STIP as a regulation which requires approval
by the General Assembly.  Establishing road and bridge project
priorities has always been the responsibility of the SC DOT.  This new review by the JTRC and mandated
approval of the STIP by the General Assembly could undermine the DOT’s objective
analysis of transportation projects guided by the criteria included in the bill
that should be used to justify and prioritize all STIP projects.

One
final concern is a provision that states “any project placed in the STIP at the
request of a metropolitan planning organization or council of government must
not be removed.” That means a community
that has proposed a project, may not later ask that such project be removed from
the STIP if the MPO or COG determines the project is no longer wanted or
necessary.  To remove a project from the
STIP, the General Assembly must adopt a new regulation, which could easily take
more than a year if this provision were approved in a final DOT Reform
bill.

In
terms of governance, S.355 allows the
current
DOT
Commission to remain in place until a
new 7 member Board is
established. All seven members would be
appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate.  Six members would
represent congressional districts, and one member would be appointed at-large
to serve as
the Board
Chairman.  The
Board would hire an at-will Executive Director to run the daily operations of
the DOT.

Also
in the Senate, Senator Ritchie (R-Spartanburg) recalled H.3575, the strong House
DOT Reform bill, from the Senate Transportation Committee and placed the bill on
the Senate’s contested calendar.  This
action by Senator Ritchie is very helpful. H.3575 may be a vehicle to move a DOT Reform bill forward this
legislative session in the event a conference committee (3 House members and 3
Senate members) gets bogged down in its negotiations. 

In
the House: One
minor glitch occurred last week just before H.3575 was adopted and approved by
the House. No need to worry. This will just give me one more thing to work
on next week. When the final amendment
was adopted during the House debate on H.3575, the amendment was not adopted as
a “perfecting” amendment, so two previous amendments hat had been approved by
the House were inadvertently deleted. First, the House approved adding Representative Loftis’ amendment that
required consideration of “congestion” to the list of criteria used to justify
and prioritize projects, which we support. Second, the House also approved our Coalition’s priority, “consideration
of alternative transportation solutions”. Unfortunately, I discovered this week that both of these amendments were
“accidentally” deleted in the final version of the bill, so I will work with the
House staff and Representatives to see if we can get these two amendments added
back into a House approved DOT Reform bill.

If
you have any questions about DOT Reform, or the two bills that have been
approved by the House and Senate, please do not hesitate to contact me. I’d be glad to help you.

I’ll
send out an update next week on the progress the House makes in regard to DOT
Reform. Until then, I’ll keep working to
encourage the House and Senate to include the strongest provisions of both DOT
Reform bills in the final compromise legislation.

Patty
Pierce
League
Lobbyist
[email protected]