Category Archives: Legislature

McConnell to step down from elective office

By all accounts, he has really thrown himself into the work of running the Office on Aging as lt. gov.

Wow, it’s kind of hard to imagine the State House without Glenn McConnell.

He was, for so many years, arguably (that being every journalist’s favorite hedge word) the most powerful person in state government, for good or ill.

He’s the guy who was the biggest defender of the Legislative State and barrier to reform, yet led a significant improvement in the way South Carolina chooses judges.

He was the champion of limited government and spending ceilings, yet managed to come up with all that dough for the Hunley.

He was, finally, the man who liked to dress up as an Old School Southern gentleman, who then acted like a real gentleman by giving up power for a point of honor (when he agreed to give up his position in the Senate to occupy the low-status job of lieutenant governor, rather than trying to engineer a way around the rules).

Now he’s giving up that job, for a shot at academe:

COLUMBIA — S.C. Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell will not seek another term and instead push to become president at his alma mater, the College of Charleston.

McConnell has said he wanted to make a decision since the college’s presidential search timetable conflicts with the June primary. A new president to succeed George Benson will not be named until around March.

“Any effort to pursue both goals at the same time is simply not an honorable path,” McConnell said in statement Monday. “It would not be fair to good candidates who may want to seek this office. Most of all, it would not be fair to the voters of South Carolina to ask them to support me for lieutenant governor if there is even a chance I might not remain in the campaign. For those reasons, I have decided I will not be a candidate for re-election. And I will instead formally offer my name for consideration to the College of Charleston.”…

The State House is losing a true original…

Cindi’s thoughtful piece on SC chief justice contest

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Someone was praising Cindi Scoppe’s column today on the contested election for chief justice of the SC Supreme Court, and I agreed: “Yes — Cindi’s probably the only journalist in SC who knows enough even to have the idea of writing it.”

You may be disappointed after that buildup to find that there’s no hard-hitting, simple editorial point in the piece, and she certainly doesn’t take sides between incumbent Jean Toal and challenger Costa Pleicones. The overall point is to lament the system we have for picking justices, and the lack of transparency in it after that one, brief, qualification hearing — which everyone knew that both of these exceptional jurists would pass with flying colors.

What she does is provide perspective on the court and its place in our, um, unusual system in South Carolina.The piece should be required reading for legislators, who will be the voters in this particular election.

The piece does a number of things. First, she explains that this is yet another chapter in Jean Toal’s precedent-breaking career, and I don’t (and she doesn’t) mean that in the facile sense of trailblazer for women, yadda-yadda:

Jean Toal

But things never have been normal where Jean Toal is involved, and by that I’m not referring to the fact that she was South Carolina’s first female justice and chief justice.

In 1988, she became the first non-judge elected to the high court in more than three decades. That happened after ethics questions derailed the candidacy of Circuit Judge Rodney Peeples, who entered the race with more than enough votes sewed up to win.

Eight years later, Mrs. Toal became the first sitting justice since 1893 to be opposed for re-election, when Circuit Judge Tom Ervin challenged her amidst anti-tax groups’ absurd efforts to paint her as a liberal; her support was so overwhelming that he dropped out of the race less than two hours after legislators were allowed to start making commitments.

Now she’s the first chief justice since at least the 1800s to be opposed for re-election…

Clearly, the Legislature will break precedent if it elects Mr. Pleicones. But even if it re-elects Mrs. Toal, the status quo already has been interrupted, making it much easier for lawmakers to break with tradition and skip over Mr. Pleicones and, who knows, perhaps skip over Mr. Beatty, possibly even select a chief justice who isn’t on the court….

In future SC history books, there will likely be quite a few footnotes devoted to Jean Toal.

As I said, while this piece may be interesting to other readers, it should particularly be read by lawmakers. Cindi takes it on herself a lot to put things into perspective for legislators. Someone needs to.

One key thing she explains — and these days we have more and more lawmakers who need this explained — is that there are important issues at stake here, but they have nothing to do with notions of left and right, Democrat and Republican, the way those things are force-fed to us today out of the Beltway:

Costa Pleicones

Some Republicans in the Legislature — and lots outside, particularly of what we now call the tea-party variety — have been grumbling for years about having a court full of former Democratic legislators.

I suppose it’s understandable that people would be confused about the role that partisan politics plays on the S.C. Supreme Court — none — given the diet of hyperpartisan Washington politics on which a frightening number of South Carolinians feed, forming not only their world views but their state views.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court is in fact composed of two well-defined ideologies, you’d be hard-pressed reading state Supreme Court decisions to guess the partisan or ideological inclinations of the justices. So I was a little disappointed when Justice Toal, asked about complaints that she’s too “political,” dismissed them by noting how well she has gotten along with the Legislature and governors, even as their politics have changed.

The political temptation Supreme Court justices face has nothing to do with party or ideology. It is the temptation to kowtow to the Legislature, whatever the Legislature’s partisan leanings or political philosophy. It’s to look the other way when the Legislature tramples on our state constitution. It’s to pretend that the laws say what the Legislature meant them to say rather than what they actually say.

That temptation must be greatest for the chief justice, whose dual role as chief executive officer of the entire judicial branch of government brings with it the heavy burden of convincing the Legislature to fund the courts adequately, and keeping lawmakers from exacting retribution, financial or otherwise, when court decisions go a way they don’t like…

It is for this reason that Cindi laments that “Justice Toal, asked about complaints that she’s too ‘political,’ dismissed them by noting how well she has gotten along with the Legislature and governors, even as their politics have changed.”

And of course, in SC, things get very personal, as Cindi suggests in suggesting an apparent reason why Associate Justice Pleicones is making this extraordinary challenge to his old friend:

… one of the themes of criticism that Justice Toal received in anonymous surveys from lawyers stemmed from what Justice Pleicones has called her broken promise to retire when her term ends next year, which would give him an extra year and a half as chief justice….

In the end, the main concern expressed is that from here on, we won’t know what these candidates are saying to individual electors: “For the mind reels at where even the most honest and well-intentioned justices might be tempted to go when they meet behind closed doors with legislators who have votes to provide them — and requests to make of them.”

Cindi doesn’t mean to besmirch either candidate. She notes in particular how Jean Toal’s tenure has been characterized by a “steady move toward judicial independence, toward calling out the Legislature when it needs to be called out.”

But moments such as this create enormous potential for undermining that kind of essential independence. And that is indeed disturbing.

Rep. Ted Vick DUI charge moves forward

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A couple of weeks ago, an acquaintance was telling me about meeting a couple of people that morning, and when one of them turned out to be Rep. Ted Vick, my acquaintance said, “Oh, I’ve heard of you.”

Rep. Vick, in this telling, rather ruefully replied, “I suppose you have…”

We all have our burdens to bear. No matter what I do or where I go (in South Carolina, that is), I get, “You’re the newspaper guy, right?” Sometimes these conversations take the form of the way Robert Duvall was addressed on the street in “Tender Mercies” — “Hey, mister, were you really Mac Sledge?” Yes, ma’am, I guess I was…

But that certainly beats being a lawmaker of 8 years, a committee chairman, and yet what people remember when they see you is the news stories about DUI charges.

Anyway, I got to thinking about all of that when I saw today that a judge has denied Mr. Vick’s motion to dismiss that latest charge:

Vick’s attorney, state Rep. Todd Rutherford, argued last week to drop the charge because police did not capture the reading of Miranda Rights on videotape as required by state law.

Marcus Gore, an attorney for the S.C. Department of Public Safety, said the reading was off camera because Vick wrestled the arresting office away from the police cruiser and out of view of the dash camera…

That’s a new allegation, to me. If that was in the previous news stories, I missed it.

Haley’s reckless CON madness gets madder by the minute

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When we last looked at the matter, Nikki Haley had vetoed funding for the certificate of need process that state law requires before new health facilities can be built and operate — leaving DHEC with an unfunded mandate, and SC hospitals in limbo on major plans.

Her action exhibited a blithe destructiveness across a wide spectrum, from public health policy through economic development.

And the stupid House failed to override her.

Today, it all got crazier:

S.C. hospitals, nursing homes and physicians can go ahead with plans for expansion or adding services without state approval after a program was not funded next year.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control will suspend the Certificate of Need program on Monday, agency director Catherine Templeton said in a letter.

The state House upheld a veto by Gov. Nikki Haley over $1.7 million in funding for the program this week.

“DHEC has no independent authority to expend state funds for Certificate of Need, and therefore, the veto completely suspends the program for the upcoming fiscal year,” Templeton said.

The agency will not take action against any work done while the program is suspended unless told to do so by the General Assembly, Templeton said…

Wow. So… hospitals are just supposed to go ahead with multi-million-dollar projects without going through the approval process that the law still requires, funding or no funding, and not worry about any future legal ramifications? Really?

Then this afternoon, this release came out:

Chairman Brian White and Representative Murrell Smith of the House Ways and Means Committee Issue a Statement Regarding Governor Haley’s Certificate of Need (CON) Veto

(Columbia, SC) – On Wednesday, June 26, 2013, the South Carolina House of Representatives sustained Governor Haley’s budget veto number twenty by a vote of 56-65. The effect of this veto reduced general fund support for the Department of Health and Environmental Control’s Certificate of Need (CON) Program by over $1.4 million.

“The House of Representatives did not intend to eliminate the CON Program or its statutory requirements. In fact, the House believes there are a number of ways for the CON Program to retain its function and purpose. The Governor has the sole power to appoint DHEC’s governing board and is ultimately charged with enforcing the CON law. If the Governor and the agency director wish to unilaterally discontinue the program, as they have indicated, then that is a decision that lies exclusively within the executive branch and one which may be contrary to law but is certainly contrary to the will and intent of the House of Representatives.”

# # #

OK, that release is really badly worded, especially that last sentence. But what the lawmakers appear to be saying is that even though they went along with cutting the funding, they had NOT meant for DHEC to ignore the law — they had meant for it to find the money somewhere to continue the program. Which, of course, was grossly irresponsible on the part of lawmakers — they should have overridden. One of the least defensible dodges of irresponsible legislators is the old “Oh, find the money somewhere” gag. When, you know, they’re the ones who decide what gets funded and what doesn’t.

This is some bad craziness, people. I would think that Ms. Templeton were doing this outrageous thing as a protest of the governor’s irresponsibility, if she weren’t like, you know, the gov’s protege.

The only thing I can think of to fix this problem is the same thing that Joel Lourie is suggesting — that the General Assembly should go back into session to fix the problem and appropriate the funding for the program.

It’s a lot of trouble to go to, but this is a serious matter. One knowledgeable observer (which means, “someone who understands the world a lot better than our governor does”) said to me today, “I suspect there’s going to be a very interesting lawsuit here.”

Hey, more than just one. I can see hospitals suing each other, subcontractors suing contractors when work is started then halted, just a free-for-all.

This is amazing.

Haley still fighting the Lexington County battles of yesteryear — while hurting the Lexington of today

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I found it interesting that Nikki Haley, whose former employment by Lexington Medical Center raised ethical questions from many, once again vetoed funding for the operation of the Certificate of Need program.

If you’ll recall, several years back, when Lexington Medical was fighting to get a certificate to do open-heart surgery, the CON process was the bête noire of Lexington County politicians. The state bureaucrats had let Palmetto Health start an open-heart program, so why were they picking on Lexington County?

That issue is now behind them, after a deal struck by Providence and Lexington that allowed Lexington one of the Catholic hospital’s certificates. So folks in her old district by no means benefit from her defunding the program.

In fact, they wouldn’t have back in the day, I suppose — since this action doesn’t obviate the legal requirement for a CON; it just prevents the state from having the means to process one.

And today, this veto — unfortunately sustained by the House — positively harms her former employer, since Lexington is awaiting a CON for a $7.9 million expansion of its radiation-treatment facility.

So no one can accuse the governor from playing hometown favorites with this veto. No, her sin in this case looks to be mere blind, foolish, destructive ideology.

Starbucks almost deserted in the middle of the day? Can the Zombie Apocalypse be far behind?

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Had a strange experience a little while ago.

The photographs above and below were taken at 12:57 p.m. today inside the Gervais Street Starbucks. And no, they weren’t closed for renovations. In fact, there were a few customers in there — I just shot the empty parts.

But… there are never empty parts in that Starbucks. Or at least, I don’t remember it happening to this extent before. Normally, if you meet someone there for a business meeting, it’s hard to find two or three seats together. I mentioned the eerie emptiness to my barista, and she said others had commented on it. She quickly noted that they had been quite busy earlier in the day, which I fully believed, but still — this empty, at lunchtime?

What gives? Didn’t everybody get a Starbucks gift card for Father’s Day (I certainly did)?

I remarked on the phenomenon to a young woman who was one of my few fellow patrons, and she had a one-word explanation: “Summer.” (When you’re young, female and attractive, it’s best to keep your answers short when old guys you don’t know start chatting you up.)

Perhaps so. One of the first things I noticed about Columbia when I moved back here in 1987 was that once the Legislature goes home, the town seems to be deserted. That applies to Mondays and Fridays during the session as well as the off-season.

Add that to USC being out, and things just really slow down. They’ve slowed down the last few days here on the blog. The comments, anyway. I haven’t noticed much dropoff in pageviews.

It’s like our activity just drops a few notches when the lawmakers go home — even when what we do has little to do with them, directly.

That’s one theory, anyway. I admit that it’s not entirely satisfactory. But you tell me — why was I almost alone in Starbucks today?

Ethics Schmethics II, or, ‘Let’s call the whole thing off’

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The story this morning about the SC Senate killing ethics legislation for the year was filled with the kind of nonsense that we’ve come to expect from this institution:

COLUMBIA — The state Senate polices its members just fine, senators said Wednesday, refusing to pass an ethics bill – Gov. Nikki Haley’s top priority for the year – that would end lawmakers’ practice of investigating ethics complaints against legislators.

But senators were pointed in their criticism of the GOP-controlled House’s ethics process, questioning its investigation last year of Republican Haley and its slowness to take up charges against Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston.

The Senate proved last week it should retain that responsibility when it investigated Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston, on charges that he broke the law by spending campaign money on himself, said Senate Ethics chairman Luke Rankin, R-Horry. Facing ouster from the Senate, Ford resigned and now faces a State Law Enforcement Division investigation.

“Is (the state’s current ethics law) broken in the Senate? I think last week was the perfect and the best evidence to show, flatly, no,” Rankin said late Wednesday as the Senate debated the bill…

Really? Because one senator decided to resign in the midst of an ethics proceeding, the system is working? How do you figure? What if he hadn’t resigned? Then we would have seen whether the system works. What Ford did in resigning was abort the process.

Or do you think this is the process? Is your plan that, the next time a senator is investigated, y’all will just say to him, a few weeks into the process, OK, this is the part where you resign and save us all a lot of trouble…?

And if you think it’s not working in the House, or with the governor, why on Earth wouldn’t you change the law in order to address that problem? Instead of just saying, We’re OK here in the Senate, so everything’s hunky-dory.

You know, you’re not elected to pass laws according to how they affect you; you’re supposed to pass them for the good of the state as a whole. Maybe that’s a radical concept for you, but that’s actually the way it’s supposed to be.

It’s not about how senators feel about themselves or about each other. It just isn’t.

But what am I saying? Who’s in the dreamworld here? Obviously, it is all about y’all…

Sheheen was wrong to blame Republicans, embarrass Hayes

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A Tweet this morning from Wes Hayes, the Republican senator from York County, brought my attention to this statement he had put out on Facebook:

It has come to my attention that a press release circulated by South Carolina Democrats today makes potentially misleading claims on my position and motivations for co-authoring an Op-Ed with Senate colleague Vince Sheheen calling for bipartisan efforts in the Senate to pass ethics reform.

All my years in the State Senate, I have sought to work both sides of the aisle to deliver reforms to make our state stronger; today’s Op-Ed is simply a continuation of my willingness to put partisanship aside to benefit our citizens.

The fact is that Governor Nikki Haley has been a champion for passing meaningful ethics reform and has worked closely with the legislature to ensure real reform is accomplished to rebuild the public’s trust in their elected officials. Even in the wake of partisan gamesmanship, she has led the collective efforts to get this passed. Governor Haley is to be applauded for her efforts, not attacked. It’s time to move forward in the Senate and pass this important legislation.

Please read the OpEd I co-authored with Senator Sheheen here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/30/2792454/hayes-sheheen-ethics-reform-all.html

Sen. Hayes has my sympathy for apparently getting in trouble for doing the right thing. I’m not sure what “press release circulated by South Carolina Democrats” made “potentially misleading claims” about his position. I had seen a release from Kristin Sosanie over at SCDP, which forwarded a message sent out by Phil Bailey of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

All Ms. Sosanie had said was:

ICYMI – Sen. Sheheen teamed up with GOP Senator and “Dean of Ethics” Wes Hayes in an op-ed in The State this morning calling on elected officials to put politics aside and finally pass ethics reform for South Carolina.

Which I thought was rather nice. I almost commented on it yesterday, it’s so unusual for one of the parties to refer to a member of the opposite party in such laudatory terms as “Dean of Ethics.”

That comment from Ms. Sosanie led into the forwarded email from Phil Bailey, which said:

Sheheen & Hayes urge electeds to put politics aside, stop delaying ethics reform in bipartisan op-ed

Columbia, SC- Today, Sen Vincent Sheheen penned an op-ed with Republican Sen Wes Hayes, calling for the Senate to put politics aside and immediately pass ethics reform in order for SC government to regain public trust. Sen Sheheen also released this statement:

“For the past seven years, I have fought for government restructuring and ethics reform. For the last three weeks, I have worked across the aisle to improve the House’s watered-down ethics bill so that it will actually reform ethics laws. For the past two days, I have voted and spoken up for the need to pass ethics reform. It’s time for the Governor, her Republican leadership in the legislature and members on both sides of the aisle to come together and finally pass real reform. The partisan bickering has to stop. The naked self-interest of the governor and other officials has to stop. We need real ethics reform, now.

“For months now, members of both parties have talked about the need for ethics reform. But action hasn’t followed. I am disappointed that for the past several days the Senate has delayed taking up ethics reform. Enough is enough. The Senate needs to move on ethics reform today, and the legislature should not adjourn until all its work is completed and that means we have reformed our ethics laws.”

Read Sen Sheheen’s bipartisan op-ed with Sen Hayes in today’s State newspaper:
http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/30/2792454/hayes-sheheen-ethics-reform-all.html

That was followed by the text of the op-ed.

Maybe it was another release, but if it was that one, well… it doesn’t characterize Sen. Hayes position or motivation in any way, other than to say that he and Sheheen “urge electeds to put politics aside, stop delaying ethics reform.” And the op-ed did indeed conclude:

Together, we can effect real change, but those who are holding this effort up must start by putting politics aside and putting the interest of the people of South Carolina first.

So what was misleading? Nothing — technically. But only technically.

If this was indeed the release in question, all I can conclude was that Hayes was blamed by some fellow Republicans for the language attributed in the release to Sheheen, specifically:

It’s time for the Governor, her Republican leadership in the legislature and members on both sides of the aisle to come together and finally pass real reform. The partisan bickering has to stop. The naked self-interest of the governor and other officials has to stop. We need real ethics reform, now….

I have two things to say about that:

First, someone in the GOP caucus needs to work on his reading comprehension skills. But that’s a minor point.
More importantly, Vincent Sheheen did the wrong thing in putting out that statement. And Phil, and whoever else was in a position to advise him not to should have spoken up. But the responsibility lies with Sheheen.

This was wrong for Sheheen to do on several levels. There he was, fixed firmly on the high road with his joint op-ed with Hayes, and he has to come out with a statement the next day blaming the governor and the Republicans?

Did Sen. Sheheen not notice that only seven Republicans voted against putting the ethics bill on special order Wednesday, while 13 Democrats did? And at least the Republicans had an excuse — namely, that some of them are certifiable, and trying to revive nullification.

The Democrats who voted against didn’t have a coherent excuse — not even a loony one.

Finally, it was completely inappropriate to embarrass Sen. Hayes by associating him, however indirectly, with such a comment. No, no one said that Hayes had said these things — you have an airtight defense there. But it was wrong to go on the defensive against the governor and her party within the context of talking about the op-ed — especially since the Democrats have so much more to answer for on this issue.

It was even against Sheheen’s own self-interest to do this. This was a leadership opportunity for him, a chance to impress independents and even some Republicans with statesmanship. What he should have done was chew out his fellow Democratic senators who had voted the wrong way.

Wes Hayes was doing the right thing. I’m sorry if it got him in hot water. This is the kind of mess that keeps people from stepping out from behind their parties and leading.

I hope Vincent Sheheen is sorry about it, too.

Robert Ford quits SC Senate

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Thanks to Doug for bringing my attention to this:

COLUMBIA S.C. Sen. Robert Ford resigned “effective immediately” from the S.C. Senate, said Sen. John Courson Friday at an ethics hearing on alleged ethics violations against Ford.

Courson said Ford submitted his resignation in a letter.

Ford, a Charleston Democrat, did not attend the second of two days of Senate Ethics Committee hearings Friday on eight alleged violations of state ethics laws against him.

Ford was admitted to Baptist Hospital Thursday evening with chest pains, William Runyon, Ford’s attorney said Friday. Ford was released sometime Friday morning, but advised by his doctor to return to Charleston, Runyon said.

Ford, a Charleston Democrat, is accused of depositing campaign donations into personal bank accounts, and spending campaign money on personal medical expenses, gym memberships and purchases from adult stores, according to a state Senate Ethics Committee complaint…

First, I’m sorry about his chest pains, and I hope he’s OK.

But the upshot for the rest of us is that South Carolina is better off without Robert Ford in the Senate.

So for once, a worthwhile result was produced under our current ethics laws. But they still need improvement.

Ethics, schmethics — what on Earth is really going on?

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First, the good news is that maybe, just maybe, ethics reform did NOT die in the SC Senate yesterday.

And, on the whole, that’s a good thing. Because while the bill is far from perfect, it’s better than no ethics reform at all.

Vincent Sheheen and Wes Hayes made the bipartisan case for ethics reform in an op-ed today. It was more in the vein of why we need reform, period, than why we need this particular bill. For more of a breakdown on the good and bad qualities of both the House and Senate bills, see this piece by Cindi Scoppe from Sunday before last. After discussing inadequacies in the Senate bill, it concluded:

The good news is that there’s still a chance to add the missing provisions to the bill and shore up the shortcomings, and at least give us a fighting chance of a strong bill coming out of the final conference committee. But there’s a lot of work to be done. And the clock is ticking.

Oh, if only senators were as conscientious as Cindi, and I, and most sensible people, would like them to be.

Rather than worrying about whether the ethics bill had everything in it that it should have, half of the Senate (which is all it took) engaged yesterday in a bipartisan effort to kill such legislation altogether.

I had a terrible time figuring out why they were doing this, from the story in the paper this morning. This was not the reporter’s fault. The problem was that the senators had no reasons that made sense.

The Republicans of the Tea Party wing who voted against putting the bill on special order had a stated reason. But it was just “reason” as motive, not “reason” as logic. It was, in fact, completely batty. They said they didn’t want to spend the time on ethics reform because they wanted to spend it on their 1830s-style bill to nullify Obamacare. Really.

A big reason the bill WAS put on special order today, reversing yesterday’s vote, was because the more sensible Republicans agreed to go along with the demand that the nullification bill be considered, too. Again, really.

But at least there was a certain clarity to the Republicans’ lunacy. Here are the stated Democratic “reasons”:

State Sen. Gerald Malloy, D-Darlington, said there is no urgency in passing the bill, adding its passage by the GOP-controlled House, only four weeks ago, left the Senate with too little time to consider ethics reform.

State Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, said Democrats still have concerns about the proposal that need to be worked out, including the composition of the committee that would oversee ethics complaints against lawmakers. Hutto held up getting to the ethics bill Wednesday by debating a bill that would direct money left over from the state’s budget year that ends June 30 to different projects.

Hutto criticized Haley and other lawmakers for saying that protecting taxpayers against the theft of their personal information — such as the hacking incident that happened last year at the state Department of Revenue — was a top priority when little, he said, has been done to address the problem…

Also, they don’t like the way Nikki Haley spells her name. And they don’t like to put bills on special order on days of the week that start with “W.” OK, I made those last two up, but they make about as much sense, in terms of relevance.

This caused me to dream up reasons. I thought that maybe this was some of the Democrats’ way of hurting Nikki Haley and helping Vincent Sheheen, whether he wants such help or not. (Sheheen was one of the four Democrats voting for special order yesterday.) The idea being to block Nikki Haley’s bid to get credit for ethics reform (in spite of, or perhaps because of, being a poster child for why we need ethics reform), while Vincent’s out there voting for it and writing op-eds in favor of it.

But that theory is a little over-elaborate. It requires voters to blame Nikki for something Democrats did. And even if that worked, they’d have to kill the bill next year, too.

I’m afraid the more likely explanation is simply that these guys are opposed to ethics reform. That’s the Occam’s razor version, and probably the right one.

Anyway, today’s action offers reform a chance this year. We’ll see.

The contemptible SC Senate kills Medicaid expansion

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Of course, in the Senate’s defense, it is merely doing what the contemptible SC House and our contemptible governor did before them:

COLUMBIA, SC — The state Senate killed Medicaid expansion on Tuesday, the last hope for supporters who wanted to extend health insurance benefits to South Carolina’s working poor.

The vote was 23-19, with two Republicans – Ray Cleary of Georgetown and Paul Campbell of Berkeley County – joining all of the Senate’s 17 Democrats present in voting for the expansion. Four senators, one Democrat and three Republicans, were absent.

The proposal would have accepted $795.8 million in federal money to pay for health insurance for about 320,000 South Carolinians beginning Jan. 1. There would have been no direct cost to the state. Because the proposed Medicaid expansion was an amendment to the state budget, it would have expired after one year. Lawmakers would have had to vote to expand coverage again next year…

Congratulations to Sens. Ray Cleary and Paul Campbell for doing what is unquestionably, indubitably the right thing. I can’t say I know either of them, really, but I’ve heard Paul Campbell speak, and suspect that he’s one of the brightest people in the Legislature. The retired regional president of Alcoa, he’s a man of accomplishment who seems to have a good grasp of how the world actually works. This vote is consistent with that impression.

As for the rest, particularly those who voted against this for no better reason than the fact that it has the name “Obama” attached to it, and that’s what you’re expected to do if you’re a Republican in South Carolina… well, you’ve just demonstrated once again why I hold partythink in such low regard.

Yes, one can rationalize all day and all night about how there are better ways to achieve the goals of Obamacare, but when you’re all done, you haven’t changed the fact that this is the only plan in effect, or likely to come into effect. This is it. You either do it, or give the idea of significantly broadening access to health care the back of your hand.

Ted Vick makes the Daily Mail

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Yes, the Daily Mail, as in the one in London — the one in “Paperback Writer,” for my fellow Boomers.

Imagine my surprise. I just this morning loaded the Daily Mail app onto my iPod, and this was one of the first stories to pop up, right there on the main U.S. news page.

And why on Earth would an arrest of a South Carolina lawmaker be worth a headline in such a venue? I think maybe it was Todd Rutherford’s explanation about the rock in his shoe. They even squeezed that into the hed, “South Carolina Democrat arrested for second DUI in a year but blames ‘impairment’ on rock in his shoe.” An excerpt:

A South Carolina state representative has been arrested for his second DUI in less than a year despite claims by his attorney that his perceived impairment was because of a rock in his shoe.

State Rep. Ted Vick, D-Chesterfield, was arrested on the Statehouse grounds around 11 p.m. Tuesday by the Bureau of Protective Services, according to Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Sherri Iacobelli.

An officer followed Vick after seeing him stumbling as he walked into a parking garage in Columbia. Vick got into his car and hit a cone before the officer could catch up and ask him to stop…

But Vick’s lawyer, fellow Rep. Todd Rutherford, said Vick was not impaired.

Vick was walking funny because he had a rock in his shoe, said Rutherford, D-Columbia…

James Smith gets way harsh on Nikki Haley

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From Rep. James Smith’s Facebook page:

If SC had seen genuine ethics reform previously and had an ethics committee with any teeth, Nikki Haley would likely have been forced out of the House and never would have made it to the Governor’s office. Her actions and the culture of corruption continue to bring shame on SC and the people of our state deserve better.

Coming from such a nice, easygoing, mild-talking guy as James Smith, that is way harsh. Especially that last sentence.

That’s the kind of stuff his neighbor Mia McLeod would say. We can see this, I suppose, as a heating-up of rhetoric as James’ friend Vincent Sheheen prepares to take on the governor. But I think it’s also a measure of the degree to which James, mild-mannered as he is, is fed up.

Anyway, for context, here’s this morning’s story in The State about the ethics bill.

Sheheen decries decriminalization of ethics violations

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Got this release a few minutes ago from Vincent Sheheen:

Sheheen on Ethics Reform: GOP efforts & Governor’s back-seat approach the “good-old-boys-and-girls network at its worst”

Columbia – Today, state Representatives Beth Bernstein and James Smith stood up to call for real ethics reform and urged Governor Haley for leadership instead of hiding behind yet another bureaucratic commission while her followers do the dirty work of decriminalizing some of the most common ethics violations – many of which she was accused of herself. State Senator Vincent Sheheen released this statement:

“I thank Representatives Bernstein and Smith for joining me in the revolt against the status quo and the efforts to move South Carolina forward by returning common sense and ethics to our leadership. The Republican effort at ‘ethics reform’ is the good-old-boys–and-girls network in politics at its worst. We need real leadership to clean up the government, not just a study or report while members of the Governor’s own party decrease the punishment on ethics violations that she has been charged with.

“For too long, South Carolina has struggled to meet its potential under the guidance of leaders who get detoured by putting their self-interest before the interests of the people. We need to change the way we do business and leave the politics of ideology and personal ambition behind to get the state back on track.”

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I just wish he wouldn’t use that overworked “good ol’ boys” construction. That got tired back when Carroll Campbell was using it. I don’t think anybody really knows what it means, aside from having a rough impression that it’s bad.

Here’s a column I wrote musing about the phrase years ago…

And here’s a column Cindi Scoppe wrote on this “ethics” legislation. An excerpt:

After failing for more than half the session even to introduce their proposal on legislators’ top to-do item, House leaders rolled out a place-holder bill on April 11 that contained nothing but the bill title. They scheduled a subcommittee meeting for the next legislative day, last Tuesday, where House Republican Leader Bruce Bannister, who chairs the Constitutional Law Subcommittee, handed members of his panel a summary and a 100-page amendment that would become the bill.

Panel members discussed the items on the summary — decriminalization was not on the list — made some changes and approved the bill before they had a chance to read it. (It took me nearly three hours to do what I consider a cursory reading.) The process repeated the next day in the full Judiciary Committee, whose members also made changes without having time to read the bill. The text of the bill wasn’t posted online until Thursday evening, seven hours after the committee formally reported it to the House.

Although it’s common for the amended version of a bill not to be available until the next step in the process, I can’t recall a bill ever making it to full committee, much less the full House, before some version was available.

The process was so confusing that Rep. James Smith, a Democrat who serves on the subcommittee, told me Thursday morning that the bill increased penalties for the worst ethics violations. The next day, he called to say he was outraged to discover he was wrong — and to promise to lead a fight to restore them. GOP Rep. Rick Quinn, who also serves on the subcommittee, emailed me an amendment he planned to offer that would do what both men had thought the bill did — increase the current criminal penalties…

Yeah, I had spoken with James, last Tuesday night I think it was, when he was fresh from the meeting alluded to above, and he thought it was a good bill. It’s a good thing that he recognized his mistake…

Thoughts on the Boeing expansion?

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This release from the state Senate GOP…

Boeing has been an incredibly [sic] partner for us as a state. Despite labor unions’ early attempt to interfere with their presence here, Boeing is already creating jobs for over a thousand South Carolinians, with a multiplier effect that touches every part of our state.

We overwhelming passed a bill this week that gives Boeing the tools they need to create another 2,000 jobs here. You read that right…ANOTHER 2,000 jobs, and nearly a $1 billion more in capital investment.

It’s a great day for South Carolina not only because of the impact these jobs will have in people’s lives, but also because it solidifies our state’s reputation as a go-to destination for world-class manufacturing…

… got me to thinking I should start a thread on this major new industrial investment by our state. This thing’s moving through the Legislature pretty quickly, so don’t type too slowly if you have something to say. A quick summary of the situation from The State:

The S.C. Senate gave final approval Thursday to $120 million in state bonds, two days after the aircraft maker said it would add 2,000 jobs and $1 billion in investment at its North Charleston Dreamliner 787 jet plant. Boeing must meet those employment and investment goals by 2020 as part of the incentive agreement.

Meanwhile, the state House agreed Thursday to fast-track the incentives bill and begin floor debate Tuesday, Speaker Bobby Harrell’s office said…

“We have made a commitment to Boeing and our state keeps its word, particularly when it comes to economic development,” said Harrell, R-Charleston. “This is a good investment for our entire state that will create exciting new opportunities for our citizens and provide our state with huge returns.”…

The 15-year, state-backed bonds would pay for a 320-acre site next to Boeing’s plant at Charleston International Airport and to prepare the property for expansion. The money would not pay for new buildings, state officials said.

I heartily disagree with Mia on food stamps and junk food

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Here’s the latest from Mia McLeod:

Dear Governor,

Seriously? Can you just “SNAP” and in an instant, delete certain foods from some South Carolinians’ grocery lists?

Sure, obesity is a genuine, significant health concern for too many people in this state. But that’s not why you’ve made a recent “SNAP” decision. You know it. We know it. And soon, citizens across this state will know it too.
Contrary to South Carolina’s definition, “SNAP” doesn’t mean “Simply Nonchalant About the Poor.” It’s actually a federal program, fully funded by the USDA. Now, isn’t it ironic that our state’s most notorious critics of “BIG” government, are arrogantly hypocritical enough to assume the despicable role of “BIG Brother” when it’s politically expedient?

As asinine as this latest stunt is, it’s even more offensive. Targeting a segment of the population in furtherance of your own political agenda is one thing. Refusing to allow federally-funded healthcare for hard-working South Carolinians while in the same breath, expressing concern about obesity and its impact on their health and well-being, is another.

You don’t want the federal government telling us whether to accept or how to spend our federal tax dollars when a state match or financial investment is required. But yet, you wanna dictate which foods we can buy with SNAP, a fully-funded federal program that doesn’t even require state funds?

The list of qualifying items that can be purchased with SNAP is very straight-forward. As with any program, there’s always room for improvement. But last time we checked, you were able to make nutritional decisions for your family without our intrusion or input. We’re just wondering why you think we need yours.

And since your cronies are traveling the state at our expense, trying to convince us that this is about obesity prevention, perhaps we’ll remember your “heartfelt” concern on our next nonemergency trip to the ER…if we can even find and get to a hospital that’s still open and accessible.

With all due respect, Governor, when it comes to obesity, it’s not the foods that we’re able to buy on SNAP that are making us fat. Perhaps it’s your empty rhetoric that’s making us sick.

If you really cared about this state’s obesity rates or us, you’d do what is well within your purview and power to ensure that we have access to quality, affordable health care, just like you do.

You’d realize that some of us would love to eat the same fresh and organic foods that your family enjoys, but because of “food deserts” across this state, many of us are without the means or access. If you’re genuinely concerned about addressing obesity, you could start by addressing that.

If only we could “SNAP” back from the regressive, debilitating tactics of centuries past, we’d all feel much better. So while South Carolina continues to reek of ignorance, intolerance and insanity, many of our best and brightest continue to leave this state in search of parity, inclusion and meaningful opportunities.

But unlike obesity and other chronic conditions, many never return. Neighboring states too often become the benefactors of our most creative minds and talented contributors. And we’re left with a weaker South Carolina.

So as you continue to cater to your political base by serving folks like us up on a party platter, the only thing that seems to be getting fatter is your reelection campaign account.

At some point, obesity may no longer be an issue for South Carolina. Under your “leadership,” our state is gradually becoming so malnourished on so many levels, it may not be strong enough to “SNAP” out of it.

But you still can, Governor, before it’s too late.

p.s. – South Carolina’s forgotten citizens (a.k.a. – your “other” constituents) may not be members of the Tea Party. But in number, we’re “the real majority.”

She really doesn’t like the idea, does she?

Well, I do. Still. So I guess I’m playing the “despicable role of Big Brother.”

Yes, there are reasons to be concerned about people who live in “food deserts.” I don’t dismiss that, and I can’t say for certain that the stores that now sell junk food in those communities would shift and sell healthier stuff if that’s all their poor patrons could buy. I think that might happen, but I don’t have the full faith in markets that some do.

So that should be thoroughly studied and taken into account before a final decision is made. But I most certainly do not agree with those who have a philosophical, rather than practical, objection to insisting that tax money not be used to buy foods that ruin the health of the poor.

The populists will call this patriarchal, but we are indeed in a position for taking responsibility for people when we undertake to feed them. We are culpable for providing people with the means of poisoning themselves when we could adopt a policy that prevents it.

When we discussed this previously, my old friend and respected colleague Burl Burlingame noted, “when the government wants to experiment, they do so first on the poor.” That may seem a particularly devastating argument against this change. But I submit that we have been running the experiment for half a century now, and the results are in: Paying for junk food kills poor people. It’s time we stop it, and do what we practically can to have a positive, rather than an actively negative, effect on people’s health.

Cindi Scoppe’s righteous rant this morning

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Cindi had a column this morning on the new post of cybersecurity chief that the Legislature is adding to the state payroll (maybe the title could be, “Officer in Charge of Closing the Barn Door after the Horses have Run Off”) — or rather, on the outrageous fact that they want this person to be immune from firing by the governor.

As she correctly points out, we have too many state employees like that already — people who don’t really “work for” anyone, since no one can fire them.

There is zero reason to make this particular person independent — unlike, say, the attorney general or the inspector general. Arguments can be made for those. Not for this new post.

Cindi and I have been fighting the Legislature’s aversion to accountability for a lot of years now. So she can be forgiven for winding up into a bit of a rant at the end:

Frankly, I’m willing to trust that politics will keep the governor in line on this one. It’s tough enough for a governor to have to explain that 6.4 million individuals’ and businesses’ Social Security numbers and bank records were hacked because her agency director either didn’t know about or ignored concerns from his own IT people. She certainly doesn’t want to have to explain that we had another breach because she fired the state cybersecurity chief, or cowed him into backing off basic protections.

Truth be told, I’d be more concerned that a governor wouldn’t be aggressive enough if a cybersecurity chief gets out of control.

As much as some legislators are fond of saying that no price is too high to secure our personal information, the fact is that there is always, always more that can be done to provide security, be it for our computer networks or our cities or our businesses or our homes. The fact is that some prices are indeed too high, and it’s the job of our Legislature and our governor, or whoever a cybersecurity director reports to, to balance the risk against the cost, in money and in time.

If you’re going to give union-style job protections to the cybersecurity chief, then why not give them to the governor’s lobbyists — since she might not like it if they tell her that legislators don’t like her? Or to the prison director — since she might not like it if he tells her how much it’s going to cost to keep the prisons safe?

In fact, why not just go back to the way we did things when I moved to South Carolina, when the governor couldn’t fire the directors of any state agencies? When those directors reported to part-time board members who, even if the governor could appoint them, couldn’t be fired.

For that matter, if S.C. governors are that untrustworthy, maybe we ought to go back to the old system whereby the Legislature elected the governor. After all, what’s the point of bothering voters with the matter of electing a governor if the governor has no power to carry out the agenda those voters elected her to carry out?

Or maybe, just maybe, we could decide that government officials should be held accountable for their actions. Maybe we could decide that it’s better to trust that a governor won’t abuse her power over powerful officials than it is to risk that those officials will either get too comfortable in their jobs or else let their power go to their heads, and be less aggressive, or more aggressive, than they ought to be, because they don’t have a boss — and they know they’ve got a job for life.

Amen to all that.

Smith: Anti-Obamacare witness transported on state plane

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Here’s an interesting release that just came in:

Rep. James Smith Responds to Use of State Plane by Right-Wing Radio Host

Today, some members of the South Carolina General Assembly learned that one of only two people to testify in favor of H.3101, otherwise known as the Obamacare Nullification Bill, at today’s subcommittee hearing, was given special travel arrangements by being flown to Columbia from Washington, DC on Palmetto 2, a state airplane. Dr. Walter Williams, a professor at George Mason University and popular right-wing radio host, gave testimony in favor of H.3101 today in Columbia after his taxpayer funded flight was authorized by Spartanburg State Representative, and lead sponsor of H.3101, Bill Chumley. The other person testifying in favor of the bill was a prominent Tea Party activist Kent Masterson Brown, who admitted he was paid $7500 to testify.

Representative James Smith, a member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Laws, released the following statement in response:

“This is the height of hypocrisy and politics at its worst. For taxpayers to be forced to foot the bill so that an out-of-state political zealot can push his extreme agenda is not only a dereliction of his duties as a public servant, it is just fundamentally wrong. During his testimony, Dr. Walter Williams espoused the abuses of government spending and intrusion while engaging in precisely the same behavior. While we work to make health care more affordable and accessible to our citizens, Representative Bill Chumley, would rather frivolously spend tax dollars to fly Tea Party ideologues down to South Carolina on the state airplane. I call on Representative Chumley to immediately reimburse the taxpayers for his reckless and irresponsible decision to spend tax dollars to promote his own extreme Tea party agenda.”

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Gee, I didn’t even know that a single member of the Legislature could authorize something like that…

‘It is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House…’

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Somehow I missed this when it was in the Charleston Business Review way back in January — until Burl, all the way from Hawaii, brought it to our attention today:

Rep. Kris Crawford, a Republican from Florence and also an emergency room doctor, supports the expansion but expects the Republican caucus to vote as a block against the Medicaid expansion.

“The politics are going to overwhelm the policy. It is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House right now, especially for the Republican Party,” Crawford said.

Well, he certainly pegged that. The House did indeed do the totally irrational thing and reject Medicaid. Which makes this prophetic statement from a GOP lawmaker — and you did notice the part about him being a Republican, right? — particularly noteworthy.

Why is he so out of step with his caucus? Because he’s a doctor, so he knows better.

That’s chapter one of our story. Chapter two is that this week, Rep. Crawford fulfilled his own prophecy by voting along with his party on the issue. But then, so did all but one Democrat:

Crawford voted against accepting the money on Wednesday because it was proposed as part of the state’s budget — which he says is not the right place to do it. Instead, he wants to propose separate legislation later this year, and he worried that if he voted with the Democrats on the budget none of his Republican colleagues would support him…

Meanwhile, Dick Harpootlian has castigated Crawford for the wrong thing, referring to his “the racist and inexcusable comments by Rep. Kris Crawford regarding Medicaid expansion.

I tend to agree with Todd Rutherford, who said, “I am never bothered by someone stating the truth.”

Meanwhile, Crawford has baked down on the more inflammatory part of his comment, but not on the general thrust:

In an interview on Thursday, Crawford said his vote on the state budget was political, but said it had nothing to do with race — noting that if he had to do it over again, he “might pick different words.” But he stood behind the larger point of his comments, criticizing Haley and the House Republican Caucus for voting against the expansion purely because a Democratic president is for it.

Mia McLeod on Medicaid expansion in SC

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Speaking of people who sort of seem like they’re running for higher office, here’s the latest missive from Mia McLeod:

Well…ladies & gentlemen, it’s time to “weigh-in.” And unlike her Republican counterparts in New Jersey, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico, North Dakota and Michigan, your Governor is once again “flexing” her Tea Party muscles and refusing to support healthcare coverage for uninsured South Carolinians.

So what separates her from a growing list of anti-Obama Governors who have recently decided to expand Medicaid in other states? Common sense and compassion, for starters.
And if South Carolina refuses to expand healthcare coverage, here’s a glimpse of the impact on hard-working folks like you:

Higher medical costs – as the uninsured forego preventive care and are forced to seek medical care in the emergency room, hospitals will be forced to shift those costs to insured individuals and employers.
Less independence – as our seniors, veterans and disabled citizens forfeit access to home health and other medical care, it’ll be extremely difficult for them to lead independent lives.
Fewer options – as our state refuses federal funding to the tune of 100% for the first 3 years, neighboring states will gladly accept and use our federal tax dollars to cover their uninsured.
Poor quality of life – as hard-working folks forfeit medical care they need to live longer, healthier lives, our state misses opportunities to be more proactive, productive and economically sound.

But this is South Carolina. Obviously, expanding Medicaid makes sense, but don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Republican Governors (in other states, of course) are saying…

“No mother or father should despair over whether or not they can afford — or access — the health care their child needs. Quality health care services must be accessible and affordable for all — not just those in certain zip codes or tax brackets,” said outspoken Obamacare critic and Florida Governor, Rick Scott, as he reflected on the death of his mother and her struggle to raise five children with little money, while worrying constantly about having family health coverage.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer also made national headlines when she supported Medicaid expansion, acknowledging that it would lessen the impact of uncompensated care that drives up medical costs to hospitals and taxpayers.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has said, “Let me be clear, I’m no fan of the Affordable Care Act…” but it’s “now the law of the land,” acknowledging that rejecting it would mean that New Jersey’s tax dollars will be spent elsewhere.

While Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval was the first Republican governor to officially embrace Medicaid expansion, his decision seemed to be based primarily upon the recognition that it wouldn’t be wise to forego an infusion of federal dollars into his state’s economy.

The same is true for South Carolina. Are you listening, Governor Haley? (Oops! rhetorical question…)

Expanding healthcare coverage to people who can’t otherwise afford it should be a no-brainer. States can opt-in or out at anytime, “risk-free” for the first 3 years. That’s an offer Republican Governors across the nation believe is too good to refuse, because while expanding healthcare coverage is voluntary, picking up the tab for the uninsured, isn’t.

Our Governor has said that SC can’t afford to expand Medicaid. With 100% federal funding for the first 3 years and 90% thereafter, how can we afford not to? It creates over 40,000 jobs, covers over 250,000 uninsured South Carolinians, infuses our state’s economy and improves our quality of life and health.

So while she focuses on restricting foods purchased using federally funded programs like WIC and SNAP (in the name of obesity prevention) or “disease” designations for obesity, here’s an idea…

Let’s expand healthcare coverage so that South Carolinians who struggle with obesity and other medical conditions can get quality, affordable healthcare that focuses on prevention and treatment to help them live longer, healthier, more productive lives.

This isn’t a partisan issue. We all want the strongest military, the best schools, quality, affordable health care, meaningful job opportunities and the ability to live, work and age with dignity. Part of government’s role is to help ensure that every citizen has access to healthcare because a healthier population is a huge, proactive step towards a stronger workforce and business community, improved quality of life and more vibrant economy.

South Carolina is only as strong as its weakest. If our state’s leaders lack the collective compassion and courage to expand healthcare coverage to “the least of these,” the biggest losers won’t just be the uninsured. South Carolinians, insured and uninsured, will pay the ultimate price. Our state will be the biggest loser. But wait…isn’t that what we’ve been since we elected her 3 years ago?

Governor Haley was elected to represent all of us. The sooner she and her party’s leaders “swallow that pill,” the healthier we’ll all be…

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