Category Archives: Legislature

Dialogue about the ‘Wireless Cloud’

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This morning, noting this post and the comments on it, Cindi sent a note to Gordon and Mike, whom she knows from past lives (Gordon was my boss when I was Cindi’s boss when she was a reporter 20 years ago; Mike Cakora was one of our "community columnists" when we had that program on the op-ed page several years back):

Good morning Gordon and Mike

    I hope you’re both doing well.
    I’ve just been reading over your comments on Brad’s blog, and it occurred to me that if y’all read the legislative study committee report that is the backdrop for the news release he posted, 1) you might find it interesting and 2) you might be able to help me think through this — either via e-mail or through a continued discussion on Brad’s blog, whichever you prefer.
    I think the report should shed additional light on precisely what is being considered. In short, the majority report recommends hiring a consultant to further think through what to do with the ETV licenses; the minority report says this is plan is a recipe for losing a valuable state resource, which will revert to the feds if we don’t have a plan in place in less than a year.
    My initial, uninformed take is to agree with the minority report, written by Rep. Dwight Loftis. By way of background, Sen. Jim Ritchie — who along with Loftis first got this conversation going in the State House a year ago — had been spinning me in advance on the importance of the state taking action. He’s a proponent of a laptop for every student, by the way, a plan I am not sold on….
    I feel like this is something our editorial board needs to weigh in on at some point….
    Also, since Rep. Loftis has added me to his broadband e-mail list, I have received a handful of articles on the topic that I would be happy to share with either or both of you if you’d like.

Cindi

Gordon urged me to post the report Cindi referred to on the blog so we could have a discussion here. Here’s the report.

Mike also answered as follows:

To the extent that I can contribute, I will.  After my first scan of the report, I want to look at the FCC deadlines that the minority report is concerned about.  I need to get clear on FCC terminology too. 

Environmentally speaking, Clearwire looks to be involved with Sprint and Intel in trying to rescue WiMax according to breaking news. 
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/02/sprint_clearwir_1.html

Thus Clearwire’s role as a proponent in some of the BTAs in this state is interesting.  I pulled the latest lobbyist report and found that while all the usual players — Sprint Nextel, Intel, Time Warner, etc. — have lobbyists, Clearwire does not. 

Mike Cakora

So if you’re hip to the highly technical issues involved, here’s your chance to jump in. Personally, I’m depending on Cindi to figure it out and help me make up my mind. This is your chance to help Cindi — and Mike and Gordon as well.

Back before I started this blog, people like Dan Gillmor told me that the Blogosphere was chock-full of people who knew more about various issues (especially technical ones) than I or any other journalist did. While that is occasionally the case, it hasn’t been as often as I’d like. This seems like a good opportunity to realize the true potential of blogging.

 

Sanford fails to derail progress — this time

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
LATE WEDNESDAY, I thought I had come up with an excuse to say something encouraging about Gov. Mark Sanford.
    Such opportunities come so seldom that I didn’t want this idea to get away from me. I sent a note to my colleagues to enlist their help in remembering: “Should we do some kind of attaboy on the governor using his bully pulpit for this good cause (as opposed to some of the others he is wont to push)?” I was referring to his efforts to jawbone the Legislature into meaningful reform of our DUI law.
    Moments later, I read the governor’s guest column on our op-ed page about a flat tax, which was his latest attempt to slip through an income tax cut, which at times seems to be the only thing he cares about doing as governor. This chased thoughts of praise from my mind.
    For the gazillionth time, he cited Tom Friedman in a way that would likely mortify the columnist and author. His “argument,” if you want to call it that: Since The World Is Flat, folks on the other side of the world are going to get ahead of us if we take a couple of hours to pull together our receipts and file a tax return. Really. “Rooting around shoeboxes of receipts” once a year was going to do us in. (And never mind the fact that most paperwork is done on the federal return, with the state return piggybacking on that.)
    Then, he argued that his plan for cutting the income tax (which was his point, not avoiding the onerous filing) was necessary to offset a proposed cigarette tax increase. The alternative would be “to grow government,” which is how he describes using revenue to get a three-to-one federal match to provide health care for some of our uninsured citizens.
    Here in the real world, folks want to raise our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax to price the coffin nails beyond the means of teenagers. Everybody who has in any way participated in conversations at the State House about the issue over the last several years knows this. Yet the governor of our state, who seems only to have conversations with himself, can ask this about raising that tax: “(W)hat for, more government or a lower-tax option?” In his narrowly limited version of reality, those are the only considerations.
    But enough about that essay from an alternative dimension. What I read on the front page the next morning drove it from my mind: “Sanford: ‘Endowed chairs’ a failure.” It was about his latest attack on one of the few really smart, strategic moves this state has made in the past decade.
    It’s the one good thing to come out of Gov. Jim Hodges’ execrable state lottery. (I used to struggle to come up with good things to say about him, too, but this was one such thing.) The scholarships? We were doing that without the lottery, and would have expanded them without the lottery except Gov. Hodges vetoed that bill (because he wanted a lottery).
    But a small chunk of the new “chump tax” was set aside to provide seed money to attract some of the best and brightest minds to South Carolina, and put them to work building our economy. Gov. Sanford has never liked this idea, because he doesn’t like the state to invest in the future in any appreciable way apart from land conservation (which is a fine idea, but hardly a shot in the arm to the economy). He believes we don’t need to invest more in education, or research, or even our Department of Commerce, which he takes such pride in having trimmed. His entire “economic development” plan is to cut the income tax. This attracts folks who have already made their pile and are looking for a tax haven in which to hide it, and makes him a hero to the only political entity in the nation that sees him as a hot property: the Club for Growth, whose president showed just how out of touch that group is with even the Republican portion of the electorate by suggesting John McCain pick Mr. Sanford as his running mate.
    The thing that made this outburst from the governor particularly galling is that on Wednesday, I had met Jay Moskowitz, the new head of Health Sciences South Carolina — a consortium of universities and hospitals teaming together to make our state healthier, both physically and economically.
    Dr. Moskowitz is the former deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, and most recently held a stack of impressive titles at Penn State, including “chief scientific officer.” He made it clear that he would not be here if not for the endowed chairs program. Nor would others. He spoke of the top people he’s recruited in his few months here, who have in turn recruited others, an example of the “cascade of people that are going to be recruited with each of these chairs.”
    These folks aren’t just coming to buy a few T-shirts at the beach and leave. They’re here to make their home, and to build their new home into the kind of place that will attract other creative minds. The endowed chairs program is the principal factor that convinces them to pull up stakes and make the effort. “I had a wonderful job in Pennsylvania,” said Dr. Moskowitz, and he wouldn’t have left it without believing that South Carolina was committed to moving forward on a broad research front.
    He doesn’t say it this way, but it’s obvious he wouldn’t have come if he had thought Mark Sanford’s “leave it alone” approach was typical of our state’s leadership.
    Fortunately, it is not. The S.C. House, led by Speaker Bobby Harrell, rose up in response to the governor’s naysaying and voted unanimously to extend the endowed chairs program.
    This is a moment of high irony for me. For 17 years I’ve pushed to give more power to South Carolina’s governor because our state so badly needed visionary leadership, and I thought there was little reason to expect it would come from our Legislature.
    But on Thursday, it did. And if the Senate has the wisdom to follow suit, your children and my grandchildren will have reason to be grateful.

The Wireless Cloud

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Just got this press release:

February 15, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Representative Cathy B. Harvin

Wireless Cloud to Support South Carolina Learners
    House Democrat Cathy Harvin, Clarendon & Williamsburg Co.’s, has collaborated with House Republican Dwight Loftis, Greenville Co. and 34 other members in introducing a Joint Resolution, H.4692 that would equip South Carolina Schools with a much needed wireless networking capability and would extend this capability to include a 10 mile radius around each school district education campus in support of homebound learners.  The resolution calls for ETV to utilize its existing towers for this purpose.
     Harvin indicates that this capability will allow enhanced learning experiences for students to use computing anywhere on the school grounds where students may now be limited to computer labs and will support children and adult learners in their homes.
     Harvin says,” South Carolina is truly blessed to have received many more communications licenses than any other state.  ETV has had these licenses for years and we must submit a plan to comply with FCC regulations by January 2009 that will indicate how we will move to digital delivery and how we will use these licenses.   What more perfect way to use the licenses than to empower learners in this state.  We now rank 48th nationally, so we have no place to go but up.  We seem to be in a timeframe where it is difficult to find any issue on which democrats and republicans can agree.”  Harvin was most pleased to find when it comes to helping South Carolina’s children learn, there is no argument.

I get excited every time I hear anybody talk about the "Wireless Cloud" proposal — not because I fully understand what it is, but because the name rocks. In fact, it’s now on my short list for names for the band that I’ve been meaning to start since about 1971 (you can’t rush these things, you know; got to find the right name first).

This legislation, or legislation related to it, came up in one of our edit board meetings last week, and I kept asking Cindi to explain it to me. And then I’d have to stop her because she’d get into explaining the politics — who would benefit and who would lose under each alternative (there was something in it about a plan that would give away bandwidth that belongs to the taxpayers, but I didn’t really follow it, because it was like talking about money) — and I wanted to hear the technical explanation: How would a "wireless cloud" work? Could I use it with my present laptop? Would it cost me to use it? Would more cell towers have to be built, or what?

I didn’t get all the answers I wanted. And this release, with all its talk about kids and education and stuff, didn’t help with the self-centered questions I had. For all I know, the idea may not be feasible, or it might cost to much, or something. But it sure sounds cool. Especially the name.

New ‘Take Down The Flag’ blog

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Michael Rodgers, a regular correspondent here and probably my most ardent regular blog ally on the cause of getting the Confederate flag off the State House lawn, has started a new blog dedicated to the cause, as he informed me over the weekend:

Dear Brad,
    Hi, how are you?
    What’s new on the Confederate flag?  It’s still flying from the Statehouse grounds. I’ve started protesting at the Statehouse when I can, and I now have a blog about the issue (Would you please add me to your blogroll?):

Take Down The Flag

    My state Representative Bill Cotty said that we have a "leadership in the House and Senate that will prevent the issue from seeing the light of day before we adjourn in June." My state Senator Joel Lourie agreed with your sense from the business community that they have no "appetite" for doing anything on this issue. I find that strange since Jim Micali of Michelin is the Chairman of the SC Chamber of Commerce. Surely he would want something done, but he’s retiring soon, so who knows?
    Take care and keep in touch.  Thank you.

                        Regards,

                        Michael Rodgers

Nothing new, I had to tell him. As y’all may have noticed, I’ve been working pretty much around the clock on presidential politics, and am just about to start paying attention again to S.C. issues (I had other folks doing that up to now), now that we’ve chased all those candidates out of the state.

Now I’m having to meet with all those folks I’ve been putting off for the past couple of months, on a wide variety of issues. The meeting with Vincent Sheheen was one of those long-delayed ones. I also have outstanding meeting requests from local hospitals, the state Department of Juvenile Justice, and … well, all sorts of issues.

The flag will certainly return in this space. Until it does, thank you, Michael, for keeping the conversation going.

P.S. Just now, going through e-mail from a different account (my published one), I see this form e-mail that Michael sent out to all potentially interested parties. As further elaboration on what he’s trying to do, I include the text of that as well:

Dear Brad Warthen,
    Hello, how are you?  I’m writing to you because I see that you’ve posted on your blog in support of taking down the flag.  I’ve written emails to people who are interested in joining your South Carolina Association for the Advancement of All People, or whatever it ends up being called.
    I’ve started a blog to encourage action to take down the flag.  I hope that we can get a group to organize and take action.  I’m inviting you to participate.  Please, let’s work together to take down the flag. http://takedowntheflag.wordpress.com/
    I’m also writing to remind you of the bill (H-3588) to take down the flag.  The bill is sponsored by Representatives Alexander, Hart, Rutherford, and Sellers, and it is currently stuck in the Judiciary Committee of the House. 
    Please write your State Representative and State Senator to ask them to get the bill to the floors and on to Governor Sanford for his signature.  You can read the bill and find out who your legislators are here (choose “quick search” for bill 3588 and choose “find your legislator”): http://www.scstatehouse.net/
    Please spread the word about H-3588.  I look forward to hearing from you and working with you.  We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we are right and we will prevail.
    Thank you.

With Kindest Regards,

Michael Rodgers

Vincent Sheheen’s plan to revamp state gummint

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Vincent_004

 

State Sen. Vincent Sheheen came by to explain his government restructuring plan, which he wrote about recently in this op-ed piece.

The significance of Vincent’s initiative (and I call him “Vincent” on account of knowing his daddy and his uncle before I knew him) is that it constitutes a credible, worthwhile government restructuring approach from within the General Assembly, the place where governor’s plans generally go to die.

Over the years, I’ve generally just given the legislative side of restructuring a lick and a promise when I write about restructuring. In the Legislative State, lawmakers can already do pretty much anything they have a mind to do, whereas the executive has been kept purposefully too weak to perform its constitutional role. Back when I did the Power Failure series, I referred to the fact that the Legislature would need to be more serious about advice and consent, and to a lesser extent oversight, if the executive were empowered to do its job. But that always seemed to me a secondary consideration, one that only became important after you do the executive.

Vincent’s idea is to stress the legislative part every bit as much as the executive, if not more so. His Government Accountability Act of 2008 would formalize lawmaker’s oversight of executive agencies, making legislative hearings looking into agencies’ performance more routine. What would be the virtue in that? Well, everybody about had a cow over the recent legislative probe into the Corrections Department, and with good reason — several good reasons, in fact. The unusual investigation WAS politically motivated, legislators didn’t have the staff to do a relevant critique and the Legislature as a whole hasn’t budgeted responsibly for corrections in many years.

Vincent’s proposal would make hearings standard operating procedure, which would lower the stakes when they happen, and thereby help lower defensiveness. Committees would have staff (an expense, but cheaper than the kind of waste it might prevent) to do a professional job in reviewing agency procedures and budgets. And the committees doing the probing would be the same ones responsible for a rational, programmatic budget for the agency. Rather than having a single committee do all the budget work, the committees with oversight authority would bring their expertise to bear to draft more realistic budgets, agency by agency.

As for the executive revamp, there are three main items:

  1. Create an Inspector General’s office empowered to look into just about anything in the executive branch, with independence from the governor.
  2. Eliminate three constitutional officers — not the ones that it makes the most sense to eliminate (such a list would include Education Superintendent and Adjutant General), but the ones that Vincent thinks most doable, given the proclivities of the Legislature: Comptroller General, Secretary of State, and Commissioner of Agriculture. (Basically, what this would constitute would be a start.)
  3. Takes purely administrative functions away from the Budget and Control Board, and vests them in a new Department of Administration. The constitutionally hermaphroditic board would still, inappropriately, have power to make policy decisions.

There’s a lot I would change in this, and a lot farther I would go, but this plan has one virtue over anything Gov. Sanford or anyone else has proposed lately: political viability.

At least, I hope it does. If we can’t do this much, we’ll never have responsible, accountable government in this state.

What it was really like at the ‘Hanoi Hilton’

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Vanloanjack
        Jack Van Loan in 2006.

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
ON MAY 20, 1967, Air Force pilot Jack Van Loan was shot down over North Vietnam. His parachute carried him to Earth well enough, but he landed all wrong.
    “I hit the ground, and I slid, and I hit a tree,” he said. This provided an opportunity for his captors at the prison known as the “Hanoi Hilton.”
    “My knee was kind of screwed up and they … any time they found you with some problems, then they would, they would bear down on the problems,” he said. “I mean, they worked on my knee pretty good … and, you know, just torturing me.”
    In October of Jack’s first year in Hanoi, a new prisoner came in, a naval aviator named John McCain. He was in really bad shape. He had ejected over Hanoi, and had landed in a lake right in the middle of the city. He suffered two broken arms and a broken leg ejecting. He nearly drowned in the lake before a mob pulled him out, and then set upon him. They spat on him, kicked him and stripped his clothes off. Then they crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, and bayoneted him in his left foot and his groin.
    That gave the enemy something to “bear down on.” Lt. Cmdr. McCain would be strung up tight by his unhealed arms, hog-tied and left that way for the night.
    “John was no different than anyone else, except that he was so badly hurt,” said Jack. “He was really badly, badly hurt.”
    Jack and I got to talking about all this when he called me Wednesday morning, outraged over a story that had appeared in that morning’s paper, headlined “McCain’s war record attacked.” A flier put out by an anti-McCain group was claiming the candidate had given up military information in return for medical treatment as a POW in Vietnam.
    This was the kind of thing the McCain campaign had been watching out for. The Arizona senator came into South Carolina off a New Hampshire win back in 2000, but lost to George W. Bush after voters received anonymous phone calls telling particularly nasty lies about his private life. So the campaign has been on hair-trigger alert in these last days before the 2008 primary on Saturday.
    Jack, a retired colonel whom I’ve had the privilege of knowing for more than a decade, believes his old comrade would make the best president “because of all the stressful situations that he’s been under, and the way he’s responded.” But he had called me about something more important than that. It was a matter of honor.
    Jack was incredulous: “To say that John would ask for medical treatment in return for military information is just preposterous. He turned down an opportunity to go home early, and that was right in front of all of us.”
    “I mean, he was yelling it. I couldn’t repeat the language he used, and I wouldn’t repeat the language he used, but boy, it was really something. I turned to my cellmate … who heard it all also loud and clear; I said, ‘My God, they’re gonna kill him for that.’”
    The North Vietnamese by this time had stopped the torture — even taken McCain to the hospital, which almost certainly saved his life — and now they wanted just one thing: They wanted him to agree to go home, ahead of other prisoners. They saw in him an opportunity for a propaganda coup, because of something they’d figured out about him.
    “They found out rather quick that John’s father was (Admiral) John Sidney McCain II,” who was soon to be named commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, Jack said. “And they came in and said, ‘Your father big man, and blah-blah-blah,’ and John gave ’em name, rank and serial number and date of birth.”
    But McCain refused to accept early release, and Jack says he never acknowledged that his Dad was CINCPAC.
    Jack tries hard to help people who weren’t there understand what it was like. He gave a speech right after he finally was freed and went home. His father, a community college president in Oregon and “a consummate public speaker,” told him “That was the best talk I’ve ever heard you give.”
    But, his father added: “‘They didn’t believe you.’
    “It just stopped me cold. ‘What do you mean, they didn’t believe me?’ He said, ‘They didn’t understand what you were talking about; you’ve got to learn to relate to them.’”
    “And I’ve worked hard on that,” he told me. “But it’s hard as hell…. You might be talking to an audience of two or three hundred people; there might be one or two guys that spent a night in a drunk tank. Trying to tell ‘em what solitary confinement is all about, most people … they don’t even relate to it.”
    Jack went home in the second large group of POWs to be freed in connection with the Paris Peace Talks, on March 4, 1973. “I was in for 70 months. Seven-zero — seventy months.” Doctors told him that if he lived long enough, he’d have trouble with that knee. He eventually got orthoscopic surgery right here in Columbia, where he is an active community leader — the current president of the Columbia Rotary.
    John McCain, who to this day is unable to raise his hands above his head — an aide has to comb his hair for him before campaign appearances — was released in the third group. He could have gone home long, long before that, but he wasn’t going to let his country or his comrades down.
    The reason Jack called me Wednesday was to make sure I knew that.

Anti-school forces have one less lawmaker to pick on: Bill Cotty to give up seat

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This release just came over the transom:

S.C. REP. BILL COTTY ANNOUNCES HE WILL NOT RUN FOR RE-ELECTION
COLUMBIA — House District 79 Representative Bill Cotty announced that he
has accepted a private sector job opportunity that will result in his not
seeking re-election in 2008. 
    "Over the Holidays one of my long-time clients made me a wonderful business
offer," Cotty said. While the terms we agreed on will allow me to serve out
my current term, I’ve promised to work with them full time after the House
adjourns in June."
    "I’ve been blessed by voters to have the honor of serving in elected office
the past 20 years, eight on the Richland Two School Board, and the 14 in the
House.  It’s time now to give someone else a chance and I wanted to let
folks now immediately so anyone interested in running has time to decide
before filing deadline at the end of March."
    "This is an opportunity for me to work on innovative land use planning
projects that incorporate new technologies for recycling and resource
conservation practices, something I’m very passionate about.  My wife and I
have places to go and grand babies to hug, the fifth of which is expected in
May."
    Rep. Cotty is a Columbia Attorney and was first elected to the House in
1994.  House District 79 encompasses Kershaw and Northeastern Richland
counties.

                    -30-

I certainly wish Mr. Cotty well in the future, but he will be missed in the Legislature. The Richland Republican has been a stalwart supporter of public schools in an era in which out-of-state, anti-public-education money has been spent by the bucketload to try to get rid of real conservatives (the kind who support society’s fundamental institutions, as opposed to the libertarian radicals who want to tear them down) like him.

So that’s a few thousand bucks that SCouRGe and its fellows will save in smearing Mr. Cotty’s name in this year’s primaries.

Beyond that, it will be interesting to see if Anton Gunn takes time away from the Barack Obama campaign (which we assume will still be going strong at the time) to make another run at the seat. He was a very promising newcomer, make District 79 one of those few districts with an embarrassment of riches — a choice between two very good candidates, rather than the all-too-common opposite situation.

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.)

Sanford takes stand against moronic partisanship

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Every once in a while our governor does something that shows he cares about good government as well as his top priority, less government. This is one of those times.

From what I can gather about this Lowcountry flap, the party zampolits in Dorchester County wanted him to appoint someone as auditor other that the choice of the departing auditor, for the obscenely idiotic "reason" that the departing auditor was once nice to a Democrat. Get this:

"Governor Sanford showed a blatant disregard for the efforts of
Republican officials here in Dorchester County by appointing a Democrat
who personifies the exact opposite of Republican ideals to the
auditor’s position."

Like any rational person would give a flying flip. Here’s the real knee-slapper:

Bryngelson (the zampolit) said politics matter because Republicans are more fiscally conservative…

Har-dehar-har-HAR!

Anyway, the governor, to his great credit, preferred to appoint someone who knew how to do the job. Good for him.

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.

Finally, a fantasy for you and me

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Fantasy_2

Remind me not to wander through the newsroom; it’s full of professional bad influences.

That said, I visited that den of iniquity just a moment ago, but for the purest of motives — to return a pen I had borrowed in a moment of need from one of my colleagues in the working press (I cannot tell a lie, Honest Abe; I am not making this up). While there, however, I learned about a game that, were I to engage in it, would probably consume the rest of my life, such as it is. It looked more insidious than video poker.
Hdr_logo
It’s the Minnesota Fantasy Legislature, created by Minnesota Public Broadcasting. Finally, a fantasy league
for us geeks who don’t know what a wishbone offense is, and can’t explain the infield fly rule. Now, we can waste our time just as pointlessly as the jockheads. It’s got rules and everything.

But I must admit, the concept is hilarious. And I feel myself getting pulled into this thing (a la Michael Corleone in Godfather III — Just when I thought I was out…). At the moment, I’ve got some real work to do, despite the newsman’s code, and don’t have time to draft my team — especially when you consider how limitless the possibilities are when this is applied to the South Carolina Legislature. So I’m generously offering you the chance to get a head start planning your team. Be sure to come up with a great name for it — my personal favorite in the Minnesota league is the "Sine Die Sadists," although there’s something to be said for the "State Muffins."

To get you started here (above) is a random sample of lawmakers to consider… Well, not exactly random — I found them lined up at the John McCain event over in Lexington today. Don’t they look like they’re waiting to be picked for something?

My team, I think (and this is just off the top of my head), will be the "Fat and Uglies."

Nathan Ballentine, Mr. Accessible

2 Replies

Calling your attention to the new Web site launched by S.C. Rep. Nathan Ballentine, who has created a fairly spiffy interface between himself and constituents:

    “Always accessible” is the theme I had in mind when I chose to launch a new website September 5, 2007!
    For the past three years, I’ve constantly kept my constituents informed via monthly COMMUNITY UPDATE emails, annual surveys, important mailings (tax free holidays, elections, referendums, etc), civic organization talks, as well as Open Office Hours and Constituent Service Nights. Now, I want to take it even further into the “21st century” with regular blog entries, videos, and updates on what’s going on inside the State House as well as in our community.
    Please visit often – especially during the January through June session – to read my “live from the floor” blog posts of what’s going on with your tax dollars and what bills are being debated that will impact the lives of all South Carolinians….
    If you have a question/concern/advice or you would like me to speak with your neighborhood association, church, school, or civic group, please email me through the site or directly at [email protected].
    It’s an honor and privilege for me to represent you in Columbia!

It’s worth checking out, and — if you happen to be an elected public servant type — emulating. I call your attention in particular to the first of what he says will be monthly reports from the State House. I read this passage with particular interest as it came from someone who recently imagined himself in the Treasurer’s seat:

In the past month, we’ve seen a new Treasurer elected as well as a new Executive Director of the Budget and Control Board. Many may not know just how significant these changes are in the political landscape but it will be very interesting to see how things progress when we return in January with this new dynamic. As you know, there is a constant battle between the Governor and the House/Senate. You may have read my comment in The State last Sunday which, I think summed it up quite well, “If I’m sick of it, I know the people of South Carolina must be too.” Let’s hope we can all work together to move our state forward. Thanks for your continued prayers and support. Change does not come easy but I am one that is willing to work towards that objective for the betterment of South Carolina…

OK, so it’s not all that fascinating, but compared to graft and scandal (made you look!), good government seldom is. That’s one reason you don’t read or hear more about such in the MSM — because when you do, it bores you and you quickly forget about it.

Ozmint: “I need the Legislature’s help on this; somebody’s going to get killed” at Corrections

10 Replies

Ozmint

S.C. Corrections chief Jon Ozmint came by Tuesday to give his perspective on the recently redirected Senate investigation of his department.

He kept saying he wanted us to take the 30,000-foot view of the situation. Well, this brief post is more like the satellite view — a few sketchy notes, a video clip, and some supplementary material his office e-mailed over when we were done. Look at it and decide what you think; I haven’t had time to digest it or dig deeper, so I have no opinion to offer at this time — beyond our usual position, which is that we’ve got to stop trying to lock up everybody and his brother and not pay what it takes to have safe prisons (that’s the view from the moon, metaphorically speaking).

In a nutshell, he said there were three problems with the way the Senate committee has gone about looking at how our prisons are run:

  1. The Subject. He says there are plenty of legitimate areas for legislative oversight — escapes, assaults, turnover rates, contraband control, gangs —  of the agency. But the Senate staff tried to get into the nitty-gritty of "individual, isolated complaints" from employees and others, and he believes there are more appropriate venues for investigating and adjudicating such matters.
  2. The Method. He said the Senate staffers lacked the expertise to investigate, leading to compromising potentially legitimate investigations. "There was no plan." They took a bunch of hearsay, he says, with no next step such as going to Corrections for more info.
  3. The Motive. He was cagier about this, not wanting to get into placing political blame specifically on individual senators. But he said the investigation "had been hijacked by a small group of senators and staffers."

"And I think those were the three problems that made this the disaster that it was," he said. We went on with a rambling discussion of problems at Corrections, politics at the State House, and various other matters, on and off the record — but the points above are what he mainly came to say. I urge you to watch him saying it on the video, as it helps you appreciate the passion and volatility that Mr. Ozmint brings to his job — whatever you may make of those qualities.

Oh, let me add this. Mr. Ozmint realized I was shooting video during the meeting. But near the end of the meeting, he said he didn’t realize I would publish it on my blog — even though he reads the blog (but, he said, his computer won’t play the videos). I asked him why he thought I was shooting it, and he said he supposed it was to back up my notes. But I have an audio recorder for that. He protested that he wasn’t dressed right. I told him he looked like a hard-working sort with his polo shirt with the name of the department on it. Whatever.

So, extra-point questions here:

  1. Is it fair for me to post the video?
  2. Does the video add any value for you, the reader (and citizen of South Carolina)?

That’s all for now.

Big Dan Cooper says ‘Arrgh!’

3 Replies

This forwarded e-mail from S.C. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Daniel T. Cooper, a very important and dignified gentleman, was in my folder last night, but seeing as how I’m on vacation, and was at the moment more interested in trying to find a good, used pick-’em-up truck at thestate.com (shameless product placement there), I didn’t open it.

This morning, back at the coffee shop that is a front for a perfectly legit bakery (there was a modest line of puzzled, but well-behaved, folk at the counter a moment ago wondering why they weren’t being served, while the counterman was very busy back in the bakery dealing with deliveries), I did read it, and got a smile, and now pass it on to you:

I pass this along, as requested …

—–Original Message—–

From: Dan Cooper
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2007 3:38 PM

To: Scoppe, Cindi

Subject: Brad

Arrgh. I have never been "Danny Cooper". Even at 2 yrs old. Please tell him for me. I hate that name

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

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

8 Replies

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?

Good news, bad news: Back to the political branches

14 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
AS THE ABOVE editorial indicates, the matter of whether young children will have a chance at a good education in South Carolina is back in the hands of the political branches. That’s very good and very bad.
    It’s very good because such matters of fundamental policy are political in nature. The courts can and should do no more than give us the constitutional parameters within which to act. And what the constitution says isn’t much:
    “The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free public schools open to all children in the State and shall establish, organize and support such other public institutions of learning, as may be desirable.”
    Courts have elaborated on that slightly. In 1999, the state Supreme Court added “minimally adequate” in front of “system” (not literally, as in amending the constitution, but in terms of our legal understanding). Many education advocates today, just a very few years later, see that “minimally” as a damning sentence of inadequacy. The great irony in that is that the chief justice who presided over that addition saw it as a great step forward for the progressive approach to education, insisting that South Carolina not define “adequate” below a certain, minimal level. That’s not the proper purview of judges, but in any case he did not have the effect he’d hoped for.
    Words can be slippery.
    I am reminded of the late Douglas Adams’ hilarious series of satirical science fiction novels. One of his main characters was a researcher for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” The universe being a big place, the Guide had devoted only one word to describing Earth: “Harmless.” After 15 years of intensive research here on our planet, the field man manages to get his editors to expand the entry so that it reads, in its entirety: “Mostly harmless.”
    As it happens, 15 years is only one year longer than the life span of the lawsuit over where we will set the floor for educational opportunity in the poor, rural parts of our state. Abbeville County School District (et al.) v. the State of South Carolina was filed on Nov. 2, 1993. Almost 14 years later, it has added “minimally adequate” to our understanding of our constitutional obligation regarding education — and not even the people who agree on what they want our school system to be can agree on whether “minimally” is a good addition or a bad one.
    On to the political branches. That’s where the “very bad news” part comes in.
Education is the biggest thing government does at the state level, which is why people who vaguely, but insistently, desire to “reduce the size of government” are always talking about vouchers and tax credits aimed at preventing the state from spending so much on public schools.
    It also happens to be the one thing that government does that can most affect whether our state prospers. South Carolina hasn’t done it very well, relatively speaking, and so we have not prospered as well as other states. It’s not that we don’t know how to educate. It’s that we’ve never resolved to extend the sort of education available in our prosperous suburbs to the rural parts of our state that have been economically irrelevant since the end of slavery. The test scores from those areas pull down the state’s averages, scaring off economic development, which keeps those areas poor, which continues to scare off economic development, etc.
    It’s possible to break the cycle, but it would take a tremendous mustering and focusing of political will to overcome certain rather powerful political barriers.
    The Legislature won’t provide the answer, because it is the nexus of 170 political agendas. Many of the most adept of the 170 are from districts that see themselves as losing what they’ve got in any effort to focus resources on the poorest districts.
    The one political figure in the state in a position to chart a course that steers around all those shoals of local interest — to articulate a bold vision of statewide interest over the heads of lawmakers and fire up the electorate — is the governor. And our current governor hasn’t the slightest interest in doing that. He’s one of the folks who wants us to spend less on public education.
    (But “Spending alone won’t do it!”, you cry. You’re right. It will require implementing a comprehensive vision of reform, from classrooms to the state Department of Education. But if you’re not willing to spend, you can forget the rest. As long as the affluent parts of our state see themselves losing in a zero-sum game, you can’t turn around the poor parts with current overall spending levels.)
    The alternative would be an uprising of the people, a grass-roots movement that would make it impossible for even the most parochial of lawmakers to ignore the broader view.
    There is such a movement. A group called “Education First” plans to dramatize the need to get serious about improving public schools by putting up interstate billboards that will welcome visitors to South Carolina, the “home of ‘minimally adequate’ education.” This will humiliate us all, and effectively dramatize the moral indignation of the sincere, well-meaning liberal Democrats who lead “Education First.”
    Meanwhile, the State House is run by Republicans. Fortunately, many of those Republicans are more interested in public schools than the governor is, at least within the contexts of their own districts. Unfortunately, for them to become emboldened to risk themselves for a broader cause, they need to hear a message that sounds like it came from the people who elected them, and might elect them again.
So much for the political branches.
    This state of affairs is not “mostly harmless” to South Carolina. Tragically, it is not even minimally so.

Yeah, you’d BETTER quit…

17 Replies

Mooretommy

In case you wonder why we can’t get anything through the Legislature to ban payday lending, here’s the rest of the story about Tommy Moore:

Moore leaving Senate for payday lending job

Former
S.C. Sen. Tommy Moore, the Democratic candidate for governor in 2006,
is going to work for national payday lending trade association.

Moore, of Aiken, resigned his Senate seat on Saturday. He will
become executive vice president of the Community Financial Services
Association of America and will move to the Washington, D.C., area, the
association said Monday.

“At this point in my career, I saw an exciting opportunity to take
on a new challenge that builds on my long history of supporting and
protecting consumers,” Moore said in a release from the association.
“CFSA shares those goals and I’ve been impressed with the great strides
they have taken to educate consumers about responsible use of the
service.”

Another one I’m thrilled to have endorsed last fall. Of course, the alternative was to endorse the incumbent. As "Mr. Bad Choices" implied in a recent comment, it would be nice to have some better ones for a change.