Category Archives: Legislature

The virtues of Virtual Schools

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South Carolina now has it’s very own version of the stem-cell debate — unfortunately.

The stem-cell fight, as we all know, isn’t about stem cells; it’s about abortion. Similarly, the virtual school fight has morphed into a surrogate for the "school choice" debate.

Consequently, the virtues, or lack thereof, of virtual pedagogy have been pushed to the back burner. But that’s what I’d like to talk about.

I have my suspicions about the efficacy of the whole idea. I think offering long-distance classes to kids who might not otherwise have access to such pedagogy sounds very good — after all, the greatest challenge in public education in this state is what to do about the kids who live in poor, rural, thinly populated districts that have trouble offering the quality found in the affluent suburbs.

At the same time, after about 25 years of witnessing the limits of electronic communication, I have my doubts. That’s about how long I’ve been dealing with e-mail in one way or another. I’ve also had some experience with teleconferencing, which is a tool of dubious value.

Yet I’m torn about it.

I know virtual schooling can’t be as good as being face-to-face with a teacher. At the same time, it sounds better than no access at all, which is the option many kids are stuck with. Question is, should finite resources be devoted to this approach, or would they be better spent on other priorities? I’m not sure.

We had a long discussion about it in yesterday’s editorial board meeting, and it was inconclusive. We’ll have to return to it to decide what to say. Of course, we discussed other aspects as well. We’re all over the place on the culture-war aspect (to what extent kids not in the public system should have access), but I’d like to address here the underlying question of whether this is a good approach to begin with.

We’ve all experienced the misunderstandings that can occur in what was once called Cyberspace; this blog serves often as a monument to that effect. Of course, some of the misunderstanding is willfully obtuse, but plenty of it is honest miscommunication between people who would be much more likely to have a meeting of the minds if they actually met.

You sit two people who’ve been speaking at cross-purposes down together — as when Randy Page and I had lunch recently — and you’re somewhat more likely to communicate effectively. Similarly, if the problem is that a given subject, or a given child, is hard to teach, do you do any good giving him or her a "virtual" teacher?

Of course, if you want to address the choice aspect, go ahead — but know that I’m not staking out a position on that myself, not yet. If you can get private school and home-school kids in without pushing some public school kids out, I’m for it. It depends on how limited the device is in terms of accessibility. I need to know more about the program, and one of my colleagues is looking into that.

I’m hopeful that we can have a debate here that we can all learn from each other. On this recent post, Randy and LexWolf gave indications of a willingness to carry on real dialogue about this and possibly other education issues. That sounds great to me. Let’s see how we do.

Good news for a change

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Want some good news for a change? Here’s some:

The S.C. House today rejected a bill that would have authorized a "freshman caucus" for the purpose of being wined and dined by lobbyists. That’s exactly what they should have done. Gee, I wonder where they got the idea?

Seriously, that’s the second time this session that the House has rejected a bill that would have undermined state ethics law, taking the action on the very day we urged them to do so. (The first one isn’t technically dead; it was sent back to committee; but so far there have been no efforts to resurrect it. So keep your fingers crossed.)

OK, you don’t have to thank us. In fact, you shouldn’t. It’s easy for us to say, "Do the right thing."

Thank the ones who actually DID the right thing. You can find their names here.

Oh, all right; I’ll help.

Here are the good guys, who voted to can the bill:
Agnew                  Anthony                Bales
Ballentine             Battle                 Bingham
Bowers                 Brady                  Branham
Breeland               R. Brown               Chalk
Chellis                Cobb-Hunter            Coleman
Cotty                  Edge                   Frye
Funderburk             Govan                 Hagood
Haley                  Hardwick               Harrison
Harvin                 Herbkersman            Hiott
Hodges                 Hosey                  Howard
Huggins                Jefferson              Kirsh
Loftis                 Lucas                  Mack
Mahaffey               Miller                 Mitchell
Moss                   J. H. Neal             Neilson
Ott                    Owens                  Parks
Perry                  Pinson                 E. H. Pitts
Rice                   Sandifer               Scott
Sellers                G. M. Smith            G. R. Smith
Stavrinakis            Talley                 Thompson
Toole                  Weeks                  Whipper
Witherspoon

That would leave, playing the goal of NOT-so-good guys, the following:
Alexander              Bannister              Barfield
Bedingfield            Bowen                  Brantley
G. Brown               Cato                   Ceips
Clyburn                Crawford               Dantzler
Delleney               Duncan                 Gambrell
Gullick                Hamilton               Harrell
Haskins                Hinson                 Kelly
Leach                  Limehouse              Lowe
Merrill                Mulvaney               M. A. Pitts
Rutherford             Scarborough            Shoopman
Skelton                D. C. Smith            J. R. Smith
W. D. Smith            Spires                 Stewart
Taylor                 Umphlett               Walker
White                  Williams               Young

OK, I gave the links on every one of the good guys. I’ve got to run, so I don’t have time to do the others right now. If you want me to, speak up, and I’ll come back and do it later tonight. (This will be helpful, because I never know how helpful that stuff is to you, or whether you care enough for the time it takes me.)

Gotta do another quick post, then run.

Reform gets fragged

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Reform gets fragged
in the S.C. Senate

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
“Here we are clinging to this antiquated system just like we clung to segregation, just like we clung to Jim Crow. I don’t mean to equate them, but in South Carolina it takes a long time to get over bad ideas.”
                                — Sen. Greg Gregory

ONCE AGAIN, the Senate has rejected the idea of letting voters decide whether they want to have a governor they can hold accountable for what state agencies do, or nine separate little governors pulling the state apart.
    Not all of the Senate, mind you. Just enough of them to ensure failure, to keep government fragmented so that it can’t ever get its act together.
    Whom can we hold accountable? Well, I can’t tell you. It was done in such a classic, befuddled manner that it is virtually impossible to fix blame. That, of course, is the hallmark of the Legislative State.
    We must applaud in spite of ourselves. It was a thing of great subtlety, even beauty, if you’re theSenate_003_1
sort who is turned on by stagnation: “The Senate, Now More Than Ever,” as the old bumper sticker said the last time senators deflected and diluted reform.
    It’s poetic. The problem with having the adjutant general, superintendent of education, agriculture commissioner, etc., all elected separately from the governor is that there is no coordination between their agencies and the rest of the state government. So when roads are falling apart, rural schools aren’t educating kids, prisons are about to burst, we have more state colleges than neighboring states but none as good as they do, and so forth, we can’t hold anybody responsible. (Is it any wonder so few South Carolinians bother to vote?)
    Some senators like fragmentation, so they “fragged” the plan to do away with it. And no one can tell who threw the grenade.
    A majority of senators voted to put the elected schools chief, the ag commissioner, the adjutant general and secretary of state on the chopping block — but they needed a two-thirds majority. Having the governor and lieutenant governor run on the same ticket didn’t even get 50 percent. The only office a sufficient number of senators were willing to risk a public vote on was comptroller general, and that’s just because he “asked for it.” Afterwards, even some of the reform-minded were saying, ah, what’s the use of changing just one of them. So we might not even get that. A true muddle.
    Just for fun, just so we can fully appreciate this ancient art, let’s try to fix blame (this will at least amuse the senators):

  • Start with the easy part: the 10 who didn’t support reform on any of the votes — Robert Ford, Darrell Jackson, John Land, Phil Leventis, Gerald Malloy, John Matthews, Yancey McGill, Kay Patterson, Clementa Pinckney and Glenn Reese. But others had to join with them, in shifting coalitions, to deny the supermajority in the half-dozen votes.
  • Was it Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, who had promised the governor a quick vote on the matter — and delivered just that, a vote without debate, held before the votes were lined up? He would be a prime suspect, given his history as a defender of legislative prerogative. Do we really believe that he of all people would have so mishandled the matter accidentally? But we can’t prove that, and must therefore give him credit for being sincere. People do change, you know.
  • Was it Senate Democrats, who have become convinced that the only statewide office a member of their party can aspire to is superintendent of education, and they don’t want to give that up? Or were the Dems just trying to stick it to a Republican governor? Well, all 10 above were Democrats, but the Senate just isn’t partisan enough to make it that simple. There were Republican “nays” on some votes. Besides, Vincent Sheheen voted for all the changes, and surely, he is a Democrat.
  • Maybe it was just the small-“d” democrats who believe that the people shouldn’t have the right to vote on every minor official taken away from them? Certain senators did wrap themselves in that. But it’s just not credible that they really believe it. Try this: Ask the next 10 voters you meet to name the nine statewide officers, and then ask yourself: If they don’t know who they are, how are they supposed to hold them accountable? The long ballot dilutes the will of the voters, and that’s the only thing it does efficiently. Besides, if you care so much about the people’s will, why won’t you at least let them vote on whether they want to change?
  • The Senate is more about personal relationships than about party. So-o-o … was it yet another case of friends of one constitutional officer making deals with the friends of other constitutional officers, plus senators who might themselves want to be constitutional officers someday, in order to get just barely a large-enough minority to kill the thing? That’s always worked in the past. But where do you grab ahold of that kind of multidirectional backscratching so you can stop it?

    Well, you don’t. You can’t. Truth is, you can’t blame any of the above causes, because it was most likely several of them, working together. You can’t blame any one phenomenon, party, faction or ego. If you try to fight it, you’ll be overwhelmed by Lilliputians before you decide which way to swing your sword.
    Now mind you, I’m not saying there should be any one person running the Senate (sorry, Sen. McConnell). A legislative body should represent and balance diverse views on the way to making laws.
    But an executive branch should not be that way. Once everybody’s had their say, and the law is a fact, somebody needs to be charged with carrying it out. At the point of execution, diverse interests are a distraction, an obstacle, a waste of money. We have all that and more in South Carolina.
And there’s nobody to blame — except maybe you, if you continue to sit still for this.

For how they all voted, click on this.

Outrage

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Sorry. I buried the lead on that one. A colleague had earlier brought the Andre nonsense to my attention, and I had made a mental note to post something on it.

When the Senate actually REJECTED this critical legislation — in a classic, befuddled manner that renders it virtually impossible to fix blame, which is of course the hallmark of the Legislative State — I failed to pause to pass on the enormity of it to you. I figured we’d save the important stuff for the paper.

Scratch that plan.

The Senate’s action today is nothing short of a big, fat middle finger flipped at the people of South Carolina, as senators once again say "Hell, no!" to a commonsense effort to construct a rational form of government.

They insist upon sticking to the Ben Tillman formula. Well, this newspaper was founded in 1891 to fight Ben Tillman, and we’re not done, not by a long sight. You will hear more, much more, from us on this.

Meanwhile, to save you the trouble of following links, here is the AP’s story:

m1088 scsc-nbx
AP-SC XGR SANFORD AGENDA, 1ST LD-WRITETHRU
Sanford’s constitutional officer agenda dies in Senate
Eds: AMs. UPDATES throughout.
By JIM DAVENPORT
Associated Press Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – State senators scuttled Gov. Mark Sanford’s plan to have voters decide whether several statewide offices should be appointed by the governor.
    Sanford lost mostly party-line votes Wednesday, with senators only giving the necessary two-thirds approval to eliminating elections for comptroller general.
    The Republican-controlled Senate gave majority approval to whether the state’s education superintendent, agriculture commissioner, National Guard chief or secretary of state are elected or appointed, but all fell short of the two-thirds needed. And a bill requiring governors and lieutenant governors to run on a joint ticket couldn’t muster a majority.
    The bills that didn’t pass were sent back to the Senate Judiciary Committee to die. "I’m not putting them back on the agenda," committee chairman Glenn McConnell said.
    It was a disappointment for the Republican governor, whose re-election campaign was filled with calls to modernize and streamline state government and give governors more control of day-to-day state operations.
    Sanford said senators show a lack of faith in letting the people of South Carolina decide if their government was inefficient.
    Power "is hard to give up and there is a minority in the Senate who are working to protect an antiquated, inefficient and unaccountable government structure," the governor said in a prepared statement.
    Wednesday’s votes means South Carolina’s "governor will continue to be one of the weakest in the nation," said Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms.
    Sen. Chauncey "Greg" Gregory noted that probably 90 percent of the voters couldn’t even name the state’s agriculture commissioner and many of the rest wouldn’t know his name unless they’d seen it on a gas pump’s certification sticker or a campaign sign.
    The Senate is clinging to the idea of having all those elected offices "just like we clung to segregation, just like we clung to Jim Crow" and the Confederate flag flying at the Statehouse, said Gregory, R-Lancaster.
    South Carolina "takes a long time to get over bad ideas," Gregory said.
And even the bill getting rid of elections for comptroller general may not survive. It now just needs a majority vote to get to the House, but if an amendment is attached to the bill, it would trigger another two-thirds vote, said McConnell, R-Charleston.
    If a second two-thirds vote is taken, some senators may change their minds. "Are we really accomplishing anything with one office?" asked Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Camden, who voted for all the bills except the one involving the lieutenant governor.
    Sanford isn’t giving up. He said he plans to take his case to voters and talk to them "about the unwillingness of many in office to make those changes."
    The governor will also push the House to pass similar bills, even though McConnell said the Senate won’t reconsider them.
    Sanford also will continue to push his plan to restructure some state agencies, spokesman Joel Sawyer said.
    The decision to pass the bill allowing the governor to appoint a comptroller general was easy because Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom told voters the office should be appointed as he campaigned for re-election and asked legislators Tuesday to make his office an example for government restructuring, said Sen. Jake Knotts, R-West Columbia.
    "Be careful what you ask for, you might get it," Knotts said.

Andre’s still got it, whatever it is

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The S.C. Senate proved yet again it can still make mincemeat of the most common-sense reforms as it basically rejected a fundamental element of government modernization — putting the elected chief executive in charge of the executive branch.

Here’s the AP story
on today’s foolishness, in case you possess the requisite energy to click on it.

I’ll go ahead and quote my favorite part (be sure to brace yourself so you don’t get whiplash between the second and third paragraphs):

    Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer showed up at Sanford’s news conference at the Statehouse, but wouldn’t publicly say whether he supported the changes. Bauer didn’t want his personal feelings to influence the debate he will preside over.
    "I think that could drastically influence" the vote, Bauer said.
    Bauer, who controls the debate in the Senate by recognizing speakers, said he wouldn’t hand the gavel to someone else during the discussions about his office.

Yes, that’s right. He won’t express his opinion, because it allegedly would have such weight in influencing the debate. But he won’t step aside from actually presiding over the debate.

Sure, he had that crash last year and all, but ol’ Andre hasn’t lost a bit of the hop on his patented screwball, which thus far has never failed to strike out any rational, ethical batter who dares to stand at the plate against him.

But the fans love it.

Closing the process

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So that you’ll know where to direct your ire — or your appreciation, in some cases — here’s how S.C. House members voted on whether to close Republican (and other) Caucus meetings to the public:

{BC-SC-Closed Meetings-Roll Call,0384}
{By The Associated Press}=
  The 59-52 roll call by which the South Carolina House adopted a Republican-backed plan to allow caucuses to meet behind closed doors.
   On this vote, a "yes" vote was a vote to adopt the change.
   Voting "yes" were 2 Democrats and 57 Republicans.
   Voting "no" were 42 Democrats and 10 Republicans.
   Not voting were 6 Democrats and 7 Republicans.

{Democrats Voting Yes}
   Bales, Eastover; Neilson, Darlington;

{Republicans Voting Yes}
   Ballentine, Irmo; Bannister, Greenville; Barfield, Conway; Bedingfield, Mauldin; Bingham, West Columbia; Bowen, Anderson; Brady, Columbia; Cato, Travelers Rest; Ceips, Beaufort; Chalk, Hilton Head Island; Chellis, Summerville; Clemmons, Myrtle Beach; Cooper, Piedmont; Dantzler, Goose Creek; Delleney, Chester; Gambrell, Honea Path; Gullick, Lake Wylie; Haley, Lexington; Hardwick, Surfside Beach; Harrell, Charleston; Harrison, Columbia; Haskins, Greenville; Herbkersman, Bluffton; Hinson, Goose Creek; Hiott, Pickens; Kelly, Woodruff; Leach, Greer; Limehouse, Charleston; Littlejohn, Spartanburg; Loftis, Greenville; Lowe, Florence; Lucas, Hartsville; Mahaffey, Lyman; Merrill, Daniel Island; Mulvaney, Indian Land; Owens, Pickens; Pinson, Greenwood; M.A. Pitts, Laurens; Rice, Easley; Sandifer, Seneca; Scarborough, Charleston; Shoopman, Greer; D.C. Smith, North Augusta; G.M. Smith, Sumter; G.R. Smith, Simpsonville; J.R. Smith, Langley; W.D. Smith, Spartanburg; Spires, Pelion; Taylor, Laurens; Thompson, Anderson; Umphlett, Moncks Corner; Viers, Myrtle Beach; Walker, Landrum; White, Anderson; Whitmire, Walhalla; Witherspoon, Conway; Young, Summerville;

{Democrats Voting No}
   Alexander, Florence; Anderson, Georgetown; Battle, Nichols; Bowers, Brunson; Branham, Lake City; Brantley, Ridgeland; Breeland, Charleston; G. Brown, Bishopville; R. Brown, Hollywood; Clyburn, Aiken; Cobb-Hunter, Orangeburg; Funderburk, Camden; Govan, Orangeburg; Hart, Columbia; Harvin, Summerton; Hayes, Hamer; Hodges, Green Pond; Hosey, Barnwell; Howard, Columbia; Jefferson, Pineville; Jennings, Bennettsville; Kennedy, Greeleyville; Kirsh, Clover; Knight, St. George; Mack, North Charleston; McLeod, Little Mountain; Miller, Pawleys Island; Mitchell, Spartanburg; Moss, Gaffney; J.H. Neal, Hopkins; J.M. Neal, Kershaw; Ott, St. Matthews; Parks, Greenwood; Rutherford, Columbia; Scott, Columbia; Sellers, Denmark; F.N. Smith, Greenville; Stavrinakis, Charleston; Vick, Chesterfield; Weeks, Sumter; Whipper, North Charleston; Williams, Darlington;

{Republicans Voting No}
   Agnew, Abbeville; Edge, North Myrtle Beach; Frye, Batesburg-Leesville; Hamilton, Taylors; Huggins, Columbia; Perry, Aiken; E.H. Pitts, Lexington; Simrill, Rock Hill; Talley, Spartanburg; Toole, West Columbia;

{Those Not Voting}
  Democrats: Allen, Greenville; Anthony, Union; Coleman, Winnsboro; Moody-Lawrence, Rock Hill; Phillips, Gaffney; J.E. Smith, Columbia;
   Republicans: Cotty, Columbia; Crawford, Florence; Davenport, Boiling Springs; Duncan, Clinton; Hagood, Mt. Pleasant; Skelton, Six Mile; Stewart, Aiken;

Patterson on “Homeboy” Clyburn

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In Washington and all over South Carolina, everybody is falling all over themselves so talk about what a big shot Jim Clyburn is, now that he’s the U.S. House majority whip.

But not Kay Patterson, who has a few home truths to share about his "Homeboy" Jim. He provides an excellent example of the quotation he cites from a prophet having no honor among his own. Of course, it’s all in fun…

This was at the Urban League‘s annual MLK Day breakfast, which is sponsored by the former BellSouth, and hosted this year at Brookland Baptist‘s new banquet and convention facility in West Columbia. It’s a very nice facility, although the lighting is sort of low for videographic purposes…

Low expectations column

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Living with low expectations
in the Palmetto State

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
SHORTLY AFTER midnight, at the weary outset of Friday morning, a heavy-set woman stood outside the elaborate revolving doors of the Palmetto Health Richland emergency department, smoking a cigarette.
    She tilted her head at the sound of a distant siren, the volume and Doppler effect indicating its rapid approach.
    “Here they come again,” she said with resignation. “They bring in another one, we go to the back of the line.”
    I was standing nearby, preferring the mists of the night to the unwholesome miasma of the packed waiting room. A few moments earlier, I had used the last few drops of energy in my PDA to post this brief comment on my blog (hey, as a distraction it beats ragged old copies of People):
    I’m standing outside a hospital ER at 11:52 p.m., waiting for MY turn to go in and see my daughter, hoping they’ve started the IV that I’m pretty sure she needs (you know how it is in a state that refuses to adequately fund mental health or other essential services — if you have an emergency, you’ll be treated in a hallway if you’re lucky enough to get treated at all)….
    In the hallway, she could only have one visitor at a time. She eventually got into a room, receiving about four liters of fluid, and got stronger. I’ve got no complaints at this point about her treatment — certainly not against Palmetto Richland. The crowding at Lexington Medical had been worse. It was the worst I’d ever seen it, and with five mostly grown kids, I’ve seen it a few times. So we were at Richland.
    It’s not the fault of either hospital. It’s just a fact of life in South Carolina. Like the woman with the cigarette, we’ve come to accept it. Go to an emergency room on a typical evening, and if you’re not bleeding out your eyeballs, you’ll generally have a long wait. My experience tells me that if, for instance, you need some stitches and a tetanus shot but don’t have anything life-threatening, you should not be surprised to wait as long as four hours. It’s not always that long, but you’re no longer surprised if it is.
    (My daughter was “lucky” in that she obviously needed quick treatment for dehydration caused by a two-day stomach bug.)
    I don’t know, specifically, what caused the backlogs of Friday’s wee hours. I suppose if I had about a month and could get around the HIPAA privacy rules and track down every patient and interview them, I could give you a reliable answer.
    But I do know that there is a constant, underlying condition in this state that causes ER waiting rooms to overflow whenever other human variables — a rash of wrecks on a slippery night, a stomach virus going around — collide with it: Hospital beds are occupied by the mentally ill, who are often found on the streets, off their meds, and police have no other place to put them, their jail cells being full of actual criminals.
    The variables may be hard to pin down in a specific instance, but that one constant is not.
    “It’ll happen the same way tomorrow night and the night after that,” says Thornton Kirby, president and CEO of the S.C. Hospital Association. But there are two constants, not one, he reminded me. The second is the fact that so many uninsured people go to the emergency room for their basic medical care, not just when they’re in crisis. As the sign behind the desk at the Richland ER proclaims, in both English and Spanish, the hospital is forbidden by law to turn you away if you need medical care. Regardless of your ability to pay, the medicos have to do what they can for you.
    That second constant is a national problem, although the responsibility for it is shared by the states, via Medicaid funding and administration. The first one seems to be particularly acute in South Carolina. It’s related to the underfunding of the state Department of Mental Health over the last few years. People with brain problems who formerly would have received greater attention and care from the state now wander our cities, seriously strung out, a danger to themselves and others.
    So eventually they end up in an ER — quite likely at a comprehensive indigent care facility such as Richland — where they wait for someone to figure out something else to do with them. That can take a while.
    So the rest of us, when we have a situation that won’t wait until regular doctors open shop in the morning, find ourselves waiting much of the night, and accepting it, because that’s the way things are in South Carolina.
    We accept it the way we accept people whizzing past us at 90 miles an hour on the interstate (or faster, in the case of the lieutenant governor), secure in the knowledge that they will not be ticketed. There simply aren’t nearly enough troopers on the road to enforce the speed limits, and everybody who didn’t just fall out of the stupid tree knows it. This is because the folks who make up our state budget haven’t stepped up to pay for such enforcement.
    But hey, rest assured that when a loud minority of homeowners whose McMansions are appreciating too rapidly squeal about it, our state lawmakers take quick action to slash their taxes radically — by raising the sales tax on all of us, but refusing as usual to reform the overall tax system comprehensively, to make it fair and effective for a change.
    They can’t assess the state’s actual needs, set priorities and address them, but they can surely lubricate a squeaky wheel in one quick hurry — just in time for elections, in fact.
With our elected followers set to come back and do their thing for another half-year starting Tuesday, I stand out in the misty night, thinking about stuff like that.

When last we saw them…

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With the Legislature coming back Tuesday, you may want to take a look at our lawmakers as we last saw them.

Basically, they were furious. Gov. Mark Sanford had just vetoed the entire state budget. This was his way of complaining that the Legislature had not stuck to the entirely arbitrary numerical cap that he proposes to place, permanently, on state spending. Rather than make line-item vetoes to get down to the number he likes — that would have made him very unpopular in an election year — he vetoed the whole thing, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Legislature would override him.

Here’s footage from the House debate on the subject on June 14, 2006. The man doing most of the talking is Rep. Doug Jennings, the Democrat from my home town of Bennettsville (his daddy used to be my doctor). No one of either party was arguing with his characterization of the governor’s action. In fact, the members of both parties laughed when he challenged Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper to say whether he thought the governor was showing "leadership" by vetoing the budget.

The longer clip that follows is from the Senate. It starts with my own senator Sen. Nikki Setzler, D-Lexington, essentially saying the same sorts of things Rep. Jennings had said in the other chamber. Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence (at the podium), is not at all shy about showing his agreement with the Democrat’s complaint. Then Lexington Republican Jake Knotts gets in a few licks on the governor as well. Finally, we see Sen. Greg Ryberg rise and take the podium to defend the governor. He’s wrong, but he is showing the courage of his convictions, which is one reason we endorsed him in his failed bid for S.C. Treasurer. By the way, at the VERY end we see Sen. Bill Mescher playing freecell during the debate. 

The governor’s veto was a moment of revelation. We knew that the governor was into empty ideological gestures that had nothing to do with governing South Carolina, but he at least had been a conscientious, detail-oriented grind when it came to the budget. This trashed his reputation for that particular virtue.

This is relevant now because the governor has already indicated that he wants to play the same game again this year — putting together a DOA budget that meets his capricious limit, so that he can say, "See, it can be done." Never mind the fact that it can only be done by cutting the good (the state’s endowed chair fund, higher ed in general) along with the bad (pork projects).

He’s already ticked off legislative leaders with this behavior, despite his re-election promises to try to work with them to actually get things done rather than devoting his energy to gestures that please his out-of-state libertarian admirers.

Solution to gerrymandering?

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Andrew Sullivan just posted something pretty cool. It’s about a computer program that draws far more logical (looking) districts than the madness that political gerrymandering creates. Just imagine — representatives elected by actual, whole communities instead of tortuously carved out to separate people by race and political proclivities, all in the name of partisanship.

Go to his post at least long enough to look at the two images: One of North Carolina carved up by politicians; the other broken into more-or-less reasonable-looking segments by a machine with no axes to grind.

Neither is perfect, but Mr. Sullivan says he knows which one he prefers. So do I.

Mark Sanford vs. Tommy Moore

48 Replies

Why must we choose
between vision and effectiveness?
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
THIS IS THE election year for complementary pairs. For treasurer we have the Brash Rich Kid vs. Everybody’s Granddaddy. For lieutenant governor, Mr. Mature is challenging Wild Thing.
    But the most marked dichotomy is at the top of the ticket.  On one side, we have incumbent Gov. Mark Sanford, a policy wonk who has all sorts of ideas, but who can’t get anything done. The fact that he can’t get anything done is both a bad thing and a good thing, because some of his ideas (restructuring state government) are excellent, while others (paying people to abandon public schools) are very, very bad.
    Opposing him is veteran state Sen. Tommy Moore, a “git ’er done” kind of guy. He prides himself on bringing together lawmakers from across the spectrum who may be miles apart on a given issue, and getting them to sit down and work something out. He can flat get a bill passed, sometimes in the face of considerable odds.
    While he can do what the governor can’t, Sen. Moore is lacking in the very department where the governor is blessed with an overabundance. When I suggested as much to him last week, noting that he seemed to lack as strict and specific an agenda as the governor’s, he said rather grumpily that “I’m glad you didn’t say I didn’t have ideas.”
    Well, I didn’t. But by the time the interview was over, he had provided little in the way of specific proposals. If I put all the ideas he set forth in that meeting in my pants pocket, I could turn it inside-out without making much of a mess on the floor.
    This is not good. I’ve lived all over the country, and I’ve never seen a state that needed principled, effective leadership as much as my dear native South Carolina.
    Some would say I’m asking too much. But people who would fit that bill do exist in our state. Charleston Mayor Joe Riley for one. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham for another. They have vision, they see how things are connected, they see what needs to be done, and they have the skills to work with political friend and foe alike to bring about results that represent significant progress.
    But they aren’t running for governor. Instead, we get an ideologue who is so into libertarian think-tank theories that he has no idea how to persuade real people — even in his own party — to work with him. That’s been our governor for four years. And our alternative is a very grounded, realistic veteran deal-maker who can work with whatever you bring to the table, but who doesn’t throw much on it himself.
    This is not to say Tommy Moore lacks principles. In fact, I’d say his principles — grounded as they are in real-life experiences — are probably closer to those of the average South Carolinian than the hothouse hypotheses of the incumbent. He’s certainly a lot closer to me when it comes to understanding the role that government must play in improving life for all South Carolinians.
    “I agree with those folks who are saying, ‘More money isn’t the answer’: More money isn’t necessarily the answer,” Sen. Moore said. “But I can guarantee you that less money over the last three and a half years hasn’t gotten us anywhere.”
    He said he would want his legacy to be that he made government more efficient in performing its legitimate functions.
    “The government can be a partner to people,” he said. “Government isn’t evil. You don’t need to starve government to where it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub.” That’s a reference to the governor’s ideological ally Grover Norquist, who has said that’s his ultimate goal as leader of a national anti-tax group.
    “The easiest thing is to come to Columbia and be against something,” said the senator. “The hard thing is to be for something.”
    Trouble is, it’s hard to find much that Sen. Moore is for, specifically, when it comes to education. He’s definitely against being against the public schools. But that doesn’t quite add up to being for a substantive agenda for moving the schools forward.
    He wants to improve prenatal health care and early childhood education. He wants comprehensive tax reform. He would pursue economic development for rural areas. But when you dig for specifics, they are scarce. He keeps saying he wants to hear other people’s ideas. He’s confident he can then sell the good ones to the Legislature.
    The general impression is that he would be a reactive governor who would deal with things as they were brought to him, but would not initiate particular proposals.
    By contrast, the current governor is all about throwing out his ideas to see what will happen — which, generally, is nothing, except for a lot of hard feelings.
    He claims that his pushing of extreme ideas such as the “Put Parents in Charge” bill has led to accelerating public school choice and the development of charter schools. So should we interpret his advocacy of paying people to abandon public schools as a mere strategy to achieve some more moderate goal?
    No, he admits, “because I actually take those extreme positions.” He laughed, and said “I would love to get there if I could.”
    Ultimately, he said South Carolina needs someone who believes in fundamental change, not someone who knows how to work the system.
    “We come from different vantage points,” the governor said of himself and Sen. Moore. “I come from outside the system; he comes from within.”
    “He’s basically said the system ain’t broke…. We say the system is broke.” So if he gets four more years, will we be able to look back and say the system is fixed to any degree? “Nah,” he said. “The political system is such that we all know that you never get the whole bite of any apple.” Nevertheless, he hopes he’d have “a material impact” on government restructuring.
    The governor misses the point. It’s not an either/or. South Carolina needs a governor who is not only committed to positive change, but who also has the ability to work with others to make that change come about.
    Once again, when we go to the polls Nov. 7, we won’t be offered a candidate who fits that description. We need and deserve better.

Tommy Moore video

42 Replies

OK, this time I really have posted a video that works. And if you go back, you’ll see I’ve fixed the previously-posted Sanford video.

Anyway, this one features Sen. Tommy Moore, D-Aiken, explaining himself to our new publisher, Henry Haitz, who had never met him before. That’s me at the end stumbling through a question…

Grover never lets you go

85 Replies

You have no doubt heard of the infamous "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" that Grover Norquist uses to browbeat Republican legislators (and a Democrat here and there) across the land into doing his will instead of the voters’.

Example of the effect it has in the real world is that it paralyzes the S.C. Legislature on the issue of tax reform. They can’t do real, comprehensive tax reform — which would mean taking our whole system and making it more fair and logical — because you can’t do that without somewhere, along with all your tax cuts, raising some other tax to balance things out (even if you’re going for a net reduction in the tax burden, not every tax would go down, if you’re approaching it responsibly).

To be more specific: It’s why we haven’t had an increase in our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax, even though it would reduce teen smoking, and be multiplied by a federal match that would ease the burden of paying for Medicaid, and even though 70 percent of South Carolinians want the tax raised.

All that matters to signers is that Grover doesn’t want the tax raised, so it doesn’t happen. So much for our system of representative democracy.

Anyway, the news is that ATR yesterday released its official list of South Carolina signers.

You will no doubt read the list with some interest, searching for names of folks facing election next month — either because you think this pledge is a good idea, or because you believe, as I do, that promising never to raise a tax in the future is as insanely irresponsible as promising to raise every tax you see. (And before you anti-tax folks say that’s what legislators always do, remember that our General Assembly has not instituted a general tax increase since it bumped up the gasoline tax a couple of pennies in 1987.)

And indeed, you will find such names as that of Rep. Jim Harrison, the House Judiciary chair who is facing energetic opposition in the 75th District. Oh, and there’s Denise Jones, who had second thoughts about signing in our interview, and said she thought her reply to Grover probably got lost in the mail or something anyway. Well, Ms. Jones, it got there.

But don’t put too much stock in this list. Bill Cotty‘s on it, too. Bill Cotty DID sign the list, years ago, but has come to regret that decision profoundly, and has not only refused to sign it in subsequent elections, but withdrawn his original pledge demanded that ATR cease claiming that he’s one of the lawmakers in their pocket. ATR has ignored his pleas, even as its anti-government allies pound Mr. Cotty for being a moderate.

That’s the trouble with this thing. You’re not allowed to wise up and have second thoughts. To Grover, it’s like the Mafia — once you’re a made guy, you’re in for life.

(Oh, and by the way — you might think it unfair that I link to a Mother Jones article to explain to the uninitiated who Grover is. Rest your troubled mind. I learned about that article because when he came to visit our editorial board, Grover passed out copies of it, along with several other press clippings, by way of introducing himself. He’s proud of that piece.)

SGM gets it — so does this Unpartisan

20 Replies

Respondent SGM had such a pertinent question, expressed so well, on my last post that I feel compelled to highlight a large part of his comment — and then answer it gladly — in this separate item.

Here’s an excerpt from what he wrote:

    Since you bring up the Karen Floyd race for Superintendent of
Education, what a fine example of just how fragmented and weak our
state’s executive branch is. (It seems like the same principle is also
applied to the structure of most local mayors’ offices.)
    It almost seems like the state constitution was written explicitly
to make the executive branch as diluted and powerless as possible.
    Oh, wait a minute, I get it now, it was deliberate…
    OK.  So does your UnParty have a platform position on this issue?
    Seems to me that it would be in the interest of all (except the
state legislature) to have a stronger, unified governor’s office.
    From a political point of view, it would make the race for governor
actually mean something and allow both parties to run broader, more
intense campaigns. They could actually offer platforms that were
comprehensive and had actual chances of getting things done their way.
    Seems like the big party machines would look at this as an economy
of scale issue. Instead of spending campaign money and resources spread
out over several candidates with diverse issues and constituencies,
they could consolidate their efforts into a single race which might
engage more of the electorate.
    From the voters point of view, it would go a long way to giving us
some real accountability. We might get some representation that would
have actual authority to get things done and that we could hold
responsible if it’s not effective.
    As it stands now, nobody can be held responsible because they can
all point their fingers at other offices and claim that the authority
to take action has been withheld from them.

Amen, SGM! And yes! Maybe I can’t speak for the whole Unparty, but this Unpartisan could not agree more with your assessment of what is wrong with S.C. government. I spent the whole year of 1991 on a special project documenting exactly the problems of fragmentation that you outline. That series helped lead to the partial restructuring of the executive branch in 1993 — a reform that went a lot farther than many expected the Legislature to go, but not nearly far enough. Last year (trying once again to get some reform rolling in the Legislature), we ran a mini-series of editorials updating that project, which was on line, but disappeared. As we revamp our online editorial presence, I intend to restore those pieces.

Until then, here are some pieces that serve as a sort of primer on the issue, starting with a very few of the more than 100 articles in the original 1991 series:

From our 2005 recap:

And for a big finish, here’s the whole text of a column I wrote for 2/6/2005 as part of that recap series:

THE STATE
SHARDS OF POWER
Published on: 02/06/2005
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: D2
BY BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
YOU WANT the bumper-sticker version of what’s wrong with government in South Carolina?
    Fragmentation.
    At every level and in almost every area, government is chopped up into so many little shards that power is never sufficiently concentrated to allow any of those mini-governments to get much done. This so confuses and dissolves the lines of political accountability that voters seldom have any way of really knowing whom to blame for failure.
    At the state level, we have at least 85 agencies, many with overlapping responsibilities. A few are part of the governor’s Cabinet, but that’s only about a third of the government as measured by spending. Most of the rest are run by boards and commissions made up mostly of people you and I did not elect. A few are even run by people who are elected separately from the governor, and therefore have no political or legal mandate to cooperate with the governor or any other part of state government.
    Last week, opponents of fixing that last problem raised the usual specious argument that letting the governor appoint such specialized functionaries as the secretary of state and agriculture commissioner takes away the people’s right to choose their leaders. Try this: Go to the mall and ask the first 10 intelligent-looking adults you see to name the secretary of state and explain what he does. How many could do it? I thought so. Then ask them to name the governor. Now, whom do you suppose they’re going to be able to hold accountable when something goes wrong?
    Fortunately, the House passed the measure. The bad news: It only lets the governor appoint two of the eight separately elected state agency heads. Worse, this is the most substantive move the Legislature plans to take toward restructuring this year. The other two bills that have a chance – one that theoretically puts the governor in charge of administrative functions and the other that claims to reduce fragmentation in health care and a few other areas – do even less.
    The worst news: The Legislature isn’t even contemplating addressing the fragmentation of local government.
    There are no plans to do anything about the 85 school districts – every one with its own expensive administrative structure – in our 46 counties. The same with the other 800 or so local governments (no one is really sure how many there are) that make it nearly impossible for voters to keep track of who is setting their property taxes.
    So why do we have a system that seems to be designed not to get things done? That could be answered in a complicated way, but here’s the simple way: It was designed not to get things done. The basic organizing principles of government in South Carolina were established to serve the interests of the antebellum slaveholding elites. They wanted a system that resisted change, and that’s what they created. There have been changes over the years, but it’s basically the same structure we’ve always had.
    In a column several weeks back, I quoted from the 1990 series of columns by USC professors Walter Edgar and Blease Graham that helped inspire the original Power Failure series. I didn’t have room for this gem:
    "It makes no sense for the 130 residents of Pelzer to be subject to the taxing authority of six different governing bodies and service districts."
    No, it doesn’t. And it makes no sense for the people of Richland and Lexington counties to be subject to more than 20. But that’s the way it is.
    And nobody’s doing anything about it.

I’ve got plenty more where that came from if you want it.

Mayor Bob on smoking bans

40 Replies

Columbia Mayor Bob Coble had sent me four e-mails (all of which I just read, since I just got back from vacation) responding to our lead editorial of July 30, which essentially said we’d love to see smoking eliminated from local bars and restaurants, but we didn’t think state law would allow a municipality to take such action.

FYI I am attaching the Attorney General’s Opinion
that holds that the State
has preempted cities from banning smoking in public buildings. The opinion
says that because the State Clean Indoor Act is statewide, it preempts
local governments from a smoking ban by "implication." I think the legal
issue is unclear enough that it should be decided by the Court in
a declaratory judgment action. The Clean Indoor Air Act does not
address smoking bans by cities but regulates where smoking is prohibited. If
the  State Legislature had specifically addressed smoking in restaurants
I would feel differently. Thanks

So the mayor is apparently forging ahead. Here’s a followup message:

FYI The Smoke Free
Columbia folks have sent me two ordinances. The first is a model ordinance (with
Columbia filled in) and the second is the ordinance that Sullivan’s Island
adopted (or is in the process). They are very similar. Thanks,
Bob

Well, I wish him luck, but it’s still our position that the Legislature intended to prevent localities from taking this common-sense step. Either way, state law needs to be changed. On this and other matters that naturally fit within the realm of local ordinance, the state should leave communities alone to decide their own rules, as expressed by the governments closest to the people.

Sanford vs. Moore

12 Replies

Tom_davis
Allegations highlight main difference
between Sanford and Moore

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor

EVERYBODY likes Tom Davis. He’s open, sincere, hard-working and honest as the day is long. That makes him a good emissary for Gov. Mark Sanford.
    As legislative liaison during the session, Tom (I can’t call such an approachable guy “Mr. Davis”) is the one bright, warm spot in the governor’s four-year Cold War with the General Assembly. Lawmakers may sometimes use him as a whipping boy because he’s handy and the governor isn’t (that’s him above standing at the back of the House above, watching lawmakers rip into the governor’s veto of the budget this year), but no one stays mad at Tom for long. He’s too nice a guy.
    Sen. Tommy Moore calls Tom Davis a “hired gun.” Not by name. That’s just how he refers to the person responsible for a “white paper” released by the Sanford campaign that attacks his performance in the Senate.
    Tom’s no hired gun; he wouldn’t wear the black hat in anybody’s Western. He’s the faithful sidekick. He has neglected his law practice in Beaufort — and, more importantly to him, his family — for the past four years to help his friend Mark Sanford.
    But he is the guy going around and peddling a set of detailed allegations against Sen. Moore. (You can find a link to Cindi Scoppe’s column on the subject Friday, and to the entire “white paper,” on my blog.)
    The allegations go back to 1988. Sen. Moore is accused of letting a bribery-tainted tax cut slip by him; of watering down ethics legislation after the Lost Trust scandals in the early ’90s; of continuing to hamper efforts to plug ethics loopholes since then; and of supporting a bill that would benefit a company that contributed to his campaigns and was proposing a development in his district. With supporting documents (mostly old news stories from The State and other papers), the handout runs to 45 pages.
    And this is only the beginning. “This isn’t exhaustive,” Tom says. He plans additional “white papers” on the environment, education and possibly other issues.
    Tom’s been working at this since the June 13 primary — poring through Lexis-Nexis, digging articles out of newspapers’ electronic archives. He seems to have enjoyed the change of pace after months of standing at the back of the House and Senate chambers and watching fellow Republicans roll right over his boss on issue after issue: “To me, it was like reading a very, very detailed historical novel.”
    But why would a governor who is 30 points ahead in the polls (according to Tom) go to this kind of trouble to dig up such detailed allegations? Was it, as some speculated at first, a sign of how nervous Mr. Sanford was about a Jake Knotts candidacy that didn’t materialize? No, says Tom; polls showed Sen. Moore losing more votes to Sen. Knotts than the governor would have.
    “Desperate people employ desperate tactics,” says Sen. Moore. “It sounds to me like some people have looked at some poll numbers” and that they weren’t as favorable as Tom lets on. He doesn’t know this, though, as he has yet to get out there with a baseline poll himself — a measure of how far behind he is in fund-raising. It reminds him of former Gov. Jim Hodges’ decision to attack challenger Sanford practically from the day after the primary four years ago. “I thought it was ill-conceived and unwise,” said Sen. Moore. “He must have the Hodges playbook.”
    But Tom’s “white paper” is actually of great value to the voters, for one reason: It highlights the main difference between the two candidates.
    “I don’t think he’s a bad man,” says Tom. “I don’t think he took bribes. I think it (the 1988 tax break) got in the budget because he didn’t read the budget.”
    Note this from the first line of the release: “Sen. Moore’s legislative record shows that he was inattentive to details, easily misled and unconcerned about (providing) legislative due diligence in reviewing legislation….”
    Time and time again, what you see and hear is this contrast:
    Mark Sanford is a stickler for detail. In preparing his executive budget, he challenges every line in an excruciating process that lasts months. (“Every line,” complains Tom. “It’s hell for me.”) Then, when lawmakers pass a budget that he doesn’t like, he vetoes the entire thing rather than work with them to come up with something mutually acceptable. His six-year career in Congress was marked by an utter lack of achievement; he’s remembered for sleeping on a futon, and talking endlessly about Social Security reform that never materialized. He is admired for being uncompromising, even though that means he gets little done.
    Tommy Moore (below, with long-time Senate Chaplain George Meetze) is respected as the “go-to” guy in the Senate. He is regularly appointed to conference committees because he is known for rescuing legislation by getting people of differing views to find something they can agree on and take action. As a result, his 28-year career in the Senate offers much to praise, and much to criticize. Of the 1991 Ethics Reform Act, he says, “You had a lot of people working together,” from the governor and other ardent reformers to lawmakers who didn’t want to pass anything. “You could have had everybody stand firm on their own positions, and then you would have gotten nothing done, and that would have been the absolute worst of all scenarios.”
    To him it would, but not necessarily to Gov. Sanford. There’s the contrast. Tom’s whole point in his 45-page broadside is that “there are bad sides to being the insider who gets things done.”
    But as Sen. Moore points out, there are good things as well.
    Which do you prefer? You have to decide by November.

    More on the subject.

Tommy_meetze

Ken Clark column

29 Replies

Clark372
Money, ideology, populism,
apathy descend upon Ken Clark

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

THE COLLARD Kitchen was steaming Tuesday night, and I could hardly hear above the sickly hum of the air conditioning. S.C. Rep. Ken Clark was talking his heart out to a “community meeting” of 11 people, not counting his wife and campaign manager.
    One of the finest, smartest and hardest-working members of the Legislature is fighting for his political life against a well-funded challenger who seems to have decided to run on a mere whim.
    Kit Spires, a Gaston pharmacist (below, at right), is not going to like that characterization, and I don’’t blame him. He seems to be a nice man, and he’’s sincere. I spoke to him for this column longer than I did to Mr. Clark, and I like him. I can see why the folks he provides with medicine like him, too.
    But I’’ve covered politics since the 1970s, and I can’’t remember a more lopsided match. Ask bothKispires72 men about any issue you choose, and it is as bright, as sharp, as clear as the edge of a diamond that Ken Clark is a better representative than Kit Spires is prepared to be.
    But Mr. Spires got 45 percent of the vote June 13 to Rep. Clark’’s 35 percent. The third-place finisher has thrown his support to Mr. Spires.
“    "Clark’’s toast,"” says one local official.
    If that’’s true, it’s a dramatic illustration of the corrosive effects of three things that are eating the heart out of American politics:

  • Money. People who see South Carolina as a guinea pig for their project to defund government across the country have sent out 13 mailings attacking him or supporting his opponent. The attacks are off-the-shelf garbage that read like a transcript of those ideological shouting matches on cable TV. “"What’s that smell, you ask? Oh, that’’s just Rep. Ken Clark burning through your hard earned tax dollars."” No specifics, because they don’t exist. I am not making this up. The mailings are actually that stupid.
  • Ideology. The money comes from rich people who have developed a religion around the idea that they should pay less in taxes, and they don’’t give a damn what the money goes to pay for. Mr. Clark gets up every morning and sees problems in this poor state of ours, and he works obsessively to find sensible, cost-effective ways to solve them. The ideologues write checks to pay others to rid them of people like Mr. Clark. (And the money goes to more than mailings. As Mr. Clark noted, Mr. Spires was able to afford signs twice as large as his — see below — and more of them.)
  • Populist apathy. (Or should it be populism and apathy?) This world is rapidly becoming one in which far too few care about anything that happens beyond the ends of their own driveways. Such attitudes have an alarming imperviousness to Mr. Clark’’s 32 years in the U.S. Navy, or his intense service since then on school board and in the House.

    Why “"populist"”? Mr. Clark is a highly intelligent man who does not hide his light. He came up in a system in which capable men made decisions and saw that things got done. Mr. Spires is unassuming, and seems to have rubbed far fewer people the wrong way. Nowadays, that plays better than competence.
    Mr. Spires burns less brightly. He says he’’ll take an interest in whatever he hears people talking about in the local diner, and what he hears them talking about most is property taxes.
    He sees no reason why his mother, who hasn’’t had children in the public schools for 30 years, should have to support them.
    Mr. Spires is an unusual ally of the kind of people who are underwriting his campaign. He praises the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the biggest Big Government spending boondoggle since Lyndon Johnson. But he’’s flexible on the outsiders’’ plan to divert public funds to tax credits for anyone who will send their kids to private schools. "“I’’m not against public schools,"” he says. He just believes "in “compromise."”
Clark272    Mr. Clark does not compromise on anything of such critical importance. That’’s why he works so hard to improve schools, rather than abandon them.
“    "My name is on every piece of education (reform legislation) that has gone to the governor,"” Mr. Clark truthfully tells every soul who will listen. That includes encouraging charter schools, and granting the right to transfer from "“failing"” schools to any public school a parent chooses. He sponsored a law likely to do more than any other idea I’’ve heard to counter our state’’s abysmal dropout rate, by engaging kids in careers early, and preparing them for those careers.
    And taxing and spending? Thanks to legislation he helped pass, “"You will see a decrease in your property tax bill of about 40 percent or 50 percent next year.”"
    Mr. Spires is utterly unimpressed that the Legislature just abolished all residential property taxes for school operations. He rejects the idea that his one motivating issue is now moot. People are still talking about how they don’’t like their property taxes, so how can the issue be dead?
    And maybe he’’s right. He’’s counting on the people who think he’’ll come up with a way of lowering their taxes (he’’s still vague on details) outnumbering the ones who understand that Ken Clark and his fellow lawmakers have just cut their property taxes so dramatically that I don’’t think it’’s entirely sunk in with most of us.
    Besides, thousands of fliers have gone out telling people what a big tax-and-spender Ken Clark is. It doesn’’t matter if it’’s not true. That’’s what folks have in front of them when they go down to the diner and gripe about their taxes.
    Meanwhile, in the place where they cook the collards for Gaston’’s signature festival in the much- cooler month of October, there were only about a dozen people Tuesday night. That counts me, and I don’’t get a vote.

Signs72

More on Sanford veto

33 Replies

Here’s some stuff I didn’t have room for in my Sunday column.

The bottom line is that even the things the governor says that sound reasonable don’t hold up when you run the numbers:

In his veto letter (on page 3), the governor says the following:

I have heard the arguments from some state legislators that "growing government by 13 percent this year simply puts us back to where we were before we had to make those midyear budget  cuts." That is simply not true.The Budget is $744 million above the previous budget high-water mark that people talk of "getting back to," as is shown by the following chart.

He’s right that it is not true. And indeed, in raw, unadjusted dollars there is a $744 million increase over the highest previous year. But the real reason the statement is not true is that there is no real-world increase at all, and the latest budget falls far short of "getting back to" what we were funding before. In fact, it is actually a $247 million cut when adjusted for inflation.

In 2006, you have to come up with $6.623 billion to have the buying power of the $5.632 billion "high-water" budget passed in 2000. That’s according to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.

The budget that the governor just vetoed is $6.376 billion. It falls short by $247 million from getting back to where we were before the cuts.

The governor also writes (on page 2) that:

I have consistently advocated limiting the growth in state government spending to a rate that reasonably correlated with the people’s ability to sustain it over time. Some would argue  that this rate is population plus inflation, currently about 5.5 percent. Others say it should be the  state’s average personal income growth, now about 6 percent.

When adjusted using the same official inflation calculator, the state budget grew by 6.41 percent from the one passed last year — not by 13 percent or even 10 percent.

So lawmakers who argue with the governor — if they have a clue as to what’s really going on — would not say, "growing government by 13 percent this year simply puts us back …." First, because it’s not growing by that rate. Second, because it doesn’t put us back at all. If they said either of those things, they’d be just as wrong as the governor is.

Column on Sanford veto

37 Replies

Sanford_win72
To kill a theoretical gnat,
Sanford drops the Big One

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor

FACED WITH global terrorism, the United States, in keeping with its values, drops smart bombs — doing as much as advanced technology will allow to kill mass murderers, and not the noncombatants they hide among.
    Straining at a gnat of his own invention, Gov. Mark Sanford — in keeping with his values — drops the Big One on all of South Carolina.
    Sure, he knew the Legislature had the power to disarm the bomb before it did away with the entire state government. But whether legislators wanted to save the day was up to them. If they had neglected to do their duty the way he abdicated his (if even a third of either the House or the Senate had called his bluff), it would have gone off.
    Not that the governor expected for a moment that they would do that. He counted on them overriding his veto of the entire budget. He’s not insane; he’s just willing to place demagoguery ahead of responsibility.
    The governor knows there must be a government for there to be a civilization in which he is free to engage in politics as a hobby. What he disagrees with the Legislature about is the size of government. Nothing wrong with that, right? We’re dealing with that question every time we argue whether the government should do this, or not do that.
    But that’s not what the governor did. He decided that the government, as measured by expenditures, should grow by no more than this precise percentage.
    The number he picks has nothing to do with the essential demands that a civilization places on government. It’s not based on the number of children to educate, or the number of miles to be paved and patrolled, or the number of prisoners that we decide to lock up, or the number of mentally ill people wandering about.
    No, it’s based on an esoteric calculation involving the functions of inflation and population. He says his growth number is based on “the people’s ability to sustain it.” Never mind that some populations need more cops because they have more criminals per capita, or that a population whose pay is trailing the nation has a greater need to invest in education. Never mind a thousand other ways that the illogic of his proposition can be illustrated. He says you, the taxpayer, shouldn’t have to pay out more than what he says you can afford.
    Sound good? Oh, yeah. On the hustings, it plays much better than actually using your line-item veto power to get as close as you can to your arbitrary number. That would upset voters, because each cut you made would be into something that some of them deem essential. Why not just veto the whole thing, knowing the Legislature will override you, and go into the fall talking about how those people grew government faster than your ability to pay.
    This way, essential functions get sort-of funded (if you think they’re fully funded, count the number of cars ignoring the speed limit in full knowledge there aren’t enough troopers). Legislators still get their pork, rather than anybody forcing them to take a straight-up vote on whether the money would have been better spent on essentials. The governor gets re-elected as the guy who would save you from high taxes and overspending, if only those people would let him.
    Win-win, for everyone but the 4 million people who live in a state that has never gotten it together and set priorities so that it can catch up to the rest of the nation.
    I’ve now blown off enough steam that I can give the governor credit for a couple of things.
He did do the hard work, before the session, of going through state programs dollar-by-dollar — something the Legislature ought to do — and presented a theoretical budget that met his arbitrary figure. A governor should set out his statewide vision, and he did.
    And the Legislature built the budget the way it always does, in big chunks, which meant the governor could not veto some of the specific programs he didn’t like without vetoing others he did like.
    There’s no bigger advocate in this state than I for putting the executive functions of government in the hands of the elected chief executive. Mark Sanford is a slacker on that, compared to me.
    But in any rational republican system, it’s the Legislature’s job to draft a budget. Assuming that lawmakers should simply adopt the governor’s spending vision and go home, without speaking up for the voters who sent them, is to go far beyond the limits of even the most fervid advocates of executive power. It would take us to the point of monarchy.
    To say that the legislative branch had to do it his way or not at all is outrageous. To say that if the government isn’t precisely the size that Mark Sanford wants it to be, there should be no government at all, is horrific.
    You say he expected the Legislature to override him? But in terms of raw, calculating political hypocrisy, that’s even worse than being a head-in-the-sky ideologue who doesn’t know the real-life consequences of his actions.
    Consider this sequence: The governor spent the last days of the primary campaign ignoring his opponent, and running against the General Assembly. His beef was that legislators did not break precedent and stay in town so that he could give them his vetoes, so their votes to sustain or override would be there before the voters on election day. He pontificated mightily on their failure to be accountable.
    Then, when they chose instead to go home and actually face the voters before election day instead of doing his bidding, he took full advantage of the extra time that gave him. He waited until after the polls were closed and the votes counted, and he was safely renominated, before dropping his Big One. He had to do it by midnight that night, so he did it between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. And so Republican primary voters had no opportunity to hold him accountable for what he did with his veto power.
    I thought Mark Sanford was better than this. I really did. Now I don’t.

Rapt attention

30 Replies

Mescher
As Greg Ryberg stood alone to defend the governor’s veto of the entire state budget (not an easy thing to defend, by the way), some senators shook their heads in disgust. Others stood to argue vehemently with him.

But Sen. Bill Mescher did not let it interfere with his activities, as he stayed glued to his Freecell game. Or maybe it was Spider Solitaire. I admit I was paying more attention to Sen. Ryberg.