Category Archives: Legislature

Circular reasoning

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Bauerheel
Hey, it’s good to hear Andre Bauer’s surgery went OK. (That’s an actual X-ray of his newly repaired heel Dr. Kyle Jeray is holding up there.)

Which reminds me of my post from last night.

I’ve never known quite what to make of the fact that you’ll sometimes hear lawmakers defending Mr. Bauer on the basis that he’s doing a good service with the Office on Aging.

There seems to be
some circular reasoning involved. Old folks were being served by that
agency before. Lawmakers, searching for something to give Andre
that he could take credit for, arbitrarily moved it to his office. Once
they moved it there, Andre went around letting old folks know what a
great job the people who now worked for him were doing for them, and
they praised him for it.

Lawmakers then started giving Andre credit for it all, thereby self-fulfilling a prophecy.

Anyway, that’s the cynic’s view. Andre claims all sorts of
restructuring and reform of the agency and its service, plus a greatly
expanded budget this last round, and says it’s all due to his
"leadership." Whether it is due to his efforts or not, I don’t know.

But my new boss did ask an interesting question when Andre was
talking about that in his Wednesday interview with us: Is the Office on
Aging now enjoying an advantage over equally vital and worthwhile
agencies, just because it has a high-profile advocate — one with every
motive to have his own area of influence grow, I might add — wielding
the gavel for it in the Senate?

Andre allowed as how he didn’t think that was the case. OK, then: If
it isn’t benefiting from that relationship, to what extent is his
position over the Office of Aging doing anything for his clients that
wouldn’t get done by that office anyway? Circular reasoning again.

All I can tell is that the lines of accountability are now muddier than before.

Why Ted Pitts likes Andre

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Andrewheelchair72
Well, as you can see, we didn’t do an about-face on our position regarding Andre Bauer‘s suitability for holding the post of lieutenant governor. We endorsed his challenger, Mike Campbell.

But as I wrote on Wednesday, Mr. Bauer has grown in his political abilities that he can make a strong impression in spite of all his sins against the public confidence. That helps explain why he seems to have so many supporters in the General Assembly and, more significantly, among the electorate.

It helps explain it, but doesn’t quite fulfill the task. I mean, even if he makes a better impression than he use to, there’s still the little matter of his record to be dealt with. I decided I needed a little more info to help me understand Andremania. So I called one of the victims of that malady.

There were a number of surprising names listed as supporters on a recent Bauer mailing — surprising to me, anyway. They included John Courson, Nathan Ballentine and my own representative, Ted Pitts.

I gave Ted a call, and essentially asked: Why do you stand behind this guy?

He said that Andre, the Joker and the Kingpin were holding Ted’s dog hostage in an abandoned warehouse down by the river.

No, wait. That’s the kind of thing I’d hoped he’d say. What he said was what people usually say to justify being Bauerites: That he was doing a heckuva job helping old people.

"I do think Andre has made some strides in the Office of Aging," said Rep. Pitts. "I’ve talked to some seniors who are pleased" with improvements in the office since it was placed under the Gov Lite’s authority.

Andreface72At the same time, of course, "I’d never do some of the things he’s done." I hope not since my rep and I agree that such actions are "very irresponsible," particularly (I would add) in the case of someone a heartbeat away from the governor’s office.

"I do think he’s been straight-up in his efforts" to explain those incidents, though.

Really? I asked. What about the infamous land deal in which he brought along a member of the highway commission and a state senator to help him negotiate with an employee of the state Department of Transportation? Andre still says there was nothing wrong with that.

"That’s wrong," Ted admits. "No two ways about it."

There are two types of people in this world," a Bill Murray character once said: "Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don’t. My ex-wife loves him."

The world can also be neatly divided between those who accept the idea that Mr. Bauer’s sterling service presiding over the Senate and serving senior citizens outweighs his abuses of power and other stunning flaws, and those of us who don’t. Rep. Pitts is in the first category.

There’s another reason, and it is a classic South Carolina reason: "We had mutual family friends."

He says he’s known Andre since "before high school." They didn’t go to the same schools (Bauer to Irmo, Pitts to Lexington), but they knew each other. Mr. Bauer is about the same age as Mr. Pitts’ older sister.

But it goes back even further: Our mothers put us in the Children of the Confederacy chapter here."

Well, that opened up a whole new topic, since I had heard of the Sons, and I had heard of the Daughters, but I was not familiar with the more inclusive "Children." Ted says it didn’t last long. They had about three meetings, and interest faded.

Correction: It was just the opposite, partly

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Altman
I now have a firsthand report, and the previous one was exactly backwards on the second point. If you follow me.

Apparently, what Rep. Altman actually said about editors at The State was that we can’t get anything for free at any stores — even temporarily. More specifically, he is said to have said that the newspaper’s owners won’t let us get so much as a box of paper clips on credit, on account of how we’re such terrible business people.

With regard to myself, I must endorse the representative’s remarks on this score. I am not a businessman, terrible or otherwise, but if I were I’d probably be a lousy one. And while the paper clip thing may be a tad hyperbolic, he’s caught the gist of what it’s like working with Knight Ridder. I can get the paper clips, but then we have to go through all sorts of gyrations to get the expense processed.

There are many reasons why we’ll all be glad to be owned by McClatchy soon.

As for the other — well, my first source seems to have gotten it right. Of my having called him a "jerk," he seems to have observed that "that is the extent of his erudition."

So, bottom line: John Graham Altman is still a jerk, but that doesn’t mean he’s always wrong.

Let’s hear it for Henry

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… McMaster that is, not my new boss who started work yesterday. In fact, we should all hope Henry Haitz turns out as well as The State‘s new publisher as Henry McMaster has as S.C. attorney general.

To go into a bit of awkward history, Mr. McMaster was not our first choice for that post four years ago. He was not our second, either. He wasn’t even… well, we’ll just stop there.

It was nothing against Henry in particular — I always liked the guy — but he had just spent the last few years being chairman of the S.C. Republican Party. And as long as there were other qualified candidates (in the Republican primary, the runoff and general election), we preferred not to go with anyone who had been on such consistent public display as a partisan’s partisan.

His opposite number, Dick Harpootlian, would have had the same trouble with us. We actually had endorsed Dick for attorney general — eight years earlier, when his opponent was Charlie Condon. But in 2002, after we’d become accustomed to Dick and Henry trying to outdo each other in silly partisan statements every day (and Charlie outdoing them both, and then some), we were looking for something a little different in the state’s top lawyer.

In Henry, we got it. Henry has been more than a breath of fresh air after the Condon years. He has gone out of his way to do the right thing, even when it was not at all helpful to him or his party (although often it was; I’ll never give up on the idea that good policy, and upholding the law, make for good politics).

If only he had primary opposition this year, we could give him a rousing endorsement.

Anyway, his opinion Monday that the House GOP caucus is a public body that must meet in the open is not calculated to endear him to his fellow partymen. Sure, it applies to the Democrats, too. But so what? The Democrats can’t decide matters of law while hiding in their clubhouse. The Republicans, being the majority, can. (And one can only smile at Jim Merrill’s assertion that they don’t take binding votes in caucus. If they do the difficult hashing-out in private, under circumstances designed to shape measures that are more likely to help a party than the state of South Carolina, what possible difference does it make to us that they make the formal vote in public? It’s not that they’re being civic-minded; that’s just a technicality they must go through in order to pass the bill.)

Sure, lawmakers can change the rules so that they CAN meet in private. They’re the Legislature; they make the rules.

But making it legal won’t make it right.

Et tu, Nikki?

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This gets more and more interesting. A moment ago, our good friend
Nikki Haley was up speaking for the execrable notion of school "choice" via individual tax credits.

On the one hand, big deal. Nikki hasn’t been so publicly opposed to such proposals in the past as Mr. Bingham has.

But I do hate to hear her advocate for it, even though she does so only for "failing" districts.

And I hate to hear her use such hackneyed and illogical arguments as the old saw about how if we let tuition grants and other disbursements from tax moneys go to private institutions … well, let’s use her words:

It it’s OK for college, why isn’t it OK for K-12?

Well, Nikki, I’ll answer that with another question: Do colleges and universities attempt to educate the entire population (which, by the way, is why we have public schools — because the market would never, ever have any rational motive for trying to do that; it’s one of those few things that only government can or would want to do)?

The answer, of course, is NO. Here’s another: What proportion of the population do colleges and universities try to educate?

Here’s a hint: It’s not the most academically challenged.

Oh, I take that back. Some colleges do have open-enrollment policies. What sort of reputation do those schools have? If someone who went to a choosier school were inclined to be harsh, they might look down and call them "failing."

But you know — even those schools don’t try to educate everyone. Only society as a whole, pooling its resources through the thing we call "government," could or would even contemplate such a task.

And society can only accomplish it as long as it has a consensus that this is a high-enough priority to dedicate the necessary resources to it.

That’s why it’s positively tragic to see elected "leaders" taking up the cudgels for those ideological groups who hold in contempt the very idea of public education.

Youth and inexperience aren’t the worst things in the world

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Young Artie White is looking better all the time.

I just got this winpop (sort of an internal instant message) from a colleague:

Kenny Bingham is up arguing IN FAVOR of the revised Edge amendment (revised, I think, to match the bill he introduced earlier this year).

… which is to say, he was arguing in favor of the merely horrendously awful version of Put Parents in Charge, rather than the worse-than-you-could-have-imagined version that Tracy Edge briefly had up.

I asked Cindi — that is, my colleague — whether she was sure. You know that I stop at nothing to ensure the accuracy of anything I put on this blog. Her answer:

yes, he was; I heard only the end of it. he’s done now and we’re on to shirley hinson, who is giving the most BIZARRE speech in defense of the amendment. i think the supporters must be filibustering.

If you hurry, you can go watch it yourself. It’s not every day that you get to see representatives, in real time, deliberately going out of their way to undermine public education. I mean, at least not this obviously.

Governor makes right call

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All hail Governor Sanford for doing the right thing for the right reasons, even though it’s likely to cost him in GOP-vote-rich Lexington County (my home, I always add). His veto message on the subject isn’t posted yet, but when it is, I’ll change this to link to it.

This was a bit of a nail-biter, as the governor could have interpreted "the right thing" two ways. Given his extreme libertarianism (you can tell an extreme libertarian by the fact that they even believe the market works with regard to health care), he doesn’t really believe in the state Certificate of Need process. But as long as it’s the law, he will not allow narrow interests to overturn it.

Now, to the override attempt. I was talking with Rep. James Smith this morning, and he says he expects a vote tomorrow. He’d rather have it today, but he said Speaker Bobby Harrell wants to give it a day.

"There should be no reason that this should not be sustained," he said. After all, the wrong side never had a 2/3 vote in their favor.

But he’s worried because some lawmakers who voted the right way the first time are — scuttlebutt has it — trying to hold up the state Hospital Association (which opposed Lexington Medical’s attempt to subvert the process through legislative fiat) for a little something in return for continuing to vote their "principles."

There will be a lot of phone-calling and button-holing today.

Whom will we endorse?

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As both a blogger and editorial page editor, and not exactly in that order, I can run into certain conflicts: If I use the blog to share my impressions of candidates as we wade through endorsement interviews, am I not risking giving away whom we are likely to endorse?

And yet if I don’t share such information from day to day, what’s the point in an editorial page editor having a blog? Isn’t that the (admittedly theoretical) value of the Weblog — that by virtue of my job, I have access to this kind of information? Shouldn’t you get something extra for going there to read it?

Last week, it struck me for the first time: Why the big mystery about whom we might endorse? I’ve written over and over that the point in a newspaper’s endorsement is the why, not the who. If you just glance at the picture and the headline, you’ve missed the point of that kind of editorial.

The benefit for the reader lies in pondering the reasons we give for the choice. (This is a fact easily lost on many of those who read my blog, unfortunately. Judging by their comments, many remain trapped in the phony left-right, Democratic-Republican, are-you-for-this-one-or-are-you-for-that-one dichotomy — which closes their minds to reason.)

The idea is that by reading our endorsements, and reading rebuttals, and thinking about whether you agree or disagree, should add depth to your own decision-making as a voter — whether you vote in the end for the candidate we endorsed or not.

Besides, trying to guess the eventual endorsement from what I write after an interview is inadequate on two levels: First, an endorsement consists not just of what I think, but of what a consensus of the editorial board arrives at. Besides, I could change my own mind as we go along. I once pulled back an endorsement that was on the page and headed for the press. (I had last-minute qualms, did a little more digging and consulted with my colleagues. We rewrote it and went with the other candidate. Neither of  them knows that to this day.)

So, that resolved, I put my initial, rough impressions of our first three candidates (out of 55 I’ll be interviewing for the June 13 primary), on the blog last week. In each case, we were interviewing challengers. When it works out, we try to bring them in first because we tend to know less about them, and this gives us more time to get up to speed.

I also put capsules of those blog posts in my column Sunday. Here are those minimal excerpts, but if you are at all interested (and I hope you are; state legislators are more likely to have a direct impact on your life than those folks in Washington that everyone loves to shout about), I highly recommend following the links to the much-longer full blog posts:

Artie White, H89, Republican.
I didn’t ask Mr. White (challenging Rep. Kenny Bingham of Lexington County) his age, but I know the approximate answer: Quite young. The nice thing about talking to a candidate so recently (two years) out of college is that he still remembers more than most politicians have forgotten about representative democracy and how it’s supposed to work.

Mr. White sets less store by party than his former boss, Joe Wilson (which is a good thing). When asked whether he would make a point of regularly voting with the GOP caucus, he said, “I don’t really think it’s important.”

His main issue? Eminent domain. “Property rights in this country… is the basis of a free country,” he pronounced.

Greatest strengths? Sincerely good intentions and good theoretical knowledge of how government is supposed to work. Greatest weaknesses? Youth and inexperience.

Sheri Few, H79, Republican.
Sheri Few of Kershaw County, who is challenging Bill Cotty for the Republican nomination in District 79, was our first challenger armed with money from school-“choice” advocates, going up against a vocal Republican opponent of Gov. Mark Sanford’s “Put Parents in Charge” plan: “I am a proponent of school choice,” she said. “We need to start treating parents as consumers.”

But she objects to being portrayed as some sort of tool of out-of-state ideologues. She notes that she has raised $30,000 for her race, with only $8,000 of it coming from outside South Carolina.
Why should voters choose her over her opponent? “A Republican should vote for me over Bill Cotty for a couple of reasons,” she said. “I am a conservative.”

She said with tax credits, private entities would set up various schools to address special needs, such as learning disabilities. I said I could see how that might happen in Columbia, where there was enough demand. But what would be the motivation for private enterprise to set up such choices in the areas where South Carolina’s greatest educational challenges lie — poor, sparsely populated counties?

“That’s an excellent question,” she said. “I haven’t really thought about that.”

Joe McEachern, H77, Democratic.
Mr. McEachern, a member of Richland County Council who is challenging Rep. John Scott, is a straightforward sort who goes his own way, as fellow council members can attest to their delight or chagrin.

For instance, when we asked how he would get things done in the House, as a minority member of the minority party, he said, “I’m not one of those folks that carry the banner.” He said that the best course for South Carolina is likely to be something that transcends party and race. As a result, at times he will disagree with the Legislative Black Caucus.

He sees no need for voters to elect the “long ballot” of statewide officials — or for that matter, the purely magisterial offices on the county level.

When he says that, “People say, ‘Oh, no …. We’ll never get an African-American elected” to statewide office if they become appointive. “Have we ever gotten an African-American elected?” he answers.

“Elect a governor and hold him accountable” for having a diverse Cabinet, he said. “That is the best way.”

More importantly, thanks to his experience in local government, he understands the crying need to get the state government — including county legislative delegations — out of local affairs. “We need to make a clean break,” he said. “Either you’re going to have Home Rule or you’re not.”

He said Rep. Scott “thinks it’s his seat,” and “takes it very personal that I’m running against him. But it’s not personal.”

He said folks in the district complain that Mr. Scott neglects them. By contrast, he says, Bill Cotty — the Republican who represents a neighboring House district — is “more hands on.” Mr. McEachern is indeed no typical banner-carrier.

Did I tell ya, or did I tell ya?

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Over the last month or two, I’ve broken the rules I’ve made against answering e-mails at length to respond to a Lexington County physician who has been extremely upset about our stance against Lexington Medical Center getting permission to start an open-heart-surgery facility.

What got to him the most was the fact that we got exponentially more down on it when the Lexington advocates — not satisfied to let their appeal of DHEC’s decision run its course — got their delegation to push to change the law under which they had been refused, so as to specifically allow LMC to have its way. He couldn’t see what a rank maneuver this was, or how many principles of sound government (and sound health regulation) this violated.

Anyway, the first thing I thought of when I read our lead story this morning was, "Well, somebody‘s going to be happy today."

As soon as I got to the office, I sent him this e-mail:

Dr. Black:

Didn’t I try to tell you that you had nothing to worry, much less get upset, about? From the moment this issue stepped out of the realm of merit and into the realm of raw politics, you were destined to get your way.

The reason we have regulation by people who are relatively insulated from politics is that they can look at things objectively. Politicians, particularly South Carolina legislators, can’t say "no" to anybody — particularly not to angry people from the most Republican county in the state.

So you can relax now. We won’t give up on this, even though the result is pretty much assured now. It’s not our job to write about what WILL happen, but to write about what SHOULD happen, no matter how unpopular the stand may be among our friends and neighbors. It’s not that much fun sometimes, but it’s what we do.

Have a good day,
Brad Warthen

If y’all show ANY interest in this issue, I’ll post some or all of my correspondence with him. It might be interesting; I don’t know. That’s up to y’all.

We need some smarter idiots

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In response to a recent post, regular contributor "Lee" cited the oft-repeated, but seldom true, statement that "Any idiot can raise taxes."

If he’s right about that, then we have extraordinarily substandard idiots in the S.C. General Assembly. Most of them were not members in 1987, which was the last time this state had any kind of general tax increase. (It was a couple of pennies in the gas tax.)

The current members of the General Assembly act as though they are unaware of the concept of raising taxes. It’s something they’ve never done, and they don’t ever intend to do it. When some vital state need (say, keeping our overstuffed prisons guarded) is underfunded, their stock answer is, "We WISH we could fund it, but we just don’t have the money." They say this with a straight face. It simply doesn’t occur to them to either cut something else, or (God forbid!) raise a tax, to GET the money.

So apparently, they are much, much stupider than any idiot Lee knows.

The only way the cigarette tax increase was even under desultory consideration was that it was NOT a general tax increase. It would essentially be a user fee paid by a minority, and it would not have hurt anyone in the world. Even the people who paid it could only benefit, because more expensive cigarettes MIGHT encourage them to smoke less. Win-win-win.

If it had involved anybody having to give up anything of value — whether for a good reason or not — they would not even have considered it.

How they voted to kill the cigarette tax hike

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Just in case you missed, or got whiplash trying to follow, the peremptory manner in which the House threw out the idea of even a modest increase in our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax, Cindi Scoppe relates a few salient facts about it on today’s editorial page — including the one about how the money would have gone to helping the state get serious, for the first time, about youth smoking prevention and cessation (beyond the fact, of course, that increasing the tax in an of itself exerts downward pressure on the rate of teenage smoking).

What Cindi didn’t have room for in her column was how they voted. I’ll supply that:

The House voted 58-53 to table a budget amendment that would have increased the cigarette tax by 30 cents a pack.

Here’s the amendment, followed by the vote:

/64 (DOR: Cigarette tax) (A)   In addition to the tax imposed pursuant to Section 12-21-620(1), there is imposed an additional tax equal to 1.5 cents on each cigarette made of tobacco or any substitute for tobacco. The tax imposed pursuant to this paragraph must be reported, paid, collected, and enforced in the same manner as the tax imposed pursuant to Section 12-21-620(1).
(B)   There are created in the state treasury, separate and distinct from the general fund of the State, the Youth Smoking Prevention and Cessation Fund and the South Carolina Health and Prevention Fund. Four percent of the revenue generated by this additional tax must be credited to the Youth Smoking Prevention and Cessation Fund and monies in the fund must be used by the Department of Health and Environmental Control in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control recommended comprehensive programs using best practices for youth smoking prevention and cessation programs. One percent of the revenue generated by this additional tax must be credited to the Department of Agriculture for research and promotion of healthy lifestyles with food grown in this State. The remaining revenue generated by this additional tax must be credited to the South Carolina Health and Prevention Fund. The General Assembly shall appropriate the monies from the South Carolina Health and Prevention Fund to critical programs that meet health needs of South Carolinians, including using funds for a Medicaid match each year, as needed. The monies credited to these funds are exempt from budgetary cuts or reductions caused by the lack of general fund revenues. Earnings on investments of monies in the funds must be credited to the respective fund and used for the same purposes as other monies in the funds. Any monies in the funds not expended during the fiscal year must be carried forward to the succeeding fiscal year and used for the same purposes./

Voting to table the amendment (58)

Altman
Bailey
Bannister
Barfield
Battle
Bingham
Brady
Cato
Chalk
Chellis
Clemmons
Cooper
Davenport
Duncan
Edge
Frye
Haley
Hamilton
Hardwick
Harrell
Harrison
Haskins
Hayes
Herbkersman
Hinson
Huggins
Kennedy
Kirsh
Leach
Loftis
Lucas
Mahaffey
McCraw
Merrill
Neilson
Norman
Perry
E. H. Pitts
Sandifer
Simrill
Skelton
G. R. Smith
J. R. Smith
W. D. Smith
Stewart
Talley
Taylor
Thompson
Toole
Townsend
Umphlett
Vaughn
Viers
Walker
White
Whitmire
Witherspoon
Young

Voting to support the amendment (53)

Agnew
Allen
Anderson
Anthony
Bales
Ballentine
Bowers
Branham
Breeland
G. Brown
J. Brown
R. Brown
Ceips
Clark
Clyburn
Cobb-Hunter
Coleman
Cotty
Dantzler
Delleney
Emory
Funderburk
Govan
Harvin
J. Hines
Hiott
Hodges
Hosey
Howard
Jefferson
Limehouse
Littlejohn
Mack
McGee
Miller
Mitchell
Moody-Lawrence
J. H. Neal
J. M. Neal
Ott
Owens
Parks
Phillips
Pinson
Rhoad
Rice
Scott
Sinclair
D. C. Smith
G. M. Smith
J. E. Smith
Vick
Whipper

Anybody know the story behind this?

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In a comment on a previous post, a reader says:

Maybe this would be a more entertaining topic

Bill allows foreign prisons to house S.C. inmates

Sure, we can discuss it. Or rather, you can discuss it. I can’t tell what the bill is all about. Here’s a link to it. Apparently, all that’s happened is it was introduced today and sent to Judiciary Committee.

So, what’s it about? Anybody know?

Speaking of legislative updates, personally, I’m more interested in this absurdity, in which one of our major local institutions is pulling a fast one on two others. Remember when hospitals just took care of folks, rather than having all these high-stakes political battles?

Column on taking sides

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Katon Dawson gets it. Why doesn’t everybody?
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
OVER A LATE breakfast at a New York deli in September 2004, S.C. Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson cheerfully told me this story:Katon_1
    Years earlier, as a novice candidate who had been burned once by his own frankness, he started carrying a piece of paper that he would look at whenever he spoke to one of my colleagues. On it he had written some good advice: “Cindi Scoppe is not your friend.”
    It did not mean she was his “enemy”; it was just his reminder to be wary because a good reporter isn’t on anybody’s side.
    You see, Katon Dawson gets it. Plenty of other people don’t.
    I believe that one of my few qualifications for my job is that I am vehemently, stridently, nonpartisan. Mr. Dawson, and his Democratic counterpart Joe Erwin, would say I’m too harsh.
    But the problem isn’t just the two major parties, loathsome as they may be. It’s this ubiquitous thing of everything being divided into “sides” — you’ve got to pick, one or the other — to the point that even smart people are unable to frame issues any other way.
    Here’s another anecdote, involving the same Ms. Scoppe: A lawmaker told her there was an inconsistency on last Sunday’s editorial page.
    The editorial criticized House members for rejecting, on specious grounds, business leaders’ input in the tax reform debate. The column dissected the General Assembly’s rush to override the governor’s veto of an odious bill stripping local governments of the ability to regulate billboards in their communities.
    When Cindi told me the lawmaker said the two pieces contradicted each other, I retorted, “Huh?” If anything, they had a consistent theme: the Legislature acting against the public interest.
    But the lawmaker saw it this way: The editorial slapped lawmakers for not doing what business wanted them to do, and the column hit them for doing what “business” (the billboard industry) wanted.
    I responded, “Say what?”
    Cindi said maybe we hadn’t expressed ourselves clearly enough. At this, I got a bit shrill: “How on Earth could we have been expected to anticipate that anybody would read it THAT way?”
    And yet, people are always reading what we write that way. The whole world encourages them to perceive every public expression as pro-business or anti-business, or siding with Democrats or Republicans, conservatives or liberals, black people or white people, rich or poor, fat or thin… you get the idea. That’s the trouble. Everybody gets the idea.
    This is a profoundly flawed way of looking at the world. If you accept or reject arguments, or even facts, according to whether they help or hurt your side, how can we ever get together and solve anything in a way that serves the common good?
    And yes, I know that the news media — especially television, although print is a culprit too — help create and reinforce this dichotomous world view. But that just makes me feel more obligated to use this page to encourage multilateral discussions that help people see things as they are, rather than the way one side or the other wants them to be.
    We’re not alone in this. We ran an op-ed piece Thursday from an assistant professor at USC-Aiken who faces the exact same problem every day in the classroom.
    Steven Millies wrote about a disturbing Emory University study. When the study’s author “showed negative information to his subjects about a politician they admired, the areas of their brains that control emotion lit up, while their reasoning centers showed no new activity.” Worse, when the subjects rejected information that they did not want to hear, their brains were rewarded in a pattern “similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix.”
    The damning conclusion was “that our political opinions are dominated by emotion, and that the reasoning part of our brain is not interested in political information that challenges us. In fact, our brains will work very hard to avoid that information.”
    This means Dr. Millies has an uphill fight in trying to teach his students that “In our political choices, we should not settle for the hollow comfort of feeling gratifyingly consistent in our assurance that one party is always right and the other always is wrong.”
    The trouble is, according to polls, about two-thirds of the electorate does cling to such assurance. That makes things tough for a fair-minded professor. It also makes it tough to publish a nonpartisan editorial page, and persuade partisans that that is actually what you are doing. No matter what you wrote the day before or the day after, a partisan tends to remember only the last thing you said that ticked him off, and to take that as proof positive that you’re on that other side.
    It doesn’t help that so many editorial pages are partisan, even at the best papers. You can almost always predict which “side” The New York Times will be on, and rely upon The Wall Street Journal to take the opposite view.
    None of us is immune to wrapping ourselves in comforting notions. Look at me: I didn’t want to hear what Cindi was trying to tell me. But I try to learn. I try to anticipate the way partisans of all sorts will perceive what I’m saying, and to express myself in a way that they see what I mean. But I often fail, and often in ways that surprise me, even after three decades of observing politics.
    Now here’s another perception problem to think about: “pro-business” or “anti-business.” Well, all I can say is that I’ll try.
    In the meantime, just in case anyone is still unclear: Sometimes business people are right; sometimes they’re wrong; sometimes they’re both. And when we write about them, we’re doing our best to sort all that out.
    It’s just like S.C. lawmakers: They don’t always do stupid stuff. It’s merely coincidence that on the two issues we wrote about last Sunday, they did.

The billboard sellout

40 Replies

Just in case today’s column by Associate Editor Cindi Scoppe didn’t quite convince you as to how indefensibly irresponsible the S.C. Legislature was last week in smooching the billboard industry’s big ol’ fat behind, here are two additional pieces of information.

The first is Gov. Mark Sanford’s veto message on the billboard bill — a document that lawmakers obviously took no time to read before overriding his laudable action.

The second item will be the roll-call votes in both the Senate and House.

Here’s the governor’s veto message:

R. 233, H. 3381–ORDERED PRINTED IN THE JOURNAL

The SPEAKER ordered the following veto printed in the Journal:

February 21, 2006
The Honorable Robert W. Harrell, Jr.
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Post Office Box 11867
Columbia, South Carolina 29211

Dear Mr. Speaker and Members of the House:

I believe that we must always stand fast against the government taking or regulating away the use of property. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management." Private property rights are fundamental to a free society, and I appreciate your efforts to address them in H. 3381.

The protection of private property rights is also essential to our market-based economy. Recognition of those rights provides the legal certainty necessary for individuals to commit resources to ventures. And those rights provide the basis for the development of financial markets that are essential for economic growth and development.

For these reasons, I have consistently acted to protect private property rights and fight unnecessary government regulation. For example, as a member of the 106th Congress, I voted for the Private Property Rights Implementation Act to give greater access to federal courts for individuals with property grievances against the government. In March 2004, I vetoed S. 560, the Life Sciences Act, in part because it extended the awesome power of eminent domain to dozens of new entities by including all state institutions of higher learning. In May 2004, I signed into law H. 4130 – commonly referred to as "The Small Business Regulatory Relief Act" – to require state agencies to consider their impact on small business before they issue final regulations. In June 2005, I vetoed S. 97 because it opened the door for more property, including agricultural, to be declared blighted or abandoned and subsequently condemned.

Given the importance of protecting private property rights, I recognize the need for a uniform approach to takings that is consistent with the overall purposes of the just compensation provision of Article 1, Section 13 of the South Carolina Constitution. Unfortunately, for the three specific reasons set forth below, I do not believe H. 3381 represents that uniform approach.
In my judgment, at least part of the reason why H. 3381 is not a consistent approach to the question of takings stems from the fact that the public debate on this particular bill has taken place in the narrow context of special legislation affecting one particular industry – an approach to legislative debate which, in my opinion, does not fit with the spirit of Article III, Section 34, IX of the South Carolina Constitution, which provides that: "In all other cases where general law can be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted …"

A broader public debate on the issue of just compensation for takings is now taking place in the General Assembly in connection with the eminent domain bills pending in the House and Senate (H. 4502, H. 4505, S. 1029, S. 1030 and S. 1031), and it is my hope and expectation that the three specific concerns I have in regard to H. 3381 will be considered as that broader public debate moves forward. Accordingly, I am hereby returning H. 3381, R. 233 without my approval for the following reasons:

First, the bill would not treat billboard owners and billboard tenants as we treat other property owners and other business tenants. This bill seeks to level the playing field by putting billboards on par with other asset classes but actually serves to set billboards apart. H. 3381 would treat billboards as real property for compensation, while they would be con-sidered as personal property for taxing purposes.

As a matter of public policy, I believe billboards should be treated as we treat other property owners, but not put in a position superior to homeowners, farmers and other businesses. Currently, billboard owners pay personal property taxes based on the sign’s original cost less depreciation, and accordingly, just compensation is determined in the same way. Likewise, if the government takes a home to build a road, one value system for real property is applied for taxes and compensation. In effect, H. 3381 would give billboard owners the tax benefits of being classified as personal property and the just compensation benefits of being classified as real property which is not something enjoyed by the other asset classes just listed.

Second, I do not think that we should have one standard for state government and another standard for local government. H. 3381 would establish a double standard in that the new compensation requirements for removing billboards would apply only to local governments, not state agencies.

Again, I think we ought to treat government at different levels consistently. Under H. 3381, local governments are held to a higher standard than the state when calculating just compensation, in that local governments are required to utilize the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practices, including a number of mandatory considerations, when calculating the amount of just compensation due the billboard owner, whereas the state is not. I do not believe it is good public policy to maintain two sets of pricing – one for state government and another for local governments. I think when we look at something as fundamental as private property rights they should be consistently administered.

Third, I think we need to be careful about saying we believe in Home Rule as a governing principle, but then reverse local governments’ decisions when they disagree with the state on an issue like this one. With a retroactive effective date of April 14, 2005, the bill would invalidate at least seven billboard ordinances that were passed legally by local governments. I believe that tossing out the ordinances of one group of local governments while respecting the ordinances of others – both of which were passed subject to the laws in place at that time – raises once again the uniformity issue that has caused me to struggle with this bill. Why should two local governments, under the same circumstances and afforded the same privileges of Home Rule, be treated differently?

Finally, as a matter of consistency, I believe that this bill undermines the very principle it purports to represent. By limiting the use of billboards by owners, certain provisions of this bill essentially constitute a regulatory taking without providing for just compensation – quite the opposite, I believe, of what the bill seeks to achieve. In keeping with the notion of federalism, I believe that all levels of government have to more clearly define their roles and responsibilities, and the way a community looks and feels should fundamentally be a local municipal or county decision. I do not believe it is the role of the state legislature to determine community standards from Columbia by regulating the content of billboards in the many towns and counties across South Carolina.

For these reasons, I am hereby vetoing and returning without my approval H. 3381.

Sincerely,
Mark Sanford
Governor

Having pointedly, insultingly ignored that, here’s how the  lawmakers voted (and if you’d like to find out how to contact individual lawmakers, go here for senators and here for House members; if you’re not sure which ones represent you, look it up here):

The 28-13 roll call by which the South Carolina Senate voted to override Gov. Mark Sanford’s veto of a bill making it harder for local governments to force the removal of billboards.
   A "yes" vote was a vote to override the veto, and a "no" vote was a vote to let the veto stand.
   Voting "yes" were 9 Democrats and 19 Republicans.
   Voting "no" were 8 Democrats and 5 Republicans.
   Not voting were 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans.

Democrats Voting "Yes"
   Anderson, Greenville; Elliott, North Myrtle Beach; Ford, Charleston; Land, Manning; Matthews, Bowman; Moore, Clearwater; Patterson, Columbia; Reese, Boiling Springs; Williams, Marion.

Republicans Voting "Yes"
   Alexander, Walhalla; Bryant, Anderson; Cleary, Murrells Inlet; Cromer, Prosperity; Fair, Greenville; Grooms, Bonneau; Hawkins, Spartanburg; Knotts, West Columbia; Leatherman, Florence; Martin, Pickens; McConnell, Charleston; O’Dell, Ware Shoals; Peeler, Gaffney; Rankin, Myrtle Beach; Ritchie, Spartanburg; Ryberg, Aiken; Scott, Summerville; Thomas, Fountain Inn; Verdin, Laurens.

Democrats Voting "No"
   Drummond, Ninety Six; Hutto, Orangeburg; Leventis, Sumter; Lourie, Columbia; Malloy, Hartsville; McGill, Kingstree; Sheheen, Camden; Short, Chester.

Republicans Voting "No"
   Campsen, Isle of Palms; Courson, Columbia; Gregory, Lancaster; Hayes, Rock Hill; Richardson, Hilton Head Island.

Not Voting
   Democrats: Jackson, Hopkins; Pinckney, Ridgeland; Setzler, West Columbia.
   Republicans: Mescher, Pinopolis; Smith, Greer.

—————————————————————————–
The 78-25 roll call by which the South Carolina House voted to override Gov. Mark Sanford’s veto of a bill making it harder for local governments to force the removal of billboards.
   A "yes" vote was a vote to override the veto, and a "no" vote was a vote to let the veto stand.
   Voting "yes" were 29 Democrats and 49 Republicans.
   Voting "no" were 13 Democrats and 12 Republicans.
   Not voting were 6 Democrats and 14 Republicans.

Democrats Voting "Yes"
   Allen, Greenville; Anderson, Georgetown; Anthony, Union; Branham, Lake City; G. Brown, Bishopville; J. Brown, Columbia; Clyburn, Aiken; Cobb-Hunter, Orangeburg; Coleman, Winnsboro; Govan, Orangeburg; Hayes, Hamer; J. Hines, Lamar; Hodges, Green Pond; Hosey, Barnwell; Howard, Columbia; Jefferson, Pineville; Jennings, Bennettsville; Kennedy, Greeleyville; Mack, North Charleston; McCraw, Gaffney; Moody-Lawrence, Rock Hill; J.H. Neal, Hopkins; Neilson, Darlington; Ott, St. Matthews; Phillips, Gaffney; Rhoad, Branchville; Rutherford, Columbia; F.N. Smith, Greenville; Vick, Chesterfield.

Republicans Voting "Yes"
   Altman, Charleston; Bailey, St. George; Barfield, Conway; Cato, Travelers Rest; Ceips, Beaufort; Chalk, Hilton Head Island; Chellis, Summerville; Clark, Swansea; Clemmons, Myrtle Beach; Coates, Florence; Cooper, Piedmont; Davenport, Boiling Springs; Delleney, Chester; Duncan, Clinton; Edge, North Myrtle Beach; Frye, Batesburg-Leesville; Haley, Lexington; Hamilton, Taylors; Hardwick, Surfside Beach; Harrell, Charleston; Harrison, Columbia; Haskins, Greenville; Hinson, Goose Creek; Hiott, Pickens; Huggins, Columbia; Leach, Greer; Littlejohn, Spartanburg; Mahaffey, Lyman; Martin, Anderson; Merrill, Daniel Island; Norman, Rock Hill; Perry, Aiken; E.H. Pitts, Lexington; M.A. Pitts, Laurens; Rice, Easley; Sandifer, Seneca; Simrill, Rock Hill; Skelton, Six Mile; G.M. Smith, Sumter; G.R. Smith, Simpsonville; W.D. Smith, Spartanburg; Talley, Spartanburg; Taylor, Laurens; Thompson, Anderson; Townsend, Anderson; Tripp, Mauldin; White, Anderson; Witherspoon, Conway; Young, Summerville.

Democrats Voting "No"
   Battle, Nichols; Bowers, Brunson; R. Brown, Hollywood; Emory, Lancaster; Funderburk, Camden; Kirsh, Clover; McLeod, Little Mountain; Miller, Pawleys Island; J.M. Neal, Kershaw; Rivers, Ridgeland; J.E. Smith, Columbia; Weeks, Sumter; Whipper, North Charleston.

Republicans Voting "No"
   Agnew, Abbeville; Ballentine, Irmo; Bannister, Greenville; Brady, Columbia; Cotty, Columbia; Hagood, Mt. Pleasant; Limehouse, Charleston; Lucas, Hartsville; Scarborough, Charleston; D.C. Smith, North Augusta; Toole, West Columbia; Umphlett, Moncks Corner.

Those Not Voting
   Democrats: Bales, Eastover; Breeland, Charleston; M. Hines, Florence; Mitchell, Spartanburg; Parks, Greenwood; Scott, Columbia;
   Republicans: Bingham, West Columbia; Dantzler, Goose Creek; Herbkersman, Bluffton; Loftis, Greenville; McGee, Florence; Owens, Pickens; Pinson, Greenwood; Sinclair, Spartanburg; J.R. Smith, Langley; Stewart, Aiken; Vaughn, Taylors; Viers, Myrtle Beach; Walker, Landrum; Whitmire, Walhalla.

Silly me, expecting maturity

15 Replies

Well, let’s all just slap our needs, throw our heads back, and engage in prolonged belly laughter over my description of the S.C. Senate as "somewhat more mature" than the House. Sure, the House asserted its reckless foolishness first, but the Senate didn’t waste any time, either.

Well, I should have known better. That’s all there is to it.

But you’d think that even lawmakers who are completely within the thrall of the billboard industry would pause a moment when they see Phil Leventis, of all people, supporting a Mark Sanford veto. Those guys never agree on much of anything. If both of them see the wisdom in letting local communities set their own standards, why can’t the rest of them.

Oops, silly me again — using words like "wisdom" in such a context.

Time’s a-wastin’

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Talk about quick. I had not even hit the "save" button on this item, which predicted that the S.C. House would override Gov. Mark Sanford’s eminently sensible veto of their bill to handcuff local governments for the sake of the billboard industry as soon as today, when they went ahead and did it.

That’s the thing that gets me about these guys. If you want them to do something smart and strategic that might make South Carolina a better place, such as guaranteeing equality of educational opportunity for all, or restructuring state government to make it more efficient and politically accountable, they just can’t find the time.

But given the opportunity to do something dumb and obnoxious, they fall all over themselves and send it over to the Senate before anybody can holler "Don’t!"

You go, Governor

3 Replies

Bully for Gov. Mark Sanford!

By vetoing the bill pushed through the Legislature by the billboard industry that would have required local governments to reimburse them at exorbitant rates if local communities decide to clean up billboard clutter, the governor has struck a blow for that which is right and true.

To the industry, this is about billboards. That’s not what it’s about to me or to my colleagues on the editorial board. Quite frankly, I don’t have any big beef against billboards; I often find them interesting, and a nice relief from the tedium of the open road. I’m sorry I don’t recall ever having seen a Burma Shave sign before they disappeared into pop culture history.

But if a community decides they are a blight, it should be able to do something about it. For that matter, if a mere neighborhood doesn’t want them, it should be able to appeal to its government — its local government — for a zoning change that would ban them.

This is a fundamental tenet of the proper roles of different levels of government. For that matter, it is allegedly a fundamental tenet of Republicans and others who call themselves "conservatives:" That government closest to the people governs best, and the bigger government should butt out.

But "Republican" lawmakers are South Carolina legislators before they are republicans. And the S.C. General Assembly has never believed in Home Rule. Ever since it had its arms twisted to pass the Home Rule Act in the mid-70s, it has done everything it could to undermine it, and to retain control of matters that are purely, obviously, local in nature.

The governor put it well: "I do not believe it is the role of the state Legislature to determine community standards from Columbia." Neither do I, governor. Neither does any sensible person who cares about good government.

And yet, look for lawmakers to respond to this veto as quickly and as obnoxiously as possible. Don’t be surprised if the House overrides the governor’s action as soon as today. I am less certain what the somewhat more mature Senate will do.

The ‘Scoop on Scoppe’

37 Replies

Scoppe_1Oops. I almost forgot that my colleague Cindi Scoppe’s column today promised that you could find, right here on my blog, the item that the anti-tax folks were circulating about her. Here it is, as e-mailed to her (be sure not to miss the real knee-slapper about how these folks "have not noticed her complaining about
the unmentioned tax
on the poor, the lottery."):

Chairman’s
Opinion –
February 1, 2006

The hypocritical scoop on Scoppe

    The battle to secure and preserve true home ownership for the citizens of South Carolina has proven itself to be long, and hard.   
    My ten year concern over this matter – based first on the simple concept that we should not have to “rent” our homes from government – has grown far beyond my original basis of conviction.  Because property taxes levied collectively upon South Carolina’s homes have virtually doubled within three years, my initial point of principle now pales in comparison to the financial hardships that have surmounted tens of thousands of homeowners in South Carolina.
    Quite honestly, this effort illustrates the struggle of South Carolina’s lawmakers as they continuously try to balance the will and voting ramifications of their districts against the campaign-funding lobbyists and special interests.
    The latter-mentioned forces are more than enough to place the underfunded citizens groups at a disadvantage.  But there is another force with which we must also do battle:  the liberal news media.
    From Greenville to Charleston to Florence to Aiken, they aid and abet the effort to maintain the property tax status quo.  Borne in the left-leaning colleges of journalism and promulgating their views of a “correct society” for South Carolina, they spin their webs to protect their beloved big government bureaucracies.
    Out of this journalistic jungle stands one above the others.  Her one woman crusade against real home ownership has been a sight to behold.  She is none other than that editorialist extraordinaire of The State newspaper, Cindi Scoppe.
     Were her idea of journalistic achievement the infuriation of the masses, she should cautiously be satisfied with self.
     It is one thing to share an opinion in this land of (diminishing) freedoms, but to compromise one’s viewpoints with innate, blatant hypocrisy is an exercise in self relegation.
    One of the most often used mantras of those who oppose a (in this case revenue neutral) tax swap is the argument that the poor will suffer disproportionately.   Rolling down the grocery tax was a tactic of equalization that negated that argument. Habitually leaving that component out of the equation, perhaps Ms. Scoppe should look to the idea’s point of origin – the citizens group that formulated what became that unmentionable touchstone, Senate Bill 880.
     Relying on reports from liberal-minded and left-leaning think tanks is another sure way to set up oneself for compromise.   To begin with, the reports from her revered Holly Ulbrich, self-proclaimed tax expert and writer of tax papers that are swallowed as gospel by bureaucrats alike, are nowhere guaranteed to be entirely rock solid. 
    Case in point is the fact that Ms. Ulbrich has of late had a somewhat difficult time defending some of her stances when challenged by certain, knowledgeable citizens.  More revealing, Ulbrich’s statements are made as a member of the Strom Thurmond Institute.  We have recently learned that just because she states opinion, that is not necessarily the majority opinion within The Institute.  However, based on public delivery, one would never guess, would they?  Lesson for Cindi – don’t hang on Holly’s every word.  Her years of working within bureaucracy might just have skewed her vision.
    While seizing upon such data as included in the Miley Report, she did get one thing right, and subsequently proved one of our long thought contentions.  Such reports, sponsored by those like the SC Chamber of Commerce, habitually come out in favor of that group’s prior stances.   No different here.
    Amongst all Ms. Scoppe’s favorite reports and studies, the McCall Study is absent.  It shows, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and The Census which includes (southeastern) average family spending data, a household with a property tax bill of $499 (BLS average) with income of $19,187 would have a 2.4% advantage gain, while a household with a property tax bill of  $1,618 and income of $62, 986 would have a lesser percentage gain of 2.2%.   Comparing the latter income to the median South Carolina household income, so much for the “rich” advantage.
    I am not aware of Ms. Scoppe railing on behalf of the lower class against higher gas prices.  Nor the increased cost in food, clothing, medicine, utilities, or especially, property taxes on the poor.  I have not noticed her complaining about the unmentioned tax on the poor, the lottery.  Disagree on that one?   Then just look at who buys the most tickets of chance (while heaven forbid, subsidizing scholarships for the children of the wealthy).
    And I could mention several more points, but space doesn’t allow.
    However, we must visit the street of Ms. Scoppe’s personal residence.  According to public county tax records, Ms. Scoppe is receiving a chunk of tax relief herself.  In addition to her state tax relief of $460, she gets an additional $869 tax credit.   Being true to her stated beliefs, maybe she returns the $869 to the county, or gives it to the poor.
    For by what means does she get the $869 worth of relief?  According to her tax bill – it is from none other than that dreaded tax on the poor – an additional one cent sales tax, by local option. 
    Being the defender of the lower class that she is, how can she abide this travesty?   Why, this is 50 percent of the amount she has determined will send the poor over the edge, and it did not even roll down the grocery tax in the county by one cent to make the sixth cent less regressive!  Even worse, it did nothing toward permanent, constitutional removal of property tax from their homes.  In the words of the Hindenburg reporter, “where is the humanity?”
     Did she editorialize zealously against the local option sales tax before its imposition?  I haven’t had the time to research that, but if not, only one word applies:  shame.
     Lastly, if permanent and meaningful property tax reform fails, we know exactly who to blame.   Should the status quo remain intact, and the trends of the property tax cancer continue to grow, thousands upon thousands of hard working South Carolinians will be forced from their homes. 
     So perhaps not that far in the future, the newly homeless can occupy all the grand school buildings (although those three story atriums relate more to HVAC capacity than to people capacity).  Some might settle for the plush offices of the county and city councils and their thousands of bureaucratic peripherals.  By then the Rutledge Building will be antiquated and abandoned – having been replaced with forty nine (guess why) stories named the Tenenbaum Tower of  Education) – so there is another option. 
     Fling open your eight foot high office doors, Association of Counties, SC Municipal Association, and Chambers of Commerce all across the state.  Your new residents can enjoy their new digs all the while thanking you for forcing them to move in with you. 
    And Ms. Scoppe, hope you have plenty of room down at The State.  Since the newspaper industry will still be profiting from its sweetheart sales tax exemptions, we know you’ll overlook the inconvenience.
Dan Harvell

USC/Clemson column

57 Replies

Gamecock, Tiger team up against caps
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
WEEK BEFORE last, I ran into USC President Andrew Sorensen as he was on his way to an “unprecedented” meeting with House Speaker Bobby Harrell. They were going to talk budgets.
    What was so new about that?
    “Carolina and Clemson are talking to him at the same time,” Dr. Sorensen said. “And we’re using the same numbers.” To those who remember the old days of tigers and chickens fighting like… well, like cats and birds, over funding, this was remarkable. Mr. Harrell was so “overwhelmed,” Dr.Bobby_presidents_1 Sorensen later said, he sent for a photographer to record the event.
    “Jim and I have become increasingly close in terms of… what we want to do and how we want to do it,” Dr. Sorensen said when he and Clemson President James Barker visited the editorial board last week.
    Mr. Barker stressed that this new level of cooperation was “not because of the governor’s ‘tax.’ ”
    In his latest executive budget, Gov. Mark Sanford proposed “a one percent reduction for Clemson, USC, and MUSC that will result in savings of $3,232,091 in general funds to encourage such further collaboration.”
    “Yes,” said Dr. Sorensen, “he takes away a million from each of us to stimulate us to collaborate…. if you can understand the logic in that, please explain it to me.”
    This is not the only area in which the two presidents agreed with each other and disagreed with the governor.
    For instance, there is the governor’s proposed cap on tuition increases. Sounds good, doesn’t it? It would help me out, with my fourth child now in college.
    And I like the governor’s stated goal, which is to force consolidation and reorganization of the state’s non-system of public higher education.
    But are caps a good idea for the state of South Carolina? No, and not just because this isn’t going to convince lawmakers to cut the number of institutions.
    Tuition started shooting up when the Legislature decided to cut back on direct funding of colleges, and give middle-class voters scholarship checks paid for by poor folks suckered into playing the lottery.
    South Carolina’s public colleges have experienced a larger percentage decrease in state funding than those of any other Southern Regional Education Board state over the last decade — a period in which most SREB states increased funding.
    Of the 16 states, only West Virginia funded its colleges at a lower percentage of the regional average last year. South Carolina was at 72.45 percent of that average. North Carolina was at the top end, at 136.95 percent.
    Higher state funding means lower tuition. Not coincidentally, Kiplinger’s recently listed UNC-Chapel Hill as the best deal in the country, measured by quality compared to cost. Out of 130 public colleges listed, Clemson was 24th, and USC 31st — in spite of those tuition increases.
    Or perhaps because of them. The money to improve academics had to come from somewhere. And since the General Assembly has seen fit to turn the money over to the students, via scholarships, that’s where the institutions have turned for funding.
    At USC, said Dr. Sorensen, 96 percent of entering freshmen get “one of the lottery-funded scholarships.” At Clemson, it’s 99 percent. In fact, said Mr. Barker, “At Clemson, not one freshman from South Carolina paid full tuition” this year.
    OK, so the heads of the schools don’t want tuition caps. Big surprise. What about the students? I don’t know about all of them, but some student government leaders at USC sent a letter
to the governor last week asking for a meeting “to make you aware of our concerns with these proposals, as we feel they do not completely address the desires of students.”
    One of the signers, student body Treasurer Tommy Preston, was diplomatic about the governor’s plan when I asked about it, saying that it was “our opinion that there’s just not enough information” to know, but it seemed the caps “potentially could be harmful in the future.”
    Never mind what the treasurer thinks. What does Tommy think?
    “Personally,” he said, “I think our state has a bigger problem with higher education funding.”
    Smart kid, that Tommy.