Category Archives: Spending

Nick Clyburn? or, ‘Hey, Buddy…’

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One thing jumped out at me when I read the piece about Jim Clyburn on today’s front page:

"…Then, he disappears down the restaurant’s narrow stairway, his three-man security detail in tow…."

Apparently, Rep. Clyburn is channeling the Nick Theodore of 20 years ago. This is from a Lee Bandy story of July 20, 1988:

SIX-MAN GUARD RIDICULED
A top state Republican is ridiculing Lt. Gov. Nick Theodore’s security contingent at the convention, but a Theodore spokesman said the six-person contingent is needed.

"While we don’t dispute the need for basic security even for a part-time job, Theodore needs a half-dozen bodyguards like Dolly Parton needs a body lift," State Republican Party Chairman Van Hipp said.

Four SLED agents and two state troopers are in Atlanta with Theodore, SLED Chief Robert Stewart said.

Theodore normally has two SLED agents, but "whatever is requested by the governor or lieutenant governor, we’ll send it," Stewart said.

Theodore spokesman Lyles Glenn said long hours and admission restrictions necessitated the extra manpower.

Spokesman Tucker Eskew said Gov. Carroll Campbell would have three or four bodyguards at the Republican National Convention next month in New Orleans.

Ah, those were the days. I was with Lee at that convention (did I mention that I’m not at this one?), and I well remember Nick’s "command post" in a room on the ground floor of the Days Inn there in Buckhead, from which his ongoing security operation was coordinated via radio.

Poor Nick never did quite live that down. Echoes of his armed force reverberate today through consideration of Andre Bauer’s security expenditures.

Anyway, that was the last part of Mr. Clyburn’s day that grabbed me. Somehow, I think I had more fun following Lindsey Graham around at the GOP shindig four years ago. After all, I got to meet Biff Henderson.

Austin on right track: Tap private sector for lights

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First, I am no Scrooge, any more than is our friend James D. McCallister. While I might be some decades removed from the time of life when Christmas was pure joy, unalloyed by stress and hassle, I am not one to call the season a "humbug." I need no spirit from the past to startle me into remembering the excitement I felt as a child when downtown decorations went up.

But as I think back to the various cities and towns in which my memory’s eye sees those simple wreaths and lights hung from lampposts, I associate those things with local merchants. And so it is that I praise City Manager Charles Austin for suggesting that perhaps it is NOT the job of the city’s taxpayers to come up with $140,800 to put up holiday lights and decorations in downtown Columbia.

"There are other ways to do this besides the city," says Mr. Austin. Indeed.

Of course, the sorts of merchants with whom you might expect to collaborate on such a thing — the kind that most clearly benefit from the Christmas season (say, Macy’s or Belk) — are rather thin on the ground these days, and in some cases perhaps for the same reason that new lights are needed (the disruption caused by streetscaping).

But before the city government coughs up even such a small amount for decorations, it needs to figure out how to pay for an improved bus system, and deal properly with homelessness. What good are festive lights if they illuminate a human being sleeping on a grate?

How do you say ‘So Gay’ in German?

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Cindi wrote a short editorial for tomorrow about the latest way that our state has found to waste "Competitive Grant" money. In case you haven’t read about it, Rep. Liston Barfield got 100 Gs to entertain German visitors to the Grand Strand, even though some local tourism officials said the money would have been better spent on advertising to promote tourism.

Wanting to jazz up the headline a bit, I sent her an instant message asking, "How do you say ‘So Gay’ in German?"

So far, she hasn’t replied. Maybe Herb can help us with that.

DeMint: Senate passes most bills without debate

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Here’s an interesting fact to know and tell, compliments of Jim DeMint:

For Immediate Release: July 23, 2008
U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina)

CRS Report: 94% of Senate Bills Passed in Secret
855 bills have passed the Senate with no debate, no amendments, no votes
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) released a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) finding that 94 percent of bills the Senate has passed in the 110th Congress have been without a vote, debate or a single amendment. The 855 bills that have been secretly passed spend more than $9 billion, though a final total is not available because many of the bills were rushed through before a cost analysis could be performed.

Senator DeMint: “It would surprise many Americans to learn that the ‘World’s Greatest Deliberative Body’ passes the overwhelming majority of legislation without any debate at all. Democrats think they are entitled to pass bills without debate or votes, and they’ve tried to ram them through right before recess to pressure us to give up. But, Senators shouldn’t fear debate on these important bills. It’s in the best traditions of our republic to demand the Senate actually do its job and have a public debate on bills that expand government and increase the burden on taxpayers. Senator Reid can complain all he wants, but Republicans represent millions of Americans whose voices are being silenced by Democrat strong-arm tactics.”

Dr. Coburn: “The U.S. Senate has a nine percent approval rating because the American people believe that much of our work is done in secret with no debate, no transparency and no accountability.  This report shows that the reality is worse than the public’s fears.  Instead of encouraging open debate, I’m disappointed that Majority Leader Reid often chooses secrecy or demagoguery.  For instance, he has depicted my effort to reduce the number of bills that pass the Senate in secret by ten percent as ‘unprecedented obstruction.’  What is unprecedented and ahistorical, however, is the Majority Leader’s view that Senators should have a king-like right to pass massive spending bills in secret with no debate, no amendments and no recorded vote.”

The CRS report states, “[T]he vast majority of measures passed or agreed to by the Senate so far in the 110th Congress have not received formal parliamentary debate on the floor of the Senate.” This practice, known as “hotlining,” has traditionally been reserved for noncontroversial bills with little to no cost to the taxpayer, like the naming of post offices. However, the practice has been abused to sneak through large bills that cost the taxpayers billions of dollars and have significant policy implications.
    On March 3, 2008, U.S. Senator Richard Durbin stated on the Senate Floor:
    “My good friend, the late Congressman from Oklahoma, Mike Synar, used to say: If you don’t want to fight fires, don’t be a firefighter. If you don’t want to stop crime, don’t be a policeman, and if you don’t want to vote on tough issues, don’t run for Congress.”
    “I agree with him. I don’t like facing tough votes, but it is a part of the job. You ought to at least have enough confidence in your beliefs to cast that vote and go home and explain it.”
    Highlights from the Congressional Research Service Memorandum –  “The Clearance Process in the Senate and Measures Approved in the 110th Congress through June 30, 2008”:
     “Nearly every day the Senate is in session, the majority and minority leaders consult to identify bills and resolutions that have been “cleared” by the Senators in both parties.  A measure is considered cleared if no Senator has informed party leadership … that he or she is opposed to passage of the measure without debate.”

  • Only 56 bills (6%) were passed by vote (53 by roll call vote, 3 by voice vote)
  • 855 bills (94%) were passed by Unanimous Consent (no debate, no vote)
  • 388 were passed by UC on the same day they were introduced
  • 381 were passed by UC without debate
  • 88 were passed by UC with some debate
  • 9 were passed by UC without debate after debate on a Senate companion bill
  • 35% of the bills passed by UC were agreed to in the week before a recess
  • 52% of the bills passed by UC were agreed to during the two weeks before a recess

            ###

Here’s a PDF of the CRS report, and here’s another PDF of graphics that go with it.

Do YOU feel sufficiently stimulated? ’Cause I don’t…

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
WHAT DID you do with your “economic stimulus” check from the government? Did you spend it in a suitably patriotic manner, doing your bit to kick-start the good ol’ U.S. economy?
    You did? Are you sure? I just ask because, as a member of the U.S. economy, I’m feeling a little understimulated.
    But then, I always had doubts about the whole scheme.
    Sort of like with the government’s bailout of Bear Stearns. I’m not a libertarian, not by a long shot, but sometimes I break out with little itchy spots of libertarianism, and one of those itchy spots causes me to ask, Why am I, as a taxpaying member of the U.S. economy, bailing out something called Bear Stearns? I didn’t even know what it was. Even after I’d read about it in The Wall Street Journal, I still could not answer the fundamental question, “If you work at Bear Stearns, what is it that you do all day?” I understand what a fireman does, and if the fire department were about to go under, I’d be one of the first to step forward and say let’s bail it out. Of course, if the fire department wanted me to lend it $29 billion, with a “B,” I might have further questions. Yet that’s what we’ve done for Bear Stearns.
    Apparently Bear Stearns is a financial institution that the federal government considers “too big to fail,” which makes me wonder, if it’s too big to fail, then why does it need to be bailed out?
    But things like this always perplex me. I am not an economist, nor a financial expert, which I’m told is different. Nor am I any kind of a businessman. At my house, I am not allowed to try to balance the checkbook.
    Anyway, while I’m still pondering why you and I and the guy down the street lent $29 billion to bail out this Bear Stearns, along comes Congress and the president wanting to send somewhat more modest checks to you and me and that same guy.
    I’m all for Democrats and Republicans setting aside pointless bickering to do something for the good of the country, but when the economy’s going into the tank, and the Democratic Congress and the Republican president are racing to see which of them can send us the biggest check, sort of like the Three Stooges all trying to get through a door at the same time, I begin to have doubts.
    I start to think, “With the national debt at — wait a sec while I go check the Internet — 9 trillion dollars, and climbing at a rate of more than a Bear Stearns bailout every month, the government is going to send several hundred dollars to every household in the country?”
    It seems that everybody in Washington was acting along the same lines of reasoning as when, in response to attacks upon this country more deadly than Pearl Harbor, we were told to go out and shop, instead of buying bonds or rationing gas or something that would have made sense to an earlier generation. And now, six-and a half years into the War on Terror, some of us weren’t shopping hard enough. So to help us get back into the fight, the government decided to send us all some more ammunition.
    As it got closer to time for me to get my ammo, my martial spirits rose, and I started thinking this was a better and better idea. If my country needed me to shop, I was going to make sure every shot counted. So I did some research.
    Finally, a suitable target presented itself. Week before last, we all went to Memphis for a wedding. The wife and I stayed with Mary, one of her best friends from high school.
    My wife has always held Mary up as one of the smartest in her class — not only a scholar, but a woman of great good sense and practicality. Mary had recently earned some extra money, and had spent it on a 42-inch, 1080-resolution flat-panel HDTV set. It had cost her $800 at Sam’s Club. I studied this item very closely while we were there, flicking back and forth between ball games on the HD channels and the same ball games on mere mortal channels, and came to the inescapable conclusion that Mary was indeed the smartest in her class, and had made an excellent investment — way better than the Bear Stearns thing.
    So by the time we got back from Memphis, I was all in a sweat to get that stimulus check, which would amount to $1,200.
    But when it came, do you know what we spent it on? A hospital bill. Not a hospital bill for major surgery or life-saving emergency treatment, because none of us had needed that, thank God. No, this was for a few X-rays for my daughter’s sprained ankle — for my baby, who was temporarily off my insurance but was covered by a separate policy that we were paying $117 a month for, which seemed like a really good deal until she needed some actual routine medical care.
    When you have five kids between the ages of 19 and 31 in the United States of America, you spend a lot of time holding your breath until they get safe jobs with their own group medical insurance. Two of mine have achieved that status, and both know they’d better not try to actually stimulate the economy by starting their own businesses or anything, because their Dad would have a stroke.
    All of this gets me to thinking… If Congress really and truly wants to help the U.S. economy, maybe, just maybe, it should pass a National Health Plan along the lines of practically every other developed nation on the planet, instead of sending me a check that would barely cover two months worth of premiums on health insurance for my wife and me and only one of my children.
    So Congress, I appreciate the thought, but I’ve got to tell you: Sending me $1,200 to throw into a debt hole that I wouldn’t have if I lived in any other industrialized country just doesn’t cut it.

Get stimulated at thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Jim Clyburn begs to differ on earmarks

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Today’s op-ed piece by Jim Clyburn is one of those responses that make it hard to recognize the original piece to which they are "responding." In this case, a lot of that is a result of the personality and political style of the man whose name appears on the piece. I invite you to go read the original editorial.

Mr. Clyburn asserts that The State "doesn’t understand" earmarks, but doesn’t support that. In fact, it’s hard to square this assertion in his piece:

 The State editors’ position on earmarking is based on erroneous
reporting, a lack of knowledge of the facts and a disregard for the
constitutional authority granted to Congress to have power over the
purse. I have always said and will reiterate here that my personal
agenda is to improve the quality of life for the residents of the 6th
Congressional District.

… with this passage from ours:

Mr. Clyburn did not invent congressional earmarks — a point his critics
too often overlook. They are no doubt as old as our federal budgeting
process, and their largest growth spurt came while Republicans
controlled the House, the Senate and the presidency. In a perverse way,
the fact that he is the most successful earmarker in the S.C.
delegation speaks to his clout. And it’s hard to argue when he says he
is serving the best interests of his constituents by pumping federal money into a district that was drawn to include our state’s poorest areas.

Indeed, our editorial was less about Mr. Clyburn and his particular earmarks, and more about the fact that such a system exists.

To find our real area of disagreement, look to the headlines. The one on our editorial is "Clyburn earmarks a microcosm of broken system." The one on the op-ed is "Earmarks serve the public good." And once he gets past his inaccurate complaints about what we said, he gets to the core of the issue, which is that he believes the proper way to appropriate federal funds for infrastructure and the like is via the interested guidance of influential members of Congress, not "unqualified political appointees," which I suppose is the Democratic moral equivalent of the nonpolitical "bureaucrats" that Republicans gripe about. (If all else fails, Blame Bush.)

Finally, I must take issue with the assertion that “if programs that get funded through earmarks were strong enough to stand on their merits, there would be no need for the local congressman to stick a note in the budget demanding that they be funded.” Let’s take a recent Washington Post report that illustrates what happened last fiscal year when there was a moratorium on earmarks.

In the absence of congressional action, funds in the Transportation Department’s discretionary budget were allocated by unqualified political appointees at the department — with no background or experience in public transportation — who chose to spend nearly $1 billion of taxpayer money on toll road experiments in urban cities. All the money was spent on seven projects in five states, not including South Carolina.

No money returned to the national treasury. No investments in rural communities. No investments in mass transit. No equity or fairness. It was a case of the triumph of ideology over the public good. The year before, thanks to earmarks, the same pot of money was spent on 442 grants in 47 states, and this year it is being spent on 313 projects in 43 states — and South Carolina has benefited from these funds.

We disagree. Mr. Clyburn sets up a false choice — either the old way of doing things (disbursement by political influence, which benefits the district of a guy who now has loads of such influence), or wicked Bush Administration privatization schemes. (At least, that seems to be the case. I’m assuming here that the WashPost piece to which he refers is the March 17 one headlined "Letting the Market Drive Transportation; Bush Officials Criticized for Privatization." That seems to fit his description.)

The proper way to select priorities for spending transportation funds is to let the NONpolitical professionals — i.e., "bureaucrats" — choose the specific projects most needed across the nation, according to overall criteria established by the Congress. Or don’t spend the money at all.

South Carolina has had a century of trying it the Clyburn way — Mendel Rivers, for instance, was no slouch at throwing federal largesse in the Palmetto State’s direction — and we’re still poor, still lagging behind the rest of the nation. Mr. Clyburn believes his approach is different in that it directs the money to previously neglected areas and constituencies, and it is. But that doesn’t make his the best way for Congress to set federal spending priorities.

Demise of the Executive Institute

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Here’s a veto that I missed last week. I guess I should have noticed it, since it was one of those rare ones that the Legislature actually sustained:

I am very sorry to have to report to you that funding for the Executive Institute was vetoed by the Governor and the veto was sustained by the House of Representatives.  Therefore the Institute will not begin it’s 19th year in August as planned and we will shut down the operation at the end of this fiscal year.

I would like to thank all of you for the friendship, enthusiasm and support you have shown us over the years.  You are the major reason for the success we have had.  Thanks so much for 18 great years. 

Tina

Tina Joseph Hatchell
Director
Executive Institute

Alongside such biggies as the SCHIP program and indigent defense, this one was easy to overlook. But now that I know, I’m sorry to hear it.

I’m an alumnus of the Executive Institute, class of ’94. Back then, the director of the program was Phil Grose. That was thee year that I was getting ready to come up to the editorial department from news (end of ’93, beginning of ’94). My predecessor Tom McLean paid for me to do the program, because back in those days, we had money for such professional development. Primarily, the Institute existed to train up-and-coming managers in state government, although there was always a smattering of private sector folks for leavening — which helped give the government types exposure to the private sector, and vice versa. The interaction itself was educational.

It was particularly useful because of the Institute’s teaching method. It was run in conjunction with the Kennedy School at Harvard, and the instructors led the class through real-life case studies, in which we were asked to put ourselves in the places of the public administrators who had navigated their way through a variety of crises and challenges.

Being the newspaper guy, I had to overcome a great deal of distrust and wariness on the part of my classmates, which was essential to the kind of interaction that the classes called for. Middle managers in government see press types as natural enemies, for a simple reason: Newspapers don’t write about what they do except when there is a problem, consequently we help create the phenomenon we see in the comments on this blog — a lot of folks in the electorate who only see them in terms of the worst mistakes that anyone like them has ever made, because that’s what gets written about.

But we managed to get a good enough rapport going to have some pretty good discussions going. Frequently, my role was to try to convince people that having the problem (in the case study) get into the newspapers was not the end of the world. It was interesting, and I think helpful to having a better-run state government.

Does that mean I think lawmakers should have overridden the veto. No, not if they were going to leave the prisons, mental health, our roads and 4K all underfunded. But if they were going to override either this or their pet "Competitive" Grants Program, they should have overridden this.

So guess which one they overrode — "overwhelmingly"?

Marking time at the State House

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
IN THE LAST 15 minutes of the 2008 session of the S.C. General Assembly, there were three things going on in the House chamber: The speaker and clerks and others up on the podium were fussing about finishing important paperwork of some sort. All of the other House members were wandering about on the floor, socializing, saying goodbye, slapping backs, shaking hands, sharing stories and so forth.
    All, that is, but two members, Reps. Chris Hart and Walt McLeod. Mr. Hart was at the lectern. Mr. McLeod was at his desk. Their microphoned voices rose indistinctly above the buzz of their milling, meandering colleagues. A sample of their vaudevillian dialogue:

Rep. McLEOD: Is it correct to say that, at the present time, our state prison system is operating at a deficit?
Rep. HART: That’s absolutely correct, and I’m glad you mentioned that, Mr. McLeod…

    They were discussing a two-part proposal made by Attorney General Henry McMaster earlier in the session. He had proposed to do away with what’s left of parole in our state prisons, while simultaneously creating a new “middle court” that would punish first-time, nonviolent wrongdoers in ways other than sending them to prison.
    What Messrs. McLeod and Hart were teaming up to say — between Mr. McLeod’s friendly, leading questions and Mr. Hart’s “thank you for that good question” answers — was that it would be crazy to do the former without first doing the latter. (Their language was more polite; I’m just cutting to the chase.)
    That’s because, as Mr. Hart explained, South Carolina already did away with parole for violent offenders long ago. And since then, we’ve been jamming more and more prisoners (violent and nonviolent) into our prisons, while cutting the budget of the Corrections Department year after year. We now spend less per prisoner than any other state in the union, while locking up more of our population than most. We lock up more prisoners with fewer guards, and make basically no effort to rehabilitate them. So our prisons are increasingly dangerous places — for the guards, for the prisoners and for those of us on the outside who depend on the worst criminals staying inside.
    Some of you will say, Oh, isn’t that just like a couple of liberal Democrats, prattling on about mollycoddling prisoners. If you say that, you’re not paying attention.
    One of Gov. Mark Sanford’s biggest gripes about the budget the Legislature just passed — and remember, this is Mark Sanford, the most fanatical enemy of “growing government” ever to enter the State House — was that it does not spend enough to run our prisons safely and responsibly.
    He is guided in this by his hyper-conservative director of Corrections, Jon Ozmint. (I once toured a prison with Mr. Ozmint, a former prosecutor. He kept striking up chats with the prisoners. He’d ask, “Who sent you here?” The prisoner would name a judge. Mr. Ozmint would say, “Oh, Judge So-and-So! He’s a really good judge! He’s really fair, isn’t he?” The prisoner would gape at Mr. Ozmint as though he were a Martian.) Mr. Ozmint, after years of refusing to complain on the record, wrote an op-ed piece this year to beg lawmakers not to abolish parole, suggesting that if they did, he and his shrunken staff would not be able to keep the lid on the pressure-cooker.
    Everybody who is familiar with these facts knows these things. Henry McMaster knows these things. So why did he propose something that flew in the face of the facts (abolishing parole), at the same time as proposing something that made perfect sense in light of the same facts (alternative sentencing for nonviolent offenders, to reserve prison space for the worst criminals)?
    Because he is a political realist. He knows the South Carolina General Assembly. “No parole” was the tooth-rotting sweetener to help the alternative-sentencing medicine go down.
    The good news here is that the Legislature didn’t abolish parole this year. The bad news is that it didn’t provide for alternative sentencing, either. What it did, in the end, was neglect the whole problem as usual, sending more people behind bars while we pay less and less to keep them there.
    It was the same approach lawmakers took to early-childhood education; our crumbling, unsafe roads; our emergency rooms crammed with mental patients; our struggling rural schools — leave it all to fester.
    What did lawmakers do this year besides throw up their hands over the lack of money, after having cut taxes by about a billion dollars over the last few sessions? Well, they passed an “immigration reform” bill that will accomplish two things: force businesses to do a lot of paperwork, and enable lawmakers to tell the voters in this election year that they had “done something” about illegal immigration. And boy did they spend a lot of time and energy on that.
    Back to Mr. Hart and Mr. McLeod. If the whole abolish parole/alternative sentencing thing was already dead for the year, why were they going on so earnestly? Well, they’re just that way; they’re very earnest guys. It was pointless, really — perhaps even a bit priggish of them. They knew they were just marking time and so did everybody else, so you can’t blame anybody for ignoring them. It was just political theater; they were actors in a play with a “what if?” plot, as in, “What if lawmakers realistically and intelligently engaged the actual challenges facing their state?”
    Only an easily distracted fool who didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on would have paid attention to them at all.

See the video of Hart and McLeod here.

Free Thomas Ravenel

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Ravenel2

Did I get your attention? I expect I did. Well, calm down. I’m not here to praise Thomas Ravenel, or defend him.

But I am here to raise the question: Why do we want to pay to feed, clothe and house him for the next 10 months?

This brings me to the larger question — one of the biggest facing the state of South Carolina, in fact: Why do we want to imprison nonviolent offenders? Sure, we may do it cheaper than any other state in the union, but even then it’s a huge waste of resources that could be better spent. And our cheapskate, insecure way of running prisons is going to bite us in the long run (actually, it already does, in terms of recidivism rates).

This is a recurring theme. Today, we raised the question on the local level — Columbia is finally having to own up to the fact that its penchant for locking people up for more offenses than the county does actually costs money.

Of course, T-Rav is neither state nor local, but we pay federal taxes, too. And it’s hard to imagine a better example of someone who could have paid another way. If you have a multi-millionaire partying on cocaine, why not give him a multi-million-dollar fine? As the sage Billy Ray Valentine said, "You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people." In other words, why isn’t he paying us, instead of the other way around?

That would make a lot more sense than sending him off to commune with Kevin Geddings in Georgia.

AP says S.C. House poised to nix lawmakers’ pension COLA

1 Reply

The Associated Press is reporting that a majority of the subcommittee in whose lap the legislator-pension increase was dumped are saying they want to kill the measure:

{By JIM DAVENPORT}=
{Associated Press Writer}=
   COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina lawmakers are expected to scrap plans to sweeten pension checks for legislators when they meet Tuesday, according to members of the subcommittee debating the increases.
   "This year, we’re not doing employees very good in their regular pay. I don’t see this as a year to be raising ours," Rep. Herb Kirsh said Monday. Three other lawmakers on the five-member House Ways and Means Panel said they also want the pension boost nixed.
   Two weeks ago, the full House gave initial approval to legislation that would add a 2 percent cost of living adjustment for lawmakers’ pensions. The vote came the same day the Senate’s budget-writing committee scuttled raises for state workers in its $7 billion spending plan for next year because of slumping tax collections. The seemingly conflicting moves drew a rebuke from Gov. Mark Sanford and, in an unusual move, the pension boost was sent back to the House Ways and Means Committee the following day.
   Kirsh, who is one of 333 current and former legislators already drawing a retirement check from the system, said he estimated the proposed increase would have added about $6 monthly to the nearly $32,000 annually he gets from the system.
   "We’ve got a pretty good retirement now," said Kirsh, a 78-year-old Democrat from Clover.
   Republican Reps. Jay Lucas, of Hartsville; Chip Limehouse, of Charleston; and Brian White, of Anderson, all said they also opposed the pension boost. Limehouse said he first thought the legislation only offered state employee raises.
   "No matter how woefully underpaid we may be, it’s easier just not to have all the controversy," Limehouse said.
   The pension proposal "sends a horrible message in a terrible budget year. I think the retirement the General Assembly gets is fair, to be honest with," Lucas said.
   Kirsh also said Rep. Denny Neilson, the subcommittee’s chairwoman, also was backing him. She did not immediately return a message Monday.
   Eliminating the legislative retirement increase still won’t address a key concern Sanford raised.
   Sanford said the cost of living adjustment for the rest of the state’s retirees ignores serious problems with the retirement system because it is tied to changing assumptions about how much investments will grow in the state’s retirement system.
   Sanford two weeks ago said he is "not willing to stake our retirees’ benefits and our taxpayers’ futures on the hope that this bill’s predictions come true, and I’d urge the House not to either."

Here’s hoping Dav has it right.

Good for Nikki

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Still catching up on the e-mail, and just now saw this one from yesterday:

For Immediate Release
Contact: State Rep. Nikki Haley

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

REPRESENTATIVE NIKKI HALEY INTRODUCES THE 2008 SPENDING ACCOUNTABILITY ACT

COLUMBIA, S.C. – State Representative Nikki Haley today announced that she has introduced legislation that requires a roll call vote on any legislation that expends taxpayer dollars. Currently, the Legislature can appropriate funds with a simple voice vote.

“Taxpayers deserve the right to see the spending habits of their legislators,” said Haley. “Over the past three years alone, state government spending has grown by over 40%. I believe the 2008 Spending Accountability Act will encourage legislators, myself included, to take a long, hard look before committing to spending taxpayer dollars.”

Haley said roll call votes on taxpayer spending remove any confusion on where individual legislators stand.

“We should never have another incident like we did last week where something as important as cost of living adjustments for retirees and legislators is not clearly on the record. Voters have the fundamental right to know how their legislators are spending their hard-earned money, and when they do, we can expect to see wasteful spending take a dramatic downturn,” said Haley.

        ###

Good for you, Nikki.

How lawmakers voted on their pension COLA

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Cindi sent me the following stuff to post as a supplement to her column today:

    Here’s the recorded vote from last Wednesday, when the House sent the bill that contained the legislative COLA back to committee, in hopes that the committee will remove the legislative COLA and report the bill back out, so it can be passed. This is a convoluted way of doing things, but it’s the only option representatives had available at this point other than 1) killing the entire bill or 2) passing it.
    A yes vote was to send the bill back to committee. A no vote was to allow it to pass with the legislative COLA included.
    The bill is H.4673.

Yeas 58; Nays 51

Those who voted in the affirmative are:
Agnew                  Allen                  Anthony
Ballentine             Bannister              Bedingfield
Bingham                Bowen                  G. Brown
Cato                   Chalk                  Coleman
Crawford               Delleney               Erickson
Frye                   Funderburk             Gullick
Hagood                 Haley                  Hamilton
Harrell                Harrison               Haskins
Hiott                  Hodges                 Hutson
Kelly                  Kirsh                  Leach
Limehouse              Lowe                   Lucas
McLeod                 Miller                 Mitchell
Moss                   Mulvaney               Neilson
Owens                  E. H. Pitts            Rice
Sandifer               Shoopman               Simrill
D. C. Smith            F. N. Smith            G. M. Smith
G. R. Smith            J. R. Smith            Spires
Stavrinakis            Talley                 Thompson
Toole                  Walker                 Witherspoon
Young

Total–58

Those who voted in the negative are:

Alexander              Anderson               Bales
Battle                 Bowers                 Brady
Branham                Brantley               Breeland
R. Brown               Clemmons               Clyburn
Cobb-Hunter            Cooper                 Daning
Dantzler               Duncan                 Gambrell
Govan                  Harvin                 Hayes
Herbkersman            Hosey                  Howard
Jefferson              Kennedy                Littlejohn
Loftis                 Mack                   Mahaffey
Merrill                J. H. Neal             Ott
Parks                  Perry                  Phillips
Pinson                 M. A. Pitts            Scarborough
Scott                  Sellers                Skelton
Stewart                Taylor                 Umphlett
Vick                   Weeks                  Whipper
White                  Whitmire               Williams

Total–51

House backs up on lawmakers’ pension COLA

15 Replies

Maybe it’s a good thing I used Cindi’s column in my usual Sunday slot.

Today, the House took action that will at least ALLOW the provision slipping in a cost-of-living increase on lawmakers’ ridiculously generous pension plan to be removed from the larger bill. Cindi explains what happened as follows:

An explainer: For procedural reasons, it would have been all but impossible for the House to remove the legislative cola from the bill today. So its only options were to 1) give the bill 3rd reading as is; 2) kill the bill; or 3) recommit the bill to committee so that the committee could remove the legislative cola (or not, if it so chose) and send it back to the House for debate. The third option was, in my opinion, the only responsible one. And that’s what the House did.

And hey, how often does the House move to do something that will please both the newspaper AND the governor? Here’s what Mark Sanford had to say:

"I want to thank everyone in the House – and in particular Mick Mulvaney who made the recommit motion – who agreed that this issue of backdoor pay increases needed to be revisited," Gov. Sanford said. "As this bill goes back through the committee process, we believe the first order of business should be to strip out this legislative pay perk. While we still have a number of concerns about the rest of this bill as well, today’s vote showed that a majority in the House have enough respect for taxpayers to put the breaks on this terrible idea. If this provision does, however, somehow survive the committee process again, we believe that at a minimum House members need to take a recorded vote on the matter so that taxpayers can hold them accountable for their actions."

Legislators about to sweeten their perk (quietly)

18 Replies

As the week drew to an end, it became more and more apparent that, tied up as I was getting the Saturday Opinion Extra thing done, any column that I did was going to be a rush job and probably not worthy of a Sunday.

Fortunately, Cindi Scoppe already had a column done that was better than either of the ideas I was kicking around (one would have been about the continuing dialogue we’ve had here about the cognitive divide between black and white over the Rev. Wright, the other would have been a look at the Pennsylvania primary, leading with an anecdote from when I was up there recently).

Cindi had written again about the absurdly generous pensions that S.C. lawmakers provide for themselves out of our pockets. More particularly, it was about the fact that they are about to vote themselves an increase in those pensions without so much as a debate.

    But the House is poised not only to approve the plan this week, but to do so without a bit of debate. That would have happened on Thursday, but for a procedural delay. And the Senate might not be far behind.
    Representatives are poised to act without so much as acknowledging what they’re doing. That means some legislators won’t realize what they’re doing — and with a few exceptions, those who do realize what they’re doing can get away with claiming ignorance.
    Or rather they could have. The purpose of this column is to make sure everybody — not just voters, but legislators as well — knows what’s happening, so there can be no claims of innocence.

Follow the link to read the rest of it. Along with the column was this informative box:

How generous is it?
• For every dollar state employees contribute to their pensions, the taxpayers kick in $1.27; for every dollar legislators pay into their system, taxpayers pay $3.91.
• The average pension for career state employees is $17,536 — 53 percent of their final salary. The average pension for our part-time legislators is $18,218 — or 102 percent of their pay.
• Former legislators can buy “service credit” at the same super-subsidized rate after they leave office. A legislator who leaves office after eight years can buy credit for $2,280 a year for the next 22 years, and then collect an annual pension of $32,980. He will recoup his “investment” in three years, and clear $33,000 a year in profit for the rest of his life.
State employees get no subsidy if they buy additional credit after they quit working.
• Former legislators can start drawing a full pension at age 60. That means an extra $91,000, on average.

It occurs to me that after reading this stuff, you might want to contact your representatives in the Legislature. To find out how to do that, go to www.scstatehouse.net and select “Find your legislator” on the left. Or call 1-888-VOTE-SMART.

More good news: Cigarette tax hike takes leap forward

53 Replies

First the smoking ban thing, now this…

A little bird just called to tell me that the Senate Finance Committee just voted, 14-11, to increase the state cigarette tax by 50 per pack, taking us to 57 cents (yes, currently it is only 7 cents, the lowest in the nation).

The vote followed three hours of debate, but the only person who actually seemed to be against the increase itself was Greg Ryberg. So what did they argue about all that time? Well, they argued about what lawmakers tend to really care about — how to spend the money. Of the $158 million the increase will raise per year, $5 million will go to smoking cessation efforts, the rest to Medicaid (which means getting a federal match). The spending decision was on a vote of 12-11.

Two important things to add:

  1. This is indexed to inflation (which the old tax wasn’t), so as cigarettes go up in price, so will the tax.
  2. The tax will also apply to those little "cigars," which are really just brown cigarettes. So no more loophole there.

If this gets full Senate approval, it will have to be reconciled with the 35-cent hike the House passed last year. The House plan was to spend the money on eliminating the sales tax on groceries, but that idea is now moot, since that happened last year anyway, without the cigarette tax increase.

You know, between this and the S.C. Supreme Court’s decision yesterday that it’s actually OK for local governments to respond to their citizens and pass smoking bans, it’s almost as though South Carolina leadership has suddenly made a consensus decision to behave in a rational manner toward tobacco. Two branches of gummint, that is — we have yet to hear from our governor. But let’s just pretend that first the full Senate, then the governor, will act like a sensible people about the health of South Carolinians, too. I’m not going to have my day ruined by thinking otherwise (even if Sen. Ryberg is a reliable indicator of the governor’s thinking, more often than not).

And no, this is not an elaborate April Fool’s Day gag. This good stuff is really happening.

Earmark crusader still takes credit for SOME funds going back home

12 Replies

Jim DeMint deserves a lot of credit for his crusade against earmarks. While we were reminded recently by Andrew Sorensen that earmarks are not necessarily always a bad thing — they’ve brought significant research funding to our universities — there’s no question that the whole process was out of control. Sen. DeMint has played a leadership role in embarrassing Democrats and Republicans alike on the issue, and on the whole I think that has had a salutary effect.

I was a little taken aback the last couple of days, though, when I received releases from Sen. DeMint announcing grant money for schools back here in South Carolina. No, they weren’t technically "earmarks." But by "announcing" these grants that were ostensibly "competitive" — which suggests that they were disbursed according to some criteria other than the political pull of a member of Congress — he is participating in the standard political practice of suggesting to the home folks that he is somehow responsible for this largesse.

And that, of course, is why politicians go after earmarks — so they can say to the folks back home, "Lookee what I brung you!" Here’s the release I received today:

Department of Education Awards $955,101 in Competitive Grants to Richland and Lexington School District 5

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) announced that Richland and Lexington School District 5 will receive $955,101 in competitive grants under the Teaching American History Grants program. This grant is designed to raise student achievement by improving teacher’s knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of U.S. history.  The program also aims to improve the quality of history instruction by supporting professional development for U.S. history teachers.

            ###

These releases do not cancel the cred Mr. DeMint has earned on the
earmarks issue. And they’re not a lot of money, and this one sounds like it’s
for a good cause (Lord knows we need to increase the level of understanding about our history in this country). They just seemed worth taking note of.

God bless Mayor Bob

12 Replies

Forgot to mention this yesterday, but as one who has worked at the south end of Assembly for over 20 years, about three or four years of which (by my highly scientific estimate) have been spent waiting for trains to move — and mind you, I long ago learned every trick for getting around them, but sometimes it’s impossible — I was deeply grateful to Mayor Bob for setting forth a vision for ridding us of this curse.

I’m not sure the city can afford it, and I’m not necessarily convinced that if it had the money it shouldn’t spend it on other things, but I do appreciate the thought.

S.C. budget earmarks

5 Replies

Here’s how to find the earmark list Cindi wrote about in her column this morning:

    Here’s the link: http://www.scstatehouse.net/sess117_2007-2008/appropriations2008/gab4800.htm.
    It’s the second item listed under "H. 4800, GENERAL APPROPRIATIONS BILL": "Earmarked Projects Pursuant to House Rule 5.3(F) (Excel format)."

    Cindi being the obsessively thorough type, she also suggests that I give "step-by-step directions for finding it," in case the link fails. (So that’s why I’m doing this; it’s not that I think you’re stupid or something:

    To FIND the list, go to www.scstatehouse.net, select "Current Legislation" from the options listed across the top of the page, then select "The Budget" on the right side of the page, then select "Fiscal Year 2008-2009 – General Appropriations Bill H. 4800 of 2008" to get to the link above.

Wilson: Earmarks bad after all

9 Replies

Just received this release via e-mail:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 11, 2008

CONTACT:    Ryan Murphy

Wilson Pledges No Earmark Requests

WASHINGTON – Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02) announced today that he will not seek earmark requests in any Fiscal Year 2009 appropriations bills.

    “The American people are fed up with a Washington that fails to respect the taxpayer’s wallet,” said Wilson.  “There remains no single set of standards to which all members of Congress abide by when requesting funding for local projects.  This has led to a process that is broken and wasteful.  Therefore, I see no choice but to enact an immediate one-year moratorium on all earmark requests from my office.  I am proud to stand with many of my colleagues in supporting this call for a moratorium and ultimately the establishment of a truly transparent and accountable system that provides a set standard for everyone in Congress to follow, where all earmarks are publicly disclosed to the American people.”

NOTE: Last year, Congressman Wilson publically disclosed all earmark requests made in Fiscal Year 2008 to his constituents. This year, he has cosponsored H.Con.Res. 263, which would create a Joint Select Committee on Earmark Reform, provide a report to Congress on the practices of earmarks, and calls for a moratorium on earmarks until the report is presented to Congress.

                    ###

You may recall (then again, you may not, since it was only watched 161 times) that in 2006, I posted this video of Joe explaining why it’s hard to be "pure" on earmarks, what with the system being the way it is.

Seriously, we all understand that one man’s pork is another’s worthwhile project. But this is no way to set priorities for federal spending.

Anyway, here’s that 2006 video:

How should homeless grants be spent?

7 Replies

Routinely, I get releases like this one from members of Congress, particularly our senators:

Graham Announces $3 Million to Assist Homeless and Disadvantaged in South Carolina
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today announced South Carolina will receive more than $3 million to assist homeless and disadvantaged persons throughout the state.  The Emergency Food and Shelter program funds may be used to supplement and expand ongoing efforts to provide shelter, food and supportive services for the state’s hungry, homeless, and people in economic crisis….

In the list that followed, Lexington County got $137,496, and $236,484 will be going to Richland.

This got me to thinking: How will this money actually get spent? Will it go to more feckless, indecisive muddling on the part of our local elected governments? Will it go to an effort that is trying to help the homeless in a comprehensive way in spite of the failure of local governments, such as that led by Amos Disasa of Eastminster Presbyterian?

Maybe it’s dedicated to a specific program that asked for it; the release doesn’t say. But I was wondering what ideas you, the readers — specifically Doug Ross, who has a good deal of personal experience helping the homeless — as to how the money should be used.