Category Archives: Spending

How they voted on Andre’s driver

How would you vote, if it were up to you, on whether taxpayers should supply a driver/security guy for Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer.

If almost anyone else — Nick Theodore, Bob Peeler, whoever — were the current Gov Lite, I would say "no way." Probably half the people I know need security more than the lieutenant governor of South Carolina. And I don’t know anyone outside the Oval Office who needs the army of armed guards Nick took with him to the 1988 Democratic Convention.

But Andre Bauer? One doesn’t have to be facetious to say that it might be in the public interest to keep him from behind the wheel. Our roads are deadly enough as it is.

In the end, I would probably have voted to sustain the governor’s veto, though, in the name of erring on the side of thrift.

Here’s how legislators who had the power to decide this actually did vote. As you know, they overrode the governor, so let’s just hope he gets a good, safe driver:

First the vote in the House, followed by the vote in the Senate.

A "yes" vote is to fund the driver. The amount is more than $90,000 because the driver was included on the same line in the budget with another item, so the governor had to veto both or neither:

House
VETO 39– OVERRIDDEN

Part IA; Section 57; Page 264; Lieutenant Governor’s Office; I. Administration; Other Operating Expenses; $112,173.

Rep. COOPER explained the Veto.

The question was put, shall the Item become a part of the law, the veto of his Excellency, the Governor to the contrary notwithstanding, the yeas and nays were taken resulting as follows:

Yeas 92; Nays 16

Those who voted in the affirmative are:
Agnew                Allen                Anderson
Anthony             Bales                Ballentine
Bannister             Barfield          Battle
Bingham             Bowen             Bowers
Brady                   Branham          Breeland
G. Brown             R. Brown          Chalk
Chellis                Clemmons          Clyburn
Cobb-Hunter       Coleman             Cooper
Cotty                   Davenport          Delleney
Edge                   Frye                Gambrell
Govan                Gullick             Hamilton
Hardwick             Harrell             Harrison
Hart                   Harvin             Haskins
Hayes                Herbkersman    Hiott
Hodges                Hosey                Howard
Huggins             Jefferson          Jennings
Kelly                   Kennedy             Knight
Leach                Loftis                Lowe
Lucas                Mahaffey          Merrill
Miller                Mitchell             Moss
J. H. Neal          J. M. Neal          Neilson
Parks                Perry                   Pinson
M. A. Pitts          Rice                   Rutherford
Sandifer             Scarborough       Scott
Sellers                Simrill                Skelton
F. N. Smith       G. M. Smith       G. R. Smith
J. R. Smith       Spires                Stavrinakis
Talley                Taylor                Toole
Umphlett             Vick                   Weeks
Whipper             White                Williams
Witherspoon       Young

Total–92

Those who voted in the negative are:
Bedingfield          Crawford             Duncan
Funderburk          Hagood                Haley
Kirsh                   McLeod                Mulvaney
E. H. Pitts          Shoopman          D. C. Smith
Stewart                Thompso             Viers
Whitmire

Total–16

So, the Veto of the Governor was overridden and a message was ordered sent to the Senate accordingly.

————————————————————–

Senate
VETO OVERRIDDEN
R. 175, H. 3620–GENERAL APPROPRIATION ACT

Veto 39 – Part IA; Section 57; Page 264; Lieutenant Governor’s Office; I; Administration; Other Operating Expenses; $112,173.

The veto of the Governor was taken up for immediate consideration.

Senator LEATHERMAN moved that the veto of the Governor be overridden.

The question was put, "Shall the Act become law, the veto of the Governor to the contrary notwithstanding?"

The "ayes" and "nays" were demanded and taken, resulting as follows:

Ayes 39; Nays 6

AYES
Alexander                Anderson             Ceips
Cleary                   Drummond          Elliott
Fair                      Ford                   Gregory
Hawkins                Hayes                Hutto
Jackson                   Knotts                Land
Leatherman             Leventis             Lourie
Malloy                   Martin                Matthews
McGill                   Moore                O’Dell
Patterson                Peeler                Pinckney
Rankin                   Reese                Ritchie
Ryberg                   Scott                   Setzler
Sheheen                Short                Thomas
Vaughn                   Verdin                Williams

Total–39

NAYS
Bryant                   Campsen             Courson
Cromer                Grooms                McConnell

Total–6

Come and get it!

32 Replies

Readers of this forum will know that I am dismissive of most of the obsessions of libertarians, from their belief that screening communications to catch terrorists somehow steals our liberty to their never-ending blather about holding down the "size of government" — which is their bizarre (what’s the "right size" for government? no one could possibly say), ideological way of getting around saying that they just really, really don’t like paying taxes.

That’s one thing; this is another altogether. It strikes me as strange and funky and wrong to actually go out
and encourage the government to spend money, particularly to spend it on and with you, the one asking for it. And yet that’s what a July 9 symposium announced by Jim Clyburnbrochure Clyburn plans to do. I quote from the press release (which I was unable to find in text form, so I reproduce as a jpg):

The focus of the Expo is to provide a one-stop shop for small businesses, large prime contractors and federal agencies to meet and establish partnerships in pursuing the remaining federal contract dollars available for 2007.

Yes, I know what the congressman would say in defense of this approach. He would say that:

This is not encouraging federal spending that would not occur otherwise. This is money that has already been appropriated.
As long as it’s being spent, why not get more of it going to small businesses, particularly the minority-owned small businesses that might not benefit from the personal connections with officials that might come with a middle-class upbringing?

And I get all that, and it makes sense, but it is … unseemly … to call folks to the trough and instruct them in ways to elbow their ways to the front of the litter. And it seems hard to refute that members of Congress would hardly push hard for this spending in the first place if they didn’t hope — or even have the pull to ensure — that it would go to the pockets of their constituents. Another thing about contracting with the government — every dime that the private contractor makes in profit is another dime that taxpayer is paying that doesn’t go directly to the thing he is ostensibly paying for. (This is one reason I lament the passing of the draft; when soldiers picked up cigarette butts on the post, no one had to pay a for-profit contractor to do it).

Think about who will be in the room at this event — no participant has any motivate for containing federal spending overall. It’s in the interests — some legitimate, some not — of the politician, the agency official and the contractors that there be plenty of money for contracts and programs in next year’s budget as well. That means you’ve just put together a significant constituency for increased spending, independent of the needs of the nation as a whole.

I also understand that my objections on this point arise from a fastidiousness that is distinctly middle class, and that Mr. Clyburn is concerned with helping people who have never enjoyed membership join that class.

But I will never feel good about any amount of government spending that doesn’t go to something we truly need to spend it on as a nation. And somehow this symposium doesn’t seem at all likely to help us keep our expenditures focused on the necessary; quite the contrary.

One ping only, Vasily…

9 Replies

"Dirty, rotten commies!," one of my colleagues has been muttering since yesterday. "The only thing worse than a commie is one with oil!" He refers to this news:

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – Venezuela is studying buying Russian submarines that would transform the South American country into the top naval force in the region, a military adviser to President Hugo Chavez said Thursday.
Gen. Alberto Muller, responding to a Russian newspaper report that Chavez plans to sign a deal for five diesel submarines, said the government is "analyzing the possibilities" but that the money has not yet been set aside.
Oil-rich Venezuela has already purchased some $3 billion worth of arms from Russia, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets and other weapons.

But he misses the silver lining: Now we can crank out those nifty new Seawolf-class attack subs. We’ve got the excuse now! We’ve got Russian boats to track and kill again! Right here in River City! "Top naval force in the region?" In our hemisphere? Shades of the missiles of October…

Just let those peace-dividenders stop us now! They can take their little Virginia-class toys and shove them where … but I must restrain myself. We readers of too many Tom Clancy novels must be magnanimous in our triumph.

I wonder if we can get Bart Mancuso and Jonesy to come out of retirement for this?

Marvin’s take on his festival

17 Replies

Here’s an e-mail Marvin Chernoff sent out giving his assessment of how his Columbia Festival of the Arts went:

Here’s my take on the festival.

It was a great success.

The two bookends, the gala at the beginning and the closing concert at
the end, were treasures. Ask anyone who was there (besides, Jeffrey Day), and they will
tell you that this town has never seen anything quite like them, and probably
won’t, for a long while.

Artista Vista this year was a success with good attendance, especially on
Saturday, according to most of the gallery owners.

There were a couple of mistakes that were made because this was the first
year. The biggest was the
timing. It probably should have
been held during the regular season for performance companies so they wouldn’t
have had to expend big dollars for an additional show and could have depended on
subscription attendees to build the audiences.

Nonetheless, As
You Like It, at Theatre USC was an outstanding performance and general
admission sales, that is tickets sold to people outside the university, increased over normal by over 100%!

Opera USC’s Postcard from Morocco was wonderful,
however, attendance was normal.

Palmetto Opera’s Marriage of
Figaro was an outstanding success, including attendance, considering that it
was a new venture without a large following.

Attendance at Marionette Theatre was outstanding.

The three theatres, Trustus, Workshop and Town virtually
sold out during the festival. But more importantly, each of them told
us that there were lots of new attendees, people who were
unaware of the theatres and what they could perform. And all those new people were impressed
with the really fine performances of Nunsense Amen, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Cats.

USC Dance performed magnificently to a good house.

Attendance at the USC Symphony pops concert with Marvin Hamlisch was a
disappointment. Don’t ask me
why. Sol Hurok once said, “If
they’re not coming, you can’t hold them back.”

The Philharmonic concert was wonderful and, considering that it was not a
subscription part of the season, sold to a good house of 1,400.

Barry, from Mac’s on Main, told me it may have been the best
10 days he ever had.

We’re proud that the Columbia Arts Hall of Fame is now on permanent
display at the Koger Center.

Marina Lamozov, Joseph Rackers, The Capital City Chorale and Skipp
Pearson rocked the Brookland Baptist Church at their free concert. It was a real treat.

First Thursday Jazz Concert at the Zoo
during the festival more than tripled its usual
attendance and the artists who showed their work, virtually, sold out. The
people at the Zoo were "blown
away."

The Columbia City Jazz Dance Group and the Columbia City Ballet both did
amazing performances to moderate houses.

Washington Street Methodist Church’s schedule of events was
outstanding for them, and they are delighted with the
attendance. So was the
Jewish Cultural Arts group who presented Tel Aviv Café to a good audience at the
Jewish Community Center.

Then there was the Open Studio Tour. Every artist I’ve encountered in this town
has thanked me profusely for helping make the Open Studio Tour
happen. We think that the
artists had over 8,000 visits and that they sold between $35,000 and $40,000 in
art, much of it to people who came in from out of town to visit their
studios. And the people, who
attended, from all over the region, loved it.

Our web site had over 15,000 visits. And we sold over 450 tickets to events
on line during the festival amounting to over $11,000 in sales. We think those are mostly sales to
people who would not have
otherwise gone to the individual box offices or sites to purchase their
tickets. Experts told
us that this was an excellent result for a first time
event.

The bottom line…our goal was to make people in and around
Columbia more
aware and proud of the arts scene here.

DOES ANYONE WHO WAS ALIVE AND BREATHING IN THIS TOWN OVER
THE PAST FEW WEEKS DOUBT THAT WAS ACCOMPLISHED?

Marvin

Cigarette tax: Whoop-te-doo

29 Replies

So the House decided to increase the cigarette tax to about a third of the national average? Well, whoop-te-doo.

Of course, at least it’s something. And if you’re going to cut a tax with the money, the grocery tax is a far better choice than the income tax, because the former is actually comparatively high, while the latter is not. It also funds a youth smoking cessation program, so on the whole it’s pretty decent legislation, certainly better than doing nothing.

There was a lot of fuss made about lawmakers not using all the money for Medicaid or some such. This did not bother me. As I’ve said before, I don’t really care what happens with that money, you could burn it and still accomplish the most significant goal that has motivated me to want to raise it all these years: Study after study has shown that if you raise the price per pack, fewer kids become nicotine addicts.

Anyway, Medicaid costs — just like the costs of those of us who are in private health insurance plans — are climbing so fast that even if you had devoted all the money to that, it would only cover one year’s increase in the expense. Then what do you do? The answer to rising Medicaid costs is the same as the rising private health care costs: We need to overhaul the entire system, and that is one of those few things that might have to be done on the federal, not the state, level.

For details on exactly what happened on this vote, I share with you this memo that my colleague Cindi Scoppe prepared for me. Enjoy:

On Wednesday, the House voted 78-37 to increase the cigarette tax by 30 cents and reduce the sales tax on groceries by 1.6 cents. (H 3567) The tax increase is projected to bring in about the same amount of money as the tax decrease, around $100 million.

There were actually two major questions concerning the cigarette tax: whether to increase it and, if it was to be increased, what ELSE to put in the bill.

The Ways and Means Committee bill increased the cigarette tax by 30 cents, reduced the sales tax on groceries by 1.5 cents, expanded Medicaid coverage, funded a youth smoking prevention program and paid for a couple of other programs. It was designed this way in order to satisfy two separate constituencies in the House: those who would only vote for a tax increase if it was offset by an equal or larger tax decrease, and those who wanted money from a cigarette tax increase to go to Medicaid and other health initiatives. The problem was that this meant the bill would have actually cost the state about $100 million. To see the details of that package, go to the April 20 version of the bill and scroll down until you see the Fiscal Impact statement.

After initially sticking by this plan, the House eventually changed course and voted 64-52 to strip out nearly all of the spending and make the bill a straight swap: a higher cigarette tax for a lower sales tax on groceries. Here’s that vote, followed by the vote to pass the bill:

Voting to strip out the Medicaid spending:
Ballentine          Bannister             Barfield
Bedingfield          Bingham             Bowen
Brady                Cato                Chellis
Clemmons             Cooper                Crawford
Delleney             Duncan                Edge
Frye                Gambrell             Gullick
Hagood                Haley                Hamilton
Hardwick             Harrell             Harrison
Herbkersman          Hinson                Huggins
Kelly                Kennedy             Kirsh
Leach                Littlejohn          Loftis
Lowe                Lucas                Mahaffey
Merrill             Mulvaney             Perry
Pinson                E. H. Pitts          M. A. Pitts
Sandifer             Scarborough          Shoopman
Simrill             Skelton             D. C. Smith
G. R. Smith          J. R. Smith          W. D. Smith
Spires                Stewart             Talley
Taylor                Thompson             Toole
Umphlett             Viers                Walker
White                Whitmire             Witherspoon
Young

Voting to keep the Medicaid spending in the bill:
Agnew                Alexander             Allen
Anderson             Anthony             Bales
Battle                Bowers                Branham
Brantley             Breeland             G. Brown
R. Brown             Ceips                Clyburn
Cobb-Hunter          Coleman             Cotty
Dantzler             Davenport             Funderburk
Hart                Harvin                Hayes
Hiott                Hodges                Hosey
Howard                Jefferson             Jennings
Knight                Limehouse             Mack
McLeod                Miller                Mitchell
Moss                J. H. Neal          J. M. Neal
Neilson             Ott                   Owens
Parks                Rice                Rutherford
Scott                Sellers             G. M. Smith
Stavrinakis          Vick                Weeks
Whipper

—————————————-
The House passed the bill by a vote of 78-37:
Those who voted in the affirmative are:

Agnew                Allen                Anderson
Anthony             Bales                Ballentine
Bannister             Bingham             Bowen
Bowers                Brady                Branham
Brantley             Breeland             Ceips
Chellis             Clemmons             Clyburn
Cobb-Hunter          Coleman             Cotty
Crawford             Dantzler             Delleney
Funderburk          Gambrell             Gullick
Hagood                Hamilton             Hardwick
Harrell             Harrison             Harvin
Herbkersman          Hiott                Hosey
Howard                Huggins             Jefferson
Jennings             Kelly                Knight
Limehouse             Littlejohn          Lucas
Mack                Mahaffey             McLeod
Merrill             Miller                Mitchell
Moss                J. H. Neal          J. M. Neal
Ott                   Owens                Parks
Perry                Pinson                E. H. Pitts
M. A. Pitts          Rice                Rutherford
Sandifer             Scarborough          Simrill
Skelton             D. C. Smith          G. R. Smith
J. R. Smith          Stavrinakis          Stewart
Taylor                Toole                Vick
Walker                Whipper             Whitmire

Total–78

Those who voted in the negative are:

Alexander             Barfield             Battle
Bedingfield          G. Brown             R. Brown
Cato                Cooper                Davenport
Duncan                Edge                Frye
Haley                Hart                Hayes
Hinson                Hodges                Kennedy
Kirsh                Leach                Lowe
Mulvaney             Neilson             Scott
Sellers             Shoopman             G. M. Smith
W. D. Smith          Spires                Talley
Thompson             Umphlett             Viers
Weeks                White                Witherspoon
Young

Total–37

Joe Wilson gets his minute on Iraq

10 Replies

The Democratic leadership gave Joe Wilson one minute on the floor this morning, which he used to criticize their fecklessness on funding for our troops in Iraq:

Mr. Speaker, for weeks the House has debated our strategy in Iraq and continued funding for the war. In the midst of this debate the democratic leadership adjourned for a two-week spring break. Even today we appear no closer to a solution that will support our mission and troops and sustain an effective foreign policy. The democrat leadership of both chambers has indicated their desire to move their message of defeat. Fortunately President Bush is standing by his commitment to veto the bill and promote our mission for victory in Iraq to protect American families. Al Qaeda has stated Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism. Osama bin laden has characterized Iraq as the third world war. Withdrawing from Iraq will not end the global war on terrorism. I have confidence in our military leaders who should not be micromanaged by congress. Yesterday Admiral William Fallen testified effectively that the new reinforcement course in Baghdad is producing results. We’ll face the terrorists overseas or again in the streets of America. In conclusion God bless our troops and we will never forget September 11.

I got that text, and the video file, in a press release generated by the office of Rep. Kay Granger, vice chair of the House Republican Conference. It was headlined, "Best One Minute of the Day."

I bet it was for Joe. He likes being on camera, however briefly.

John Spratt can cut the fat

18 Replies

Or at least that’s what David Broder said Sunday: That the House Budget Committee chairman from Rock Hill is doing a good job of holding fellow Democrats on a leash on spending.

That reminded me of our interview with him before the last election, when he promised to be a force for injecting some discipline into the budgeting process if his party got the power.

I caught some of those comments on video, and here I present two versions of it. Let me know which one you like. As I learn the best way to use multimedia on the blog, I’m always torn between two approaches. On the one hand, I figure that a main purpose of the blog is to give you as much additional information as I can, which is what this four-minute, 20-second video does:

Then I think, but that’s just going to bore people to the point that they’ll stay away from the blog, or just not watch my videos, which would be a shame given the time that they take.

So sometimes I cut them way down, as in this two-minute, 13-second version:

And of course, I could have cut it all the way down to a mere sound bite, but that would take it to an extreme that I find distasteful.

Anyway, if you can stand to watch them both, give me some feedback to help me with this dilemma.

DOT reform prospects dismal

6 Replies

Tom Davis put it well on the phone this morning when I asked how his world was going in general. The
governor’s chief of staff said some things were going well, but:

"DOT was a disappointment, obviously."

Tom_davis No kidding. Tom said maybe it would be possible to get something halfway decent out of conference committee, but he shouldn’t hold his breath. With the Senate bill being less than useless and the House bill being, as he put it, "not as much as we would want, and not as much as y’all would want," we’re pretty close to being able to chalk up the DOT issue as a huge missed opportunity to improve the quality and accountability of government in South Carolina. My words, not Tom’s. He’s slightly kinder to the House plan than I am. For me, if you’ve still got a commission, you don’t have reform.

For a view that is a lot kinder to the House than either mine or Tom’s here’s the latest memo from Patty Pierce, who has been lobbying on behalf of the Coastal Conservation League‘s transportation reform coalition. The House approach is more or less just what the coalition wanted, which is one reason we don’t have reform. Both the private group wanting reform and the governor went to the table unwilling to fight for a straight Cabinet arrangement.

Anyway, that’s water under the crumbling, neglected bridge. Here’s what Patty had to say to supporters:

DOT
Reform Team,
In the
Senate: The Senate completed its work on S.355, the
Senate version of DOT reform, after four weeks of debate, and the bill has been
forwarded to the House for its consideration. S.355 includes four of our DOT Reform
Coalition’s priorities, but overall this bill is NOT as strong the House DOT
Reform bill, H.3575, by Representative Annette Young (R-Dorchester).

In
terms of justifying and
prioritizing transportation projects, S.355 requires the DOT to craft
a “methodology for determining how to design the Statewide Transportation
Improvement Program (STIP) that includes the schedule of priorities for all
major construction and funds allocated to complete those projects”. In crafting the methodology the following
criteria—which our Coalition supports—must be
considered:

a)
Financial viability, including the life cycle analysis of estimated

Maintenance and repair costs over
the expected life of the project;

b)
Public safety;

c)
Potential for economic development;

d)
Traffic volume;

e)
Truck traffic;

f)
The pavement quality index;

g)
Alternative transportation solutions;

h)
Consistency with local land use plans;

i)
Environmental impact; and

j)
Federal requirements for designing and setting priorities for the
STIP.

We are thankful that S.355 includes the above criteria, but the
bill does not clearly state that all projects will be justified and prioritized
according to the criteria as our Coalition has advocated. Also, the methodology will be a DOT internal
policy document as opposed to a regulation as required in H.3575, the good House
bill. H.3575, requires the DOT to
“establish a priority list within the STIP…when compiling this list of projects
or changing this list, the department shall use” the criteria that
our Coalition has advocated.

Public
hearings
are required in S.355 prior to adopting the “prioritization” methodology, prior
to adopting the STIP, and prior to moving forward with large road and bridge
projects; this last item was not included as a separate item in the bill as was
suggested to staff, so this section needs to be further improved. The additional public hearings required in
S.355 are great opportunities for the public at-large and individual communities
affected by major transportation projects to voice concerns/praise about the
proposed methodology, the STIP, and individual projects. Having real public
hearings where the public can address a panel and/or hearing officer regarding
projects is a great improvement over current DOT practices.

The
most troublesome aspect of S.355 is the creation of a new legislative review
process through the establishment of a Joint Transportation
Review Committee (JTRC)—a 10 member committee composed of 6
legislators and 4 public members. The
JTRC will review and comment on the “prioritization” methodology and the
STIP. After review of the STIP, the DOT
is then required to promulgate the STIP as a regulation which requires approval
by the General Assembly. Establishing road and bridge project
priorities has always been the responsibility of the SC DOT. This new review by the JTRC and mandated
approval of the STIP by the General Assembly could undermine the DOT’s objective
analysis of transportation projects guided by the criteria included in the bill
that should be used to justify and prioritize all STIP projects.

One
final concern is a provision that states “any project placed in the STIP at the
request of a metropolitan planning organization or council of government must
not be removed.” That means a community
that has proposed a project, may not later ask that such project be removed from
the STIP if the MPO or COG determines the project is no longer wanted or
necessary. To remove a project from the
STIP, the General Assembly must adopt a new regulation, which could easily take
more than a year if this provision were approved in a final DOT Reform
bill.

In
terms of governance, S.355 allows the
current
DOT
Commission to remain in place until a
new 7 member Board is
established. All seven members would be
appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate. Six members would
represent congressional districts, and one member would be appointed at-large
to serve as
the Board
Chairman. The
Board would hire an at-will Executive Director to run the daily operations of
the DOT.

Also
in the Senate, Senator Ritchie (R-Spartanburg) recalled H.3575, the strong House
DOT Reform bill, from the Senate Transportation Committee and placed the bill on
the Senate’s contested calendar. This
action by Senator Ritchie is very helpful. H.3575 may be a vehicle to move a DOT Reform bill forward this
legislative session in the event a conference committee (3 House members and 3
Senate members) gets bogged down in its negotiations.

In
the House: One
minor glitch occurred last week just before H.3575 was adopted and approved by
the House. No need to worry. This will just give me one more thing to work
on next week. When the final amendment
was adopted during the House debate on H.3575, the amendment was not adopted as
a “perfecting” amendment, so two previous amendments hat had been approved by
the House were inadvertently deleted. First, the House approved adding Representative Loftis’ amendment that
required consideration of “congestion” to the list of criteria used to justify
and prioritize projects, which we support. Second, the House also approved our Coalition’s priority, “consideration
of alternative transportation solutions”. Unfortunately, I discovered this week that both of these amendments were
“accidentally” deleted in the final version of the bill, so I will work with the
House staff and Representatives to see if we can get these two amendments added
back into a House approved DOT Reform bill.

If
you have any questions about DOT Reform, or the two bills that have been
approved by the House and Senate, please do not hesitate to contact me. I’d be glad to help you.

I’ll
send out an update next week on the progress the House makes in regard to DOT
Reform. Until then, I’ll keep working to
encourage the House and Senate to include the strongest provisions of both DOT
Reform bills in the final compromise legislation.

Patty
Pierce
League
Lobbyist
pattyp@scccl.org

Marvin defends his festival

19 Replies

Here’s what Marvin Chernoff, father of the Columbia Festival of the Arts, had to say in a memo to the festival’s "advisory committee" in response to our editorial this morning:

Three things.
1. If you saw this morning’s State newspaper editorial it would be pretty obvious that they feel strongly that festivals like ours should be paid for by "private donations not public money".
Well guess what? I agree. And, unless I’m missing something, that’s exactly what we did. You see, aside from the sponsor money, the in kind contributions from media, the contributions to Friends of the Festival and sales of gala tickets, the money we got from the city and the county was from hospitality and accommodations taxes.
Those are "private donations" made by people like you and me whenever we eat some prepared food or stay in a hotel. It just goes to the city for them to hold and then turn around to pay for things like festivals that bring people to those restaurants and hotels.
What would the State editorial board have the city do with that money, pave roads? I think that might make the restaurateurs and hoteliers who collect it upset. And the people who pay it too.
2. Joint ticketing is now available on our web site. It’s really neat. You can go to www.columbiafestivalofthearts.com click on the ticketing icon and pick out your tickets for up to 17 different events. And miracle of miracles your etickets are printed out on your printer.
3. Tickets to the Gala are going fact. If you are going to the gala, I would buy my ticket now. There will be nothing any one can do for you after they are all gone.

Less than three weeks.

To see what the editorial board would "have the city do with that money," read the editorial. As we said, this is money that could be going straight to arts groups, and could also come out of direct funding they might want in the near future.

EXCLUSIVE Joe Biden op-ed

12 Replies

We decided this piece wasn’t worth bumping some local writer or one of our syndicated columnists for, our op-ed space in the paper being so limited these days. Besides, we keep the bar pretty high for candidates wanting to use our space for free media. (Calling it "exclusive" didn’t do it. We appreciate it, but we pretty much expect that; why use precious space for something people can read anywhere?)

Fortunately, the threshold is considerably lower here on Brad Warthen’s Blog. So you can read it here.

Dear Brad and editorial team:
Please see below the following op-ed penned below by Sen. Joe Biden. As you probably know, Sen. Biden will be in South Carolina tomorrow. With the many military bases and training facilities in SC, we believe this op-ed on the new MRAP vehicle would be very pertinent to your readers and hope you will consider its publication.
We are offering this op-ed as an EXCLUSIVE to the State Newspaper and look forward to hearing from you on whether you choose to publish.

Elizabeth Alexander
Press Secretary for U.S. Senator Joe Biden
elizabeth_alexander@biden.senate.gov
###

No Price Tag on Protecting our Troops
By Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Road side bombs are by far the most lethal weapons used against Americans in Iraq. They account for seventy percent of our casualties. So if we had the technology to cut these casualties by two-thirds, it is safe to assume that the Bush Administration would spend whatever is necessary, as quickly as it could, to get that technology into the field, right?
Wrong.
The President’s emergency spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan significantly short-changed the budget for new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. They have a v-shaped hull that offers four to five times the protection of the armored Humvee.
Right now, only a few hundred MRAPs are in service in Iraq. The Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force need 7,774 vehicles, costing a total of $8.4 billion. The Administration’s plan was to spend $2.3 billion this year and $6.1 billion next year. However, the military believed they could accelerate production at the eight manufacturers (one of which is right here in South Carolina) if we gave them adequate funding.
As Army Chief of Staff General Schoomaker told the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this month: "We can build what we can get the funds to build. It’s strictly an issue of money."
The President’s emergency budget under-funded MRAPS by $1.5 billion. So I introduced an amendment to the emergency budget to add the necessary funds and it passed the Senate unanimously. If the House agrees and the President signs the budget into law, we now can manufacture and deploy 2,500 more vehicles by December 2007, six months earlier than we would have under the President’s plan.
$1.5 billion is a lot of money, but it is money we were going to spend next year anyway. The pay-off for spending it now is literally priceless. Each vehicle means four to twelve Americans in the field get four to five times more protection than they have now. That means 10,000 to 30,000 more soldiers and marines will be protected sooner than later.
So, the question is, do you want to spend the $1.5 billion now and save lives, or go with the current schedule and spend it next year? Do you want 10,000 to 30,000 more soldiers and marines to be protected in December?
For me, the bottom line is simple: get as many of these vehicles as possible into the field as quickly as possible to protect our troops.
Their safety is our first responsibility.
________________________________________________________________________

The author, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., is the senior Senator from Delaware and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
####

The "tomorrow" in the intro was a reference to Saturday. This was sent on Friday; we only rejected it today.

Bidensc1

‘Reform’ still an elusive term

1 Reply

The Coastal Conservation League’s Patty Pierce answered my message from yesterday thusly:

Brad,
Brian White tried to do the same amendment that you are referring to at the Committee level because the staff drafted the bill incorrectly according to him. Representative Lucas liked it this way, so he may have been the last legislator to speak to the staff when this section was drafted. Nevertheless, Rep. White tried to get this corrected at the Committee level, but the Committee was tired and didn’t feel like talking about it that late night when they were trying to wrap things up on this bill, so he said he’d just do the amendment during the floor debate. Everyone knew it was coming, and there was agreement on it.
Personally, I think once the priorities are adopted that they should not be changed at all until the next time the priorities are supposed to be adopted by the Commission again. Also, setting the priorities should also be the Commission’s job completely and not the Secretary of Transportation’s in the House bill, so I thought this was a good amendment. It kept the duties separated. It didn’t make sense for the Secretary of Transportation to be able to reach across to the Commission and ask that the priorities be changed. The Secretary is supposed to run the day to day operations of the DOT in the House bill. The Commission should set the transportation priorities. I don’t like the 2/3rds vote to be able to change the transportation priorities, but I can sometimes see when I cannot be effective in changing the minds of some legislators, so I stayed out of this fight.
I’m copying Elizabeth on this note to keep her in the loop.
Send any other questions that you may have my way. I’ll be glad to give you background material if it helps.

patty

We may be miscommunicating here. I realize about what happened in committee. What I don’t understand is why, after working so hard to get sound priority-setting criteria in place, the League would go along with letting the commission — a commission, of all things, the very root of the current problem — toss the priorities any time 2/3 of them wanted to. At the very least, you would want them to have to wait until some other party — in this case, the secretary, who would supervise the people who actually have the wherewithal to set priorities on the basis of objective criteria rather than mere political whim — suggests the changes.

By eliminating that check, you place the commission just as much in the driver’s seat as it is now, setting all your vaunted reform at naught. And for this the league cast aside any thought of actual structural, fundamental reform?

Eliminating the commission — in any way, shape or form — is essential to accountability at this most unaccountable of agencies. Keep the commission, and you can kiss any other reforms you’ve worked for goodbye, because they won’t be around very long — especially if you agree to make it autonomous from the beginning.

Reform in dazzled eyes of beholder

11 Replies

Last night, the lobbyist for the Coastal Conservation League and its allies sent out this note to supporters about the House passage of the DOT plan that coalition had been pushing:

After
four hours of debate and consideration of 39 amendments, finally, the House
overwhelmingly approved the great DOT Reform bill,
H.3575, crafted by Representative Young and her AdHoc Transportation Committee by a vote of 104-3.

H.3575
has ALL 5 of our
DOT Coalition’s DOT Reform Priorities thanks to Representative
John Scott (D-Richland) Annette Young (R-Dorchester) and Christopher Hart
(D-Richland) who sponsored one final amendment this evening to require the DOT
to consider “reasonable transportation alternatives” prior to initiating new
construction of road and bridge projects. H.3575 also requires transportation projects to be justified and
prioritized according to engineering criteria, economic benefits, and
environmental impacts. Maintenance
funding is provided annually to address our $3 billion maintenance needs across
the state, and public hearings are required on large transportation
projects. WOW!

I’ll
set up a thank you note from our capwiz site, so we
can be sure to let House members know how much we appreciate their making reform
of the DOT a top priority this year. Please also help me thank Representative Young in particular for her
terrific leadership on this most important issue. I am certain that we would never have achieved
the goals we set for DOT Reform without her constant efforts to push DOT Reform
forward every step of the way.

Thank
you Coalition members for all of your hard work on this issue and your support
through this rigorous process. Our
Coalition could not have come this far without you!

Tomorrow
afternoon the Senate will continue debate on S.355, its
DOT Reform Bill. I am feeling very
hopeful about the Senate debate. I understand that amendments will be offered to
strengthen our Coalition’s priorities in S.355, and it seems Senators are
pulling together. I’ll write again by
the end of the week with an update on the Senate’s progress.

Great
Job Everyone!

Patty
Pierce
League
Lobbyist
pattyp@scccl.org

Here’s my concern about that (aside from the fact that the coalition’s idea of great reform falls short of mine):

But Patty,
didn’t they do a last-minute amendment that stripped out something that was
important to you? My understanding is that the amendment fixed it so that the
commission could change the priority list WITHOUT the recommendation of the
secretary. (This is something that apparently escaped notice in newspaper
reports.)

It seems that
would pretty much undo the reforms y’all are seeking — not to mention not even
attempting to do what I see as essential. Even though it would take a 2/3 vote,
the commission would still be in the driver’s seat as to whether to continue
applying the reform y’all have worked so hard for.
That’s the
trouble with these overly elaborate, fragmented governing structures — the
slightest change undoes all your efforts to change the way the agency does
business. That stuff is harder to hide with a Cabinet. That’s why structural
reform is, and has always been, the FIRST step — so you can enact deeper
changes with some hope that they will stick.

I wrote a note to Patty along those lines, copying it to Elizabeth Hagood. I haven’t heard back from them yet. For their sake, I’m hoping I heard wrong, or that they have a good reason to think it’s OK anyway (and aren’t just whistling in the dark).

I think what the House came up with was bad enough without the coalition’s agenda getting shafted, too. But that would be par for the course for the Legislative State.

REAL reform, but not really

3 Replies

Meanwhile, the House has also been jockeying about with DOT reform. It’s a little harder to tell the good guys from the bad with the game-playing going on in that chamber.

Rep. Tracy Edge (the main guy pushing the latest incarnation of PPIC today), put up an amendment Tuesday to abolish the transportation commission and make the DOT a Cabinet agency. He spent only a couple of minutes arguing for the amendment, and it certainly sounded cynical: If we’re going to reform the department, let’s have REAL reform. This is, after all, the man who recently told The Sun News "I have a hard time seeing that the system was bad for Horry County, so why change it?" And his amendment was offered right after he and others lost their attempt to let local legislators continue to select commissioners, rather than letting the full Legislature select them.

One other note: The amendment was inartfully drawn; it does not make clear that the governor can remove the secretary, although that is strongly implied. That probably wasn’t deliberate — merely a reflection of the author’s insincerity.

No one felt threatened enough by the amendment even to ask a question, much less speak against it. Rep. Cooper merely moved to table it, and the House complied. The vote is below, from the Journal.

Rep. EDGE explained the amendment.
Rep. COOPER moved to table the amendment.
Rep. EDGE demanded the yeas and nays which were taken, resulting as follows:

Yeas 71; Nays 36
Those who voted in the affirmative are:

Agnew                Alexander             Anthony
Bannister             Battle                Bowen
Bowers                Branham             Breeland
R. Brown             Cato                Chalk
Chellis             Clyburn             Cobb-Hunter
Cooper                Crawford             Dantzler
Frye                Funderburk          Govan
Gullick             Hamilton             Harrell
Hart                Hinson                Hiott
Hosey                Howard                Huggins
Jefferson             Kelly                Kirsh
Leach                Limehouse             Littlejohn
Loftis                Lowe                Lucas
Mack                Mahaffey             McLeod
Miller                Moss                J. H. Neal
J. M. Neal          Owens                Parks
Perry                Pinson                E. H. Pitts
Rutherford          Scarborough          Scott
Sellers             Shoopman             Simrill
Skelton             D. C. Smith          G. R. Smith
J. R. Smith          Spires                Taylor
Thompson             Umphlett             Walker
Whipper             White                Whitmire
Williams             Young
Total–71

Those who voted in the negative are:
Anderson             Bales                Ballentine
Barfield             Bedingfield          Bingham
Brady                Brantley             Ceips
Clemmons             Cotty                Davenport
Delleney             Duncan                Edge
Hagood                Haley                Hardwick
Harrison             Hayes                Herbkersman
Hodges                Jennings             Kennedy
Knight                Merrill             Mulvaney
Neilson             Ott                   G. M. Smith
Stavrinakis          Toole                Vick
Viers                Weeks                Witherspoon

Total–36

Randy runs the stats for us

13 Replies

Our own Randy Ewart took a spreadsheet that I made available to y’all earlier and crunched the numbers for us a couple of different ways, helping us dig a little more deeply into the "Competitive Grants Program."

His first spreadsheet sorts the grants by awarded amounts over 100k, then by awarded amounts 100k or less. As Randy says, "This makes it easier to see all the awarded amounts."
He then sorts them by individual lawmaker, so you can more easily see who got what.

Thanks, Randy! We appreciate your time, and your expertise.

Elizabeth Hagood on DOT reform

Who GOT the pork? Here’s who…

17 Replies

A good question was posed by bud on this last post. He asked for names. Well, at first I was at a loss, because if you want to know whom to blame for the "Competitive Grants" boondoggle, you pretty much need to blame the whole Legislature. They passed it. As for whose idea it was to start with, I still don’t know.

However, I can tell you which lawmakers were sponsors for each of these individual grants. When I set out to do this, I thought it would be hard. I thought I’d have to sift through individual grant applications to find the sponsors. I was prepared to do that.

But when I asked Michael Sponhour over at the Budget and Control Board how I might track down the info, he wrote back 11 minutes later to say,

Brad,

Here is an excel spreadsheet with all competitive grant
applications and awards with sponsors.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Mike

So that wasn’t so hard. Enjoy perusing.

The pork list

18 Replies

At Doug Ross’ request, here’s a link to the list (it’s a PDF file) of pork handed out through the Competitive Grants Program.

You can find it at the Budget and Control Board site, so it’s not hidden, but it’s not exactly advertised to the world, either. Trouble is, we sort of had to know it existed to look for it. We sort of had to piece this together from some oblique references made by lawmakers over the last couple of weeks.

And if you’re like this other guy and want to bid for YOUR piece of the pie, here’s the main page. But here’s hoping we can shut this down before you get your money.

Happy reading. Or unhappy reading, as the case may be.

By the way, Doug — Cindi’s now done two columns on
this grant thing, there’s an editorial written and scheduled to run, and news has
done two articles, including today’s lead front-page story. I don’t know about news, but that’s more work than any of us in editorial ever did on any one outrage of Andre’s.

Anyway, thanks for raising the question about the list.

Cash? Where? How can I get some?

5 Replies

One might have expected any number of responses, ranging from outrage to indifference, to Cindi’s recent columns about the outrageous way that lawmakers came up with to dole out millions in pork without the least chance of veto or any other form of accountability.

But I didn’t expect this response, even though I suppose I should have.

Cindi got an email this morning from an enterprising individual in the private sector, posing the following question:

Is it too late to
submit an application for the grants you mentioned in today’s paper? If not,
how do I find out how to apply for one?

I am not making this up. Of course, you are now thinking, this is just somebody being ironic, right? Well, Cindi treated it as a serious question, responding:

I think I remember
that the application period is still open. If you go to the Budget and Control
Board page on the sc.gov homepage (http://www.bcb.sc.gov/BCB/BCB-index.phtm),
there’s a link to "competitive grants" at the top of the rail on the
left.

We’re all about providing news you can use around here. She was, of course, curious to see what the guy would say next. His response:

Thanks and
I appreciate the quick response.

Now maybe he was just staying in character and keeping the gag going. But there are a lot of people in this world upon whom irony is utterly lost. If you don’t believe me, look at a lot of the feedback I get on this blog.

Tax cuts for the right sort of people

21 Replies

You might have assumed, after reading fellow blogger Joshua Gross’ op-ed in Tuesday’s paper, that the Ways and Means budget he praised as one that "actually resembles a responsible document" (that’s high praise, coming from him) devoted a lot more money to tax cuts than the current year’s budget.

An excerpt:

When the budget was debated last year the appropriators, flush with $1.1 billion in new
revenues, decided to spend the vast bulk of the money, much of it on pet projects, while reserving a small fraction of the new funds for a property tax reduction that had a negligible impact on job creation in our state. The final budget was a monstrosity so bad the governor chose to veto it in its entirety, knowing full well that the Legislature would still override his veto and spend the money.

Those nasty, monstrous Republican legislative leaders! What were they thinking? But wait! The facts get in the way of Joshua’s interpretation.

This year’s Ways and Means proposal, which the House is debating this week, devotes $81 million to an income tax cut.
Last year’s budget, so horrible, so monstrous that the governor had to veto it, devoted $92 million to a sales tax cut on groceries and a second sales tax holiday.

That’s right, the bordering-on-responsible budget devotes $11 million less in new revenue to tax cuts than the toss-it-in-the-rubbish, big-government’s-gonna-eat-your-children current budget.

Granted, $14 million of last year’s tax-cut money was a one-time tax reduction, for the silly after-Thanksgiving sales tax holiday that we will not have again this year. But even if you discount that, last year’s budget still included a permanent tax cut of $77 million.

Now I understand that supply-siders don’t like to cut the taxes that ordinary people pay. But let’s at least give a nod to reality here.

The budget they’re debating over there this week is $600 million bigger than the one we’re operating under now (or maybe $1 billion more if you use Sanford math). This money thing is not my forte, but that seems to suggest that even if you ignore the $14 million sales tax holiday, the wild-and-crazy budget from last year actually devoted a nearly identical portion (not to mention amount) of money to new tax cuts as the almost-responsible one on the table right now.

But give my buddy Joshua a break; his piece is accurate in one respect: It’s an accurate representation of the Club for Growth world view.

DeMint on working with Democrats

21 Replies

Who recently said this? "It’s been easier working with the Democrats:"

George W. Bush
Nancy Pelosi
Lindsey Graham
Osama bin Laden

The answer? None of the above.

One of the great ironies of the November elections is that the outcome proved empowering for Sen. Jim DeMint, previously known — to the extent he was known, in the shadow of the more bipartisan Lindsey Graham (with whom we’ll meet today) — as a toe-the-line GOP loyalist.

He’s still certainly a Republican, but he has found that the fact places fewer constraints on him in the new Congress. Democrats are in charge, and he feels freer to go ahead and just get things done, rather than having to carry water for his own leadership.

This has had its most dramatic effects so far in the bipartisan effort to curtail earmarks, but our junior senator sees other possibilities as well. See for yourself…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: Spending

How they voted on Andre’s driver

Come and get it!

One ping only, Vasily…

Marvin’s take on his festival

Cigarette tax: Whoop-te-doo

Joe Wilson gets his minute on Iraq

John Spratt can cut the fat

DOT reform prospects dismal

Marvin defends his festival

EXCLUSIVE Joe Biden op-ed

‘Reform’ still an elusive term

Reform in dazzled eyes of beholder

REAL reform, but not really

Randy runs the stats for us

Elizabeth Hagood on DOT reform

Who GOT the pork? Here’s who…

The pork list

Cash? Where? How can I get some?

Tax cuts for the right sort of people

DeMint on working with Democrats