LAST WEEK, the state Supreme Court once again struck a unanimous blow against South Carolina’s special brand of legislative logrolling, and all the critics of bobtailing could do was complain that the ruling was too tepid.- 1:45 AM
THE GOVERNOR is usually making a judgment call when he accuses legislators of squandering tax dollars. But in the case of S.1143, which Gov. Mark Sanford vetoed two weeks ago, that charge has nothing to do with priorities. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen and a lawsuit the state is sure to lose, at considerable expense to taxpayers.- 12:18 AM
CANDIDATE endorsements are never easy if you like gray. With legislation, you can embrace the thrust of a bill but suggest changes.- 12:17 AM
WE’VE BEEN reading a lot about the long and distinguished careers of two Senate veterans who are retiring this year, and rightly so. But I’d like to take a few moments to recognize a quieter senator who also is stepping down this year, albeit after a relatively short 16 years.- 12:15 AM
AN ARTICLE published a few days before the Legislature adjourned for the year, projecting how things would turn out, listed three items under “what didn’t pass” this year: cigarette tax increase, payday lending restrictions and abolishing parole.- 12:13 AM
BY THE time primary day comes around, I always feel like I’ve just run two marathons — simultaneously. The first is the action-packed final few weeks of the legislative session, when all the important efforts of the session are either coming together or falling apart, when if you blink you miss that major new initiative that someone just slipped into an unrelated bill that’s only a step away from the governor’s desk.- 12:14 AM
CHAD WALDORF loves to remind me, particularly after I write disparagingly about all the little groups that have sprouted up to support parts of Gov. Mark Sanford’s agenda, that his S.C. Club for Growth frequently highlights my columns, and that it’s one of the few organizations pushing the agenda most near and dear to my heart — government restructuring.- 12:13 AM
I USUALLY ignore the displays of religiosity the Legislature feels compelled to engage in from time to time. They generally don’t offend me, but neither do they excite me, because ultimately they don’t do anything, except when they trigger lawsuits the state is almost certain to lose, which I’ll get to in a moment.- 12:16 AM
SENATE resistance to letting the governor control the executive branch of government is legendary, memorialized in those bumper stickers that proclaimed “The Senate ... Now More Than Ever!” But the upper chamber eventually agreed to hand a bit of power to the governor; no group has traditionally been more hostile to the idea than the Legislative Black Caucus.- 1:49 AM
I’M PRETTY good at staying on task, but an efficiency expert would find plenty of examples of inefficiency — what most of us would call “wasting time.”- 12:13 AM
THE LAST time the Legislature “reformed” our campaign finance law, a lot of good changes were supposed to have been passed, to make it easier for voters to figure out to whom their elected officials might be indebting themselves.- 1:49 AM
FOR ALL the extra hours the House and Senate stay in session during the final days of April, for all the gyrations lawmakers go through to get their bills over to the other body to beat the May 1 “crossover” deadline, the fact is that even the bills that slide in under that deadline have little chance of becoming law.- 12:14 AM
NEW HOUSE members are often caught flat-footed the first time there’s a big fight over a House bill that the Senate has amended and sent back to the House.- 1:49 AM
I’M A statistics agnostic. When people use numbers to make their case, my first question is about where the numbers came from. I want to examine them so I can figure out whether they have any meaning. Often they don’t — or at least they don’t have the meaning being suggested.- 12:13 AM
IT’S A BIENNIAL rite of spring: Legislative candidates sprout up and start talking about how the way to fix education is to use more of that lottery money. Maybe the voters are asking them about it when they’re out on the trail, but when they stop by to chat with our editorial board, it’s the candidates who bring up the “L” word.- 1:45 AM
THURSDAY began with a meeting with House candidate John Rust, who brought up government restructuring himself, because he wanted to make sure we knew how much he disagreed with us.- 12:17 AM
THINGS TEND to get a little bizarre toward the end of budget debate in the Senate. But last week, it felt like we had entered a parallel universe.- 12:17 AM
“DUM SPIRO spero,” Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman greeted me when I dropped by the Senate last week. “Me too,” I answered.- 12:15 AM
TAX POLICY isn’t officially on the table when lawmakers debate the state budget — nor should it be. But we would be missing the point if we didn’t focus on tax policy in the wake of last week’s dismal downward revenue forecast — and the resulting ripples through the budget that the Senate is debating this week- 12:17 AM
YOU COULD have gotten vertigo trying to keep up with last week’s legislative pension gyrations. When the twisting and turning was done, the conspiracy of silence had been broken, opposition was growing in the Senate, and the House had reversed its earlier unrecorded votes and taken a step toward killing the plan to add a guaranteed 2 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment to the legislative pension system. That, if you’re just tuning in, is the system that taxpayers subsidize...- 1:49 AM
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