TheState.com: Opinion

Miller by a hair

Fri, 16 May 2008 00:15 EDT

YOU CAN’T TALK about House District 96 without talking about vouchers. Rep. Kit Spires owes his election in great part to out-of-state voucher supporters who flooded the district two years ago with a nasty, misleading assault on then-Rep. Ken Clark.

Today, Mr. Spires says improving the public schools should be the priority and wants to focus on letting students attend any public school — but he doesn’t oppose giving parents tax credits to send their children to private schools. A clearer picture emerges from his votes: He voted twice last year to subsidize private school tuition. And when Gov. Mark Sanford vetoed the bill that would have created the open-enrollment program he says he supports, because it didn’t include private-school vouchers, Mr. Spires voted to uphold the veto.

Mike Miller, his challenger in the June 10 Republican primary, gives a nearly identical answer about vouchers, although he places more stress on the fact that private schools won’t help people in this poor district straddling the Lexington-Aiken County line. That’s typical: On most issues, the two men’s answers have only nuanced differences.

So the choice boils down to subtle differences, and Mr. Miller comes out slightly ahead. Mr. Spires brings home money for festivals and parades; Mr. Miller wants to bring home money to help Gaston hire a police officer. Mr. Miller is slightly more willing to go against popular opinion when it’s misinformed. And while Mr. Spires has certainly learned a lot in two years, Mr. Miller starts out with as firm a grasp of issues facing the state as Mr. Spires has developed in his first term.

Neal, Bales, Hart outshine foes in House races

Fri, 16 May 2008 00:15 EDT

MARY KIRKLAND VOWS to bring “change” to House District 70, Stanley Robinson vows to do the same for District 80, and Joe Brown promises to change back to the way things used to be in District 83.

All three Richland County challengers in the June 10 Democratic primary are likable, well-intentioned, level-headed people. But the first two have ill-defined reasons for wanting to serve, and Mr. Brown wants the office back for the same reason he wanted to keep it two years ago — to help constituents with local problems that should be handled by city or county council. And all three are challenging equally likable, well-intentioned, level-headed incumbents — all of whom demonstrate a much clearer desire to act as state policymakers.

With few significant policy differences, it is that focus on our state’s central problems that sets apart Reps. Joe Neal, Jimmy Bales and Chris Hart.

Mr. Neal has increased his community focus, working to create a local organic farming and energy cooperative and help bring a community health center to Hopkins. But that’s in addition to his role as the conscience of the House, where he uses his powerful preacher’s persona to demand equal educational opportunity for children regardless of their address, force attention to the medical needs of those too sick to care for themselves and fight for civil justice.

His depth of knowledge in education, health care and community-based economic development is impressive — one reason that, while he is often a voice in the wilderness, he has begun to put together the coalitions to make significant advances, particularly in addressing health disparities that hurt poor, minority communities.

Green bills could do far more with targeted taxes

Thu, 15 May 2008 00:15 EDT

EARTH DAY CAME a bit late at the State House, but what lawmakers lacked in timeliness they more than made up for in quantity. April ended with the House and Senate both busy passing bills to require, encourage and reward energy efficiency.

There were bills in both bodies requiring state agencies to replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs and to reduce energy consumption by 1 percent a year. There was one to keep local governments from discriminating against energy-efficient heating and cooling systems. There were tax breaks for people who buy everything energy-efficient from light bulbs and ceiling fans to dishwashers and manufactured homes, from alternative fuels to alternative-fuel vehicles. There was a plan — which was sent to the governor last week — to extend the tax breaks we already give to ethanol-production facilities. There was even a bizarre bill to have a state agency create a non-profit corporation to accept tax-deductible donations to assist low-income residents with energy conservation.

While it’s unlikely our country will get anywhere near where it must without congressional action, it’s encouraging to see state lawmakers getting serious about one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century.

Most of the bills contain good ideas — as far as they go. But they stop short of the kind of bold changes our nation is overdue for. The mandates on state agencies, for example, are filled with outs, allowing agencies to get exemptions even from the light-bulb requirement, and providing no penalties if they miss the goals.

Worse, by pulling up short, the tax bills can do more damage than good. The smart thing about these bills is that they use the tax code to reward behaviors we want to see more of. But they’re yet another batch of tax cuts, and as such they reduce overall tax revenue and skew the balance of tax burdens.

Reject House’s attempt to revive budget bobtailing

Wed, 14 May 2008 00:13 EDT

AT ITS WORST (as far as anyone knows), the Legislature’s practice of tacking separate laws onto the tail of the state budget produced the clandestine legalization of video poker and a bribery-tainted, retroactive tax break for a select few.

More commonly, it resulted in laws that everybody knew about but that didn’t have enough support to pass on their own. They were attached to the budget, and opponents ordered to swallow them or else risk shutting down state government — and lose all those special little perks in the budget that they wanted.

Those abuses led the Republican leadership of the House and Senate, once they controlled both bodies, to agree to put an end to bobtailing or logrolling or whatever you want to call this blackmail maneuver.

That agreement had a slow start, but it seemed to be working until last year, when House leaders used a different procedure to achieve the same goal, refusing even to negotiate the state budget until the Senate acquiesced on a separate bill that masqueraded as “reform” of the Transportation Department.

Last week, they laid aside the pretense and declared bobtailing season open, adding four separate new laws to the budget bill. They didn’t even try to hide their arm-twisting intentions; Speaker Bobby Harrell explained that this was part a strategy so he could use the budget to pressure the Senate into passing those separate laws.

Post-conviction DNA testing protects all of us

Tue, 13 May 2008 01:49 EDT

WHEN THE WRONG person is convicted of a crime, the only clear winner is the actual criminal — although police and prosecutors might appear to be winners, since they were able to score a conviction. The person wrongly convicted certainly doesn’t win, and in fact we do incomprehensibly grave harm to that person. Neither do the rest of us, who are less safe because the real criminal remains free to harm others.

We don’t have reason to believe that a large number of people are wrongly convicted in South Carolina, but we do know that our laws are not adequate to right the wrong when it does occur. A bill passed last month by the Senate (S.429) would correct part of the problem, by adding our state to the 44 others that allow people convicted of murder, rape and a handful of other violent crimes to have DNA testing done if they can convince a judge it would likely prove them innocent.

Under current law, there’s no mechanism for such testing; in most cases, judges can’t order DNA testing — or do anything about it if such testing is somehow done and demonstrates the convict’s innocence — unless the solicitor agrees to the request.

That wouldn’t be a problem in an ideal world, because the job of prosecutors is to do justice, and so they would be just as anxious as anyone to make sure the wrong person isn’t in prison. The reality is different. Prosecutors are human and dislike admitting their mistakes; and besides, they grow cynical from hearing the inevitable claims of innocence from criminals who really aren’t innocent, so with rare exceptions, they fight tooth and nail against those claims.

One of the main criticisms of laws to facilitate claims of innocence is that they would be abused by prisoners who, with all the time in the world on their hands, will pursue any avenue of appeal that’s opened to them. That’s always a risk, but the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Gerald Malloy, projects that no more than five to 10 requests would be made each year. That’s in part because the bill is a double-edged sword for prisoners who really are guilty: If the DNA testing confirms their guilt, they are subject to contempt of court, revocation of good-time credits and denial of parole requests. Perhaps more importantly, it requires that any new DNA samples be run through state and federal databases, to see whether the prisoner can be tied to unsolved crimes.

Don’t let veto threat stop cigarette tax hike

Sun, 11 May 2008 00:13 EDT

IN DECLARING THAT he intends to veto the cigarette tax hike if it makes it to his desk in anywhere near the form that it passed the Senate last week, Gov. Mark Sanford made one of the most outlandish claims we’ve heard in some time: He said the Senate plan would “mean having to raise taxes later on to cover future growth in the programs it seeks to expand.”

If that were so, then his own counter-proposal would also lead to other tax hikes, since it uses the same cigarette tax hike to offset an income tax cut.

You see, the one thing Mr. Sanford and the cigarette-company-financed opposition have right is that a higher cigarette tax should eventually generate less money, as it does what we want it to do: reduce teen smoking. So whether you count on the cigarette tax to fund new services or to replace another tax that’s funding existing services, eventually there won’t be enough money.

But the fact is that barring a radical shift in the political philosophy in the Legislature and the public, that’s not going to lead to a tax increase. Not if lawmakers use cigarette tax revenue to lower the income tax, and not if they use it to provide Medicaid coverage to more workers too poor to purchase medical insurance.

Our Legislature has demonstrated over and over that when there’s not enough money to fund essential state services, it simply won’t meet its obligations. It’ll slash the number of prison guards and Highway Patrol troopers; it won’t provide care to keep the dangerously mentally ill from clogging up our hospital emergency rooms, won’t pay to fuel the school buses.

Cayce must be open about plans for Congaree land

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:15 EDT

IT’S GOOD THAT Cayce is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to extend a public comment period as well as come and explain complicated flood maps proposed for a 3,000-acre tract annexed into the city late last year.

We only wish city officials would be as open and honest with citizens about their own intentions as they want FEMA to be.

In a letter to FEMA responding to proposed maps, which effectively prohibit 70 percent of a proposed project called Vista Farms, the city asks that the public review period be extended 60 days and that the agency hold a public meeting. The letter encourages FEMA to ensure that scientific and other information is “evaluated through an open and transparent process.”

That’s good advice — for FEMA and Cayce. City Council rushed to annex this property along the river in December, and has kept residents largely in the dark.

The council unanimously voted to ask FEMA to consider how new levees might affect where construction can occur on the 3,000 acres. “The city urges exploration of the feasibility of proposals (including changes to levees) that would reduce flooding and the risk of flood,” the city wrote.

There is simply no need for a state spending cap

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:14 EDT

SENATE LEADERS are backing a far less offensive approach to spending caps than are the House and the governor. Their plan only restricts the actions of the Legislature itself, rather than trying to dictate their preferences to cities and counties. It would not make it literally impossible for the Legislature ever to raise taxes.

But while the pig might look a little less homely with some lipstick and eye shadow and might even smell better after you squirt it with perfume, it’s still a pig.

The call for spending caps is based on the assumption that our state is on a drunken spending spree and that legislators are driving us all into the poor house with excessive, and increasing, taxes.

Those assumptions bear no relationship to reality.

Does the Legislature spend money on things we could do without? Of course so. It creates new programs when the ones we have don’t accomplish our goals, but doesn’t eliminate the old ones. It squanders money on counter-productive policies such as locking away nonviolent offenders for excessive terms. It pays for festivals and local projects that the state has no business funding.

Communitywide smoking ban would benefit region

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:13 EDT

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS in Lexington and Richland counties should ban smoking in both bars and restaurants.

Columbia and Richland County need to follow through on recent discussions of such a ban. And to make the initiative fully effective, other Midlands governments should join in as well.

Local governments should seize this opportunity to strike a blow for the health of the entire Midlands, but especially those who work in these businesses. Employees shouldn’t be forced to work in smoke-filled environments. The U.S. Surgeon General has declared that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke.

Last year, the three hospital systems in the two counties — Lexington Medical Center, Palmetto Health and Providence Hospital — joined together in support of smoking bans on their premises. The governments should follow suit and send a clear message that this is a smoke-free community that cares for its workers and the many who frequent public accommodations.

As more and more local governments adopt bans, some have chosen to exempt bars, which is unacceptable. All employees are captive at their work places, and governments shouldn’t protect one set of them while leaving others exposed.

Senate can save kids’ lives with cigarette tax hike

Tue, 06 May 2008 01:49 EDT

A LOT HAS CHANGED since the House voted a year ago to raise South Carolina’s cigarette tax from the lowest in the nation to the eighth-lowest.

The state budget has gone from surplus to deficit, with most state agencies facing budget cuts. Public concern over access and affordability of medical care has shot up, as more and more families either lose insurance coverage or foresee the day when they will.

The changes make it more tempting than ever to focus on secondary issues as the Senate finally gets down to serious debate on the cigarette tax. So before things get too far off track, let’s take a moment to step back and consider why lawmakers need to raise this tax.

It is not primarily in order to increase the number of South Carolinians who are covered by public or private health insurance, although that certainly would help us all — the people who would get better medical care as well as the rest of us, who would be subject to less cost-shifting from hospitals trying to make up for the free care the federal government forces them to provide.

It is not primarily in order to generate more money to pay for our state’s most urgent needs, although we certainly have more than our share — from bulging-at-the-seams prisons to underpoliced highways, from inadequate psychiatric care to insufficient incentives to attract the best teachers to poor, rural schools with moldy walls and leaky toilets.

Influence-peddling fills power vacuum in Legislative State

Mon, 05 May 2008 09:59 EDT

A MAJOR ELEMENT in the continuing saga of mismanagement in the city of Columbia is City Council members’ habit of meddling in the day-to-day operations of the government.

This practice of bypassing the city manager and asking his underlings to handle individual council members’ requests is cited in study after study as one of the city’s central problems. No one seriously disputes its impropriety: The City Council’s job is to set the policy; the city manager’s job is to see to it that the policy is implemented appropriately in each individual case.

Walk a few blocks down Main Street, and the situation changes dramatically. Not only is it routine for state legislators to call up state employees and tell them how to do their jobs, but legislators defend the meddling as a proper part of their jobs.

Last week, no less than House Speaker Bobby Harrell didn’t just defend but actually endorsed the actions of Rep. Grady Brown, who called a high-ranking State Transport Police officer to tell him how to enforce the law in one part of his district. An elected official should intervene if he believes a constituent has been treated unfairly, Mr. Harrell said; that’s his job.

Senate Ethics Chairman Wes Hayes did allow as how “we may need to define where advocacy stops and interference begins,” but even he said there’s nothing clearly wrong with legislators intervening with law enforcement when their constituents get in trouble.

Columbia should pay for inmates in the county jail

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:17 EDT

IT’S GOOD TO SEE Columbia finally acknowledge it can’t continue to crowd the Richland County jail with inmates without paying its fair share.

After rebuffing the county’s attempt to be reimbursed for jail space for years, City Council says it’ll pay a fee, although members insist it amounts to double taxation for city residents. But the courts have ruled in favor of counties on that issue.

While city taxpayers pay for basic jail service through their county taxes, there are instances in which the county is justified in charging an additional fee. One would be if Columbia uses a disproportionate amount of jail space because of arrests made due to city ordinances not in effect in the county. Another is when the city adopts a policy of locking more people up for particular crimes, such as public drunkenness.

When the strict enforcement of city ordinances in an effort to make residents safer increases jail population and raises costs, the city should pay more.

Beginning July 1, the county will charge $25 per day per inmate the city sends to Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center. The fee applies to municipal offenses — simple assault, first-offense criminal domestic violence and public drunkenness — not general sessions cases.

Pandering on gas

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:17 EDT

JOHN McCAIN AND Hillary Clinton are tied in a contest that is unlikely to produce a win for either of them, or for the American people: They’re competing to see which can stoop the lowest to buy our votes.

Sen. McCain’s suggestion to suspend the 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal tax on gasoline for the summer has been taken up by Sen. Clinton. This is the worst case of election-year pandering over gasoline since Mrs. Clinton’s husband opened up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a vain attempt to help Al Gore win in 2000.

Both candidates should know better. We understand that Sen. Clinton is trying anything at this point. It is harder to understand why Sen. McCain, with the Republican nomination sewn up, would do this.

To the extent that this tax cut would have any effect, it would be to encourage more gasoline consumption during the busy summer months. More demand creates pressure on gasoline prices to rise, not fall, and instead of going into the U.S. treasury, the windfall would go to the oil companies (Exxon Mobil’s profits for the first quarter of this year were “only” $10.9 billion), and ultimately to the petrodictators and terrorists.

We congratulate Barack Obama for not joining in (even though he voted for a similar deal as a state legislator).

Tougher standards for lenders would benefit homebuyers

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:15 EDT

WITH HUNDREDS of unregulated lenders making mortgage loans in our state, it would be wise for lawmakers to require them to be licensed and meet other standards to protect homebuyers.

The biggest purchase most of us will make is our home. In recent years, the mortgage industry has seen an increase in competition as well as a loss of quality controls, creating an atmosphere in which risky loans far too often slide through. Those and other conditions, along with the fact that oversight is limited, can lead to unscrupulous lenders with little or no experience misleading, and preying upon, borrowers.

South Carolina, once among the FBI’s top 10 “hot spots” for mortgage fraud, should do all it can to make sure consumers are protected. Better regulation would help protect homeowners from costly, high-risk mortgages as well as identify and prosecute bad lenders. As it is, lenders can come into our state, and we know very little about them until it’s too late.

The South Carolina Mortgage Lending Act, which the Senate approved Tuesday, would be a continuation of efforts begun several years ago to protect people’s homes and rein in predatory lending and mortgage fraud. In 2003, lawmakers adopted an anti-predatory-lending law to protect consumers against high-cost mortgage loans. In 2005, a law went into effect requiring originators for mortgage brokers to be licensed and meet minimum standards. The proposed law would enhance standards for brokers.

Currently mortgage bankers — the more appropriate term is mortgage lenders — are not required to be licensed. Mortgage lenders don’t carry deposits as regular banks do, and use their own money to extend loans. Mortgage brokers connect consumer with lenders. There are about 300 mortgage lenders in the state that would be affected by this legislation.

‘Middle Court’ can help save money, increase safety

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:13 EDT

GOOD NEWS, taxpayers: The state of South Carolina — already spending $40 million less than in 1999 — will spend $7 million less than that to lock up prisoners next year.

Bad news: That’s not because we’ll be providing around-the-clock care for fewer inmates; projections are that we’ll have 300 more. It’s because in the state that already spends less per inmate than any other, we’ll be spending less still. Not because prison officials say they don’t need as much money, but simply because in a tight budget year, lawmakers have other priorities.

Frankly, we have other priorities as well. We suspect most South Carolinians do. But once you put people in prison, you have an obligation to feed and clothe them and provide them with medical care — and to provide enough guards to keep them from rioting or escaping.

That’s why it’s so maddening that legislators are resisting a plan that would almost certainly reduce the inmate population, and thus the tax dollars we have to spend on prisoners, and at the same time make our state safer — by diverting first-time, non-violent offenders into an intensive-parole-type program.

Until recently, alternative sentences were mostly just theory in our state. But Attorney General Henry McMaster has fleshed out the theory with his “Middle Court,” which would operate much like drug courts, combining individual attention with certain punishment for anyone who breaks the rules. Offenders would appear regularly before a judge, where they and others would report their progress on education, job skills, drug treatment, public service, restitution and whatever else the judge ordered them to tackle. The judge could throw them in jail for a few days or have their original prison sentence imposed if they didn’t cooperate.

Set limits on river usage, to preserve limited resource

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:45 EDT

THE CATAWBA RIVER is designated the most endangered river system in the nation by an environmental watchdog group.

South Carolina is heading into another parching summer without any extra rainfall predicted and every single county still officially in a state of drought — in a dozen cases, severe drought.

Population growth both in South Carolina and in the North Carolina counties that get first dip into our rivers is increasing the demand by industry and individuals for cheap, readily accessible, clean water.

Our part of the world is changing, and we haven’t quite wrapped our minds around it yet. We’ve always taken water for granted — a free, unlimited resource, much like the air we breathe. But like other areas, the South is being forced to realize that water — at least water where we want it, when we want it, at the price we want — is a finite resource, that everyone who uses fresh, clean water reduces the amount available for others. And unless the scientists are all out of their minds, the pressure on this limited resource will only grow as droughts lengthen and deepen and populations swell. (Think Atlanta, summer of 2007.)

Attorney General Henry McMaster has responded to this new norm by taking North Carolina to court over its plan to divert some water away from the population centers of South Carolina.

Stop holding retirees’ pension increases hostage

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:17 EDT

IT WAS NO BIG surprise when legislative leaders tried to sneak through a generous perk for themselves on the back of an important bill to stabilize the State Retirement System and protect tens of thousands of state retirees. Sweetening up their own pension system is something lawmakers try to do periodically, and they always do it quietly.

But what happened last week, after the House had reversed course and rejected the new legislative perk, reached a new low, at least in terms of what lawmakers have done out in the open: The Ways and Means Committee voted 13-11 to kill the underlying proposal, which guarantees 2 percent annual cost of living adjustments for state retirees. Representatives didn’t kill the bill because they thought it was a bad idea. They killed it because they weren’t going to get their perk.

This was extreme petulance: If we can’t have a hot fudge sundae, we won’t let anyone have one.

The people who are hurt by this petty, self-serving vote — teachers, police officers, those who cleaned the restrooms at the State House and investigated allegations of child abuse — have devoted their lives to serving the state. They retired based on the wink-and-nod promise that their paychecks would be adjusted annually to keep pace with inflation. But the Legislature got reckless with the pension system, so now there’s not enough money to keep that promise.

The bill didn’t guarantee full COLAs. In fact, it all but guaranteed retirees wouldn’t receive one this year, because it prohibited more than the 2 percent increase until the pension system is stronger. That plan came from a task force of retirees, government employees, business leaders and policy wonks. The idea of adding a 2 percent COLA to the Legislature’s own special, absurdly generous pension system came from Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper and Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman.

City must be wise in giving neglected areas needed boost

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:21 EDT

IT’S UNDERSTANDABLE that some on Columbia City Council want to spur development in long-neglected areas, but city officials should make sure a proposed special tax district is the right vehicle.

Council members E.W. Cromartie, Sam Davis and Tameika Isaac Devine believe a special taxing district similar to one used to transform the Vista could work in some north and east Columbia neighborhoods. The idea would be to establish boundaries around those communities and funnel new property tax dollars generated within those boundaries back into the area for streetscaping and other development projects.

But it’s unknown just how much money the district would generate. It’s possible the city would be better off allocating dollars from bonds or incremental citywide growth over time. That might mean a slower rate of development, but if the city remains committed and encourages private development, change could come.

North Main is a good candidate for revitalization because it is a major corridor that runs into downtown. Residents have complained their community has been overlooked as the Vista and Five Points have gotten resources. The city has agreed to a major streetscaping project for North Main, but it’s not fully funded.

Council members and community leaders said the special district would be a boost to an area beset by crime and blight. “Those areas are really prime for development. People are looking at the North Main corridor,” Mrs. Devine said, adding she believes sufficient public investment will attract private dollars.

Priority, not politics, must determine fate of sidewalk projects

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:17 EDT

IF COLUMBIA CITY Council is to avoid controversy over which communities get sidewalks and when, it must defer to a priority list developed by city staff instead of its own subjectivity and politics.

The city has never had a priority list based on objective criteria to determine where new sidewalks would be built. But the need to prioritize came to light recently when Councilman Kirkman Finlay pushed through a sidewalk project for some disabled seniors in his district ahead of about 22 miles of other sidewalk projects.

Not only did the project leapfrog others, but it will be built by a private contractor and cost twice as much as a city-built sidewalk. In this instance, while the sidewalk would have cost the city less to build, it also would take more than a year for construction to begin because of the amount of work city workers have on their plate.

Only a limited number of city sidewalks get constructed each year, because money is scarce. The city doesn’t budget money for sidewalk construction. It builds sidewalks when it can find the cash — from gas tax revenue, grants or other sources — and when city workers have the time. While it doesn’t budget for the purpose, the city does set aside about $1.5 million each year for road and sidewalk maintenance and repair.

With there being more requests for sidewalks than there is money, citizens — and council members — naturally will lobby for their areas above others. A process lacking set priorities is ripe for exploitation.

Put grant, market funds to better use

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:15 EDT

SENATE LEADERS insisted last week that they could not use the $16 million in their “Competitive Grants” slush fund to balance the budget — as our editorial board, Gov. Mark Sanford and others have urged — without passing a separate law. The same apparently is the case with the $21 million waiting to be used once lawmakers stop squabbling over where and how to build a network of farmers markets.

Fine. So pass the separate bills.

The Legislature can pass a bill in five days. A single legislator can slow things down, but a bill still can be on the governor’s desk in two weeks. It’s true that the Senate and House have now both passed their versions of the state budget, but the real decisions are made by the six House and Senate budget conferees. Two weeks is plenty of time to get that money freed up before they get down to serious negotiations.

This is not a complicated matter that needs studying. We’ve been talking about the grants program for a year. We’ve been talking about the need (or lack thereof) for a new farmers market for several years —although the idea of building a bunch of mini-markets was just dreamed up this year, when legislators went looking for a way to spend the $11 million that wouldn’t be needed for a new state market.

Whether the competition is based on merit (as it should be) or political clout (as it is), the Competitive Grants program was never designed to fund essential services; it was designed to pay for extras. A bunch of mini-markets that no one had even talked about until this year is obviously not an essential.