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  • Think you pay more than your share for schools? Don’t be so sure

    WHEN PARENTS tell me they shouldn’t have to pay taxes to educate children they’re already paying tuition to send to private school, I ask if they think I deserve a pass as well. I don’t have children, but I pay school taxes. I pay them for the same reason private-school parents do: School taxes pay to educate the children of South Carolina, not the children of the individual taxpayer. It’s much the same as the taxes we pay for fire service, which we hope we...- 11:53 AM

  • Law lets Greenville try to disband one special little government

    H.4754 reads almost like parody. It allows a county council to take over a special purpose district. But only a special purpose district created without a public referendum. And only a recreation special purpose district. That covers an entire county. And doesn’t provide aging services.- 8:14 AM

  • Accidental law remains the law, for two years and counting

    THE GOOD news is that the Legislature has finally eliminated the “mistake of age” defense for men who have sex with underage girls — a blame-the-victim provision that lawmakers swear they had no idea they passed, but that it took them two full years to repeal.- 12:14 AM

  • What it means for senators to keep magistrates on short leash

    YOU’VE dropped by your office on the weekend to go over some paperwork, and you accidentally lock yourself inside a storage room. The door can only be unlocked from the outside, and the only person who has a key is your assistant. You call your wife and tell her to find your assistant and have him come rescue you.- 1:47 AM

  • Ruling adds potentially useful element of uncertainty to bobtailing

    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

  • Subsidized guns, dishwashers and gas add up to lawsuit loss

    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

  • Outside money elevates one issue above others, and it’s not vouchers

    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

  • Greg Gregory’s lonely fight for health, environment, democracy

    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

  • Legislative mantra: Ignore your problems and hope they go away

    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

  • Why June is busier than November, and why that’s bad

    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

  • Be careful what you ask for; you might get a Trojan horse

    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

  • Lawmakers trip over line between pandering and insulting

    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

  • Are black legislators becoming best advocates of restructuring?

    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

  • Oh deer! Are they wasting time again?

    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

  • A chance to break out of one step forward, one step back mode

    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

  • Beating May 1 deadline is only part of the battle for late bills

    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

  • Public, rank-and-file could be shut out of budget debate

    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

  • Biggest obstacle for S.C. women also plagues men

    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

  • Lottery=education fantasies that do more harm than good

    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

  • The myth of the dictatorial governor

    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

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