Sunday, Apr. 27, 2008

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.

“Why don’t we just hire a king and he can go out there and pick whoever he wants to run these departments?” he asked. “Or do we keep it the way it is — a democracy — and have the people elect their leaders?”

When I finally managed to claw my way through my over-stuffed in-box, a reprise of the Rust message was waiting for me:

“I saw, again, in your column, a push for enhanced gubernatorial power in South Carolina. You made reference to a leader with bold ideas that don’t get watered down by the timid legislature. Were you implying that this would protect education from unwise budget cuts? If our present governor’s bold ideas were unchecked, a good portion of our education dollar would be paying private school tuition, even bright kids who read at age five would be getting systematic phonics instruction until they were nine, and Barbara Nielson (sic) would likely be State Superintendent. At least 25% of the income tax burden would have been shifted from upper-incomes to middle and lower incomes.”

Wow.

When you put it that way, no one in his right mind would want to “restructure” government.

Heck, I’d oppose the plan my e-mail correspondent outlined. It’s scary to think a governor could have the kind of “unchecked” power he suggests ours would.

But no one has ever proposed such a thing.

The scenario he described, like what Mr. Rust implied and what I hear objected to over and over, could not play out unless we literally abolished the Legislature and gave the governor both executive and legislative powers.

That’s the only way the governor could cut the education budget, since our constitution gives exclusive power to write the budget to the Legislature. That’s the only way the governor could hand out vouchers or give tax cuts to the wealthy or change school curriculums, since only the Legislature can write laws.

If you transformed South Carolina’s governor from the weakest in the nation to the strongest, the Legislature would still control the purse. The Legislature would still write the laws — and, with enough votes to override a veto, it could reverse any decision the governor made.

There are no proposals to make South Carolina’s governor the strongest in the nation. The proposals my colleagues and I have been advocating for more than a decade are 1) to consolidate some agencies (which doesn’t change the imbalance of power at all) and 2) to let the governor hire and fire the directors of most state agencies.

The proposals that have gotten a hearing in the Legislature do far less. The bill the House passed last week, for instance, would move some functions from the Budget and Control Board into a new Department of Administration, whose director the governor could hire and fire. But it would leave in place the board, which is a slap in the face to the principle of separation of powers that is the foundation of our federal government and the other 49 states — and that our own constitution pays lip service to.

Here’s what could change if the governor controlled most executive agencies:

When DHEC permits a new coal-fired power plant, you could hold the governor responsible; you might even be able to convince him to reverse the decision.

When it looks like the Highway Patrol is out of control, the governor could demand changes on the spot or even clean house, rather than letting problems simmer until that one chance he gets every four years to replace the folks at the top.

When an agency stonewalls on releasing public documents, the governor could make it act.

When two agencies argue over which one has to treat autistic children, the governor could order one to just do the job.

None of this takes any power from the Legislature. What it does is take power away from the anonymous, unaccountable, unelected officials who pretty much do what they want, controlled only by the blunt instrument of the state budget: the part-time political appointees on the DHEC board, whom the governor appoints for fixed terms and can’t remove, the directors of all those multitudinous state agencies who answer to their own part-time and even more obscure boards.

The Legislature can overrule the actions of those part-time boards and obscure agency directors today, although the process is cumbersome, so it doesn’t happen as often as it should. The Legislature could do the same if the governor controlled those agency directors. It could pass a law requiring the coal-fired plant to be permitted, for instance, or prohibiting state agencies from releasing certain kinds of information to the public.

The system we have is great for that tiny group of people who have figured out how to work it to their advantage. It’s great for the people who don’t want government to work at all. But for the rest of us, it’s an exercise in futility: We can’t get our hands around the levers of power, and the people we elect can’t either.

A dictator could make things happen. But so could a governor who has the normal, routine sort of powers that the governors of 49 other states take for granted. And that is all anyone has ever suggested trying here in South Carolina.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.