Tuesday, May. 20, 2008

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.

Back in 1993 — the first and, so far, last time the Legislature got really serious about restructuring government — black legislators formed a solid front against a plan they feared would disenfranchise African-Americans by shifting power to a white governor and away from the autonomous governing boards whose strings legislators could often pull.

Richland Rep. Joe Neal was at the vanguard of that opposition, upset that white Democrats were joining forces with white Republicans to reduce legislative influence over the government just as black legislators gained clout.

I wouldn’t call it a Road to Damascus conversion, but a light went on for Rep. Neal this spring when Gov. Mark Sanford ousted Public Safety Director James Schweitzer for failing to take aggressive-enough action after an out-of-control trooper threatened to kill a fleeing suspect and punctuated the threat with a racial slur.

“He demonstrated his ability to do with DPS what we could not have done in the Legislature,” Mr. Neal told me recently. “That just illustrated what the potential impact of a governor who can be held accountable would be. You rarely see an opportunity where a governor’s influence on an agency is that clear. That’s a benefit that I think some of us may have missed.”

Mr. Neal still fears that state agencies will be politicized if a governor can hire and fire top officials, but he says it’s also tough for the Legislature to “deal with the day-to-day operations of state agencies without politicization.”

“I’m convinced that our involvement is sometimes not in the best interest of our state,” he said. “Sometimes agencies need a direct line of responsibility.”

Although his is the most dramatic turnaround I’ve seen, it is far from the only one.

When Brad Warthen and I interviewed candidates in the upcoming legislative primaries, we found more support than opposition among African-Americans to letting future governors appoint some statewide officials who are now elected, consolidating agencies and replacing agency governing boards with directors appointed by the governor.

At the outset of the 1993 effort, Rep. John Scott told me: “You’re talking about this state going back 100 years to a dictatorship.” Today, Mr. Scott boasts that he voted this spring to create a new Department of Administration that the governor would control, to let the governor hire and fire the director of a merged Department of Mental Health and Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services, and to ask voters to let the governor name the education superintendent, secretary of state and lieutenant governor.

Mr. Scott’s opponent in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Kay Patterson, Richland School District 1 board member Vince Ford, says that by all means we need to restructure government — although neither candidate offered much of a reason last week when I asked why they felt this way.

Richland 1 Chairwoman Wendy Brawley is seeking to unseat the one black legislator involved in negotiating the 1993 law, Sen. Darrell Jackson. She says it’s probably time to turn more agencies over to the governor, noting that “we all survived it” before and singling out change at the Insurance Department, where she used to work, as “a good move.”

Mr. Jackson was one of the most outspoken critics of restructuring efforts last year, but he now says he’s back to supporting the idea, specifically mentioning Gov. Mark Sanford’s argument that letting the governor appoint constitutional officers is “the only way we’ll get an African-American in a high position.”

Of all the candidates we’ve talked to, Republican and Democrat, black and white, none was clearer about the direct line from an empowered governor to a responsive government than Richland County Council Chairman Joe McEachern, who is seeking Mr. Scott’s House seat.

“If you have accountability to where the people can have some input to it, they can get the services they deserve,” he said. “In those areas that you don’t have oversight by the governor, those people are not accountable. They’re like little children: When they do the wrong thing, they always look to their parents to see if they’re looking.”

There are political reasons for black politicians to support an empowered governor, one of which is the mirror image of the waning enthusiasm among many Republicans, who formed the core of support during the Campbell administration: Then, the Democratic Party, to which all the African-American legislators belong, controlled the Legislature; today Republicans are in charge, and so for the first time in a century they appreciate the greater wisdom of the legislative branch.

But it’s not all about party politics and power, as I was reminded when we talked to one of the new generation of black legislators, Rep. Chris Hart, who is still brimming with the enthusiasm and sense of urgency that he used to oust longtime Rep. Joe Brown two years ago. Mr. Hart reminded us that government restructuring was “one of the things I ran on” in 2006 and that he was one of the few Democrats to co-sponsor bills the House leadership offered this year to nudge things forward.

Mr. Hart dismisses the fears of diminished legislative power, noting that the Legislature and governor can — and should — both be strong. For him, the need for change is so obvious that he barely manages not to roll his eyes when he talks about it.

“In civics class, you learn about the three branches of government,” Mr. Hart said. “We don’t have that here.”

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