‘Mega’ health department is a bad idea, critics say. Plan to break up DHEC assailed
In the more than 30 years Genia Timmons has dealt with South Carolina’s mental health department, she’s almost always found agency staff members willing to help her sort out the problems and challenges she faced.
“I wouldn’t have been able to be myself without them,’’ the Florence resident said Tuesday. “Everybody needs somebody to talk to, whether they admit it or not.’’
Timmons’ comments at a legislative hearing in Columbia were among a cascade of concerns that surfaced over plans to dissolve the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
The effort to break up DHEC, an agency with a wide range of duties, centers on efforts to provide more efficient health and environmental protection. Under the proposal, the state Department of Mental Health, the agency that helped Timmons, would be folded into a larger health agency that includes DHEC’s health division. DHEC’s environmental division would become its own agency.
The new health agency would be more than twice the size of the current Department of Mental Health. Critics told the Ways and Means Committee panel that the larger size would make it harder for people to get the service they are accustomed to. Many said the state Senate, which approved the bill without extensive hearings, moved too hastily.
“It’s not going to work,’’ said Darren E. Rogers Sr., who serves on the mental health department’s local board in Lexington County. “And I’m here to tell you as a businessman in Lexington County, it don’t take common sense to figure this out, though common sense is not something that grows on everybody’s bush anymore.
“Please do not consider this. Please do not approve this.’’
Despite the outcry, the Ways and Means subcommittee voted to send the measure to the full committee. But the criticism might have succeeded in raising enough questions to kill the bill before the Legislature adjourns for the year.
Breaking up a major agency
With eight days left in the legislative session, plenty of work is needed on the bill, said Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a Democrat from Orangeburg who chairs the subcommittee.
“Frankly, to move something of this magnitude right now is not really prudent,’’ she said, noting that questions remain after the two-hour meeting. “You can’t have this kind of massive change in this short a time period without impacting services.’’
Her subcommittee amended the bill Tuesday. The amendment still calls for separate environmental and health agencies to be created, and for mental health to move under the health agency. But it adds details on how to accomplish the complicated task of dissolving and forming new agencies, relying on committees and the S.C. Department of Administration to help. It also delays the effective date of the break-up by two years, until 2024.
Now, questions and changes to the bill must be discussed by the full committee, and the House must take up the measure. Gov. Henry McMaster also would have to sign the bill.
The DHEC breakup bill is on Thursday’s full House Ways and Means Committee meeting agenda. The committee meeting is at 9 a.m. in room 521 of the Blatt legislative office building.
Agency directors who weighed in on the proposed DHEC breakup Tuesday said it was not their job to say whether the split is a good idea. But DHEC director Edward Simmer said it makes sense to put the mental health department in a new large health agency.
“We are convinced that bringing public health, mental health and substance abuse together in one agency will help improve the health of South Carolinians across the state, will allow for more efficient and effective approaches to those serious crises, and will end up leading to better outcomes,’’ he said.
DHEC is one of the few departments in the country that combines both health and environmental services under one roof. Critics say that means the agency has struggled to respond adequately to major environmental and health challenges. It’s a long-running complaint that has sparked many unsuccessful efforts through the years to create a separate environmental department from the health department.
Among problems that have haunted DHEC is the agency’s failure to resolve long-running threats to drinking water in small communities, including one neighborhood southeast of Columbia that waited 20 years for lead-free drinking water. Many small drinking water systems have for years repeatedly violated safe drinking water laws, but fines have been light and the problems have lingered, The State reported in 2019.
Critics also blasted the agency during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 for failing to quickly disclose information that could have educated people about where outbreaks were occurring. Also, the department’s director quit during the pandemic, and the board did not find a new chief for months, leaving an interim director in charge. Later, under Simmer’s leadership, the agency more aggressively attacked the coronavirus pandemic.
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control was formed in 1973. Supporters have said combining health and environment into one agency made sense. But the agency is a controversial one with a broad range of responsibilities, from regulating hospitals to issuing pollution permits -- duties that tend to upset people who disagree with department decisions.
How breaking up DHEC would work
This year, led by powerful Sen. Harvey Peeler, a Cherokee County Republican whose family for years ran a well-known dairy, the legislation moved swiftly through committees and was approved.
But environmentalists and health care advocates complained that they didn’t get a chance to speak at Senate hearings, expressing appreciation Tuesday the House gave them a full hearing.
Under Peeler’s plan, DHEC’s environmental division would become its own agency, directly answerable to the governor rather than an appointed board. Some of the DHEC environmental side’s duties would go to the Department of Agriculture. Other duties from the S.C. Department of Natural Resources — namely water research — would go to the new environmental agency.
The DHEC health side, with more than 2,000 workers, would merge with the S.C. Department of Mental Health and the Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services. The new department, also to be a governor’s cabinet agency, would have about 6,000 employees.
While many like the idea of separating DHEC’s health and environmental sides, the proposal to make a large health agency that includes mental health is another matter. It could cost $18 million upfront to break up the agency, estimates show.
“You’re making a mega-department,’’ said Bill Lindsey, president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in South Carolina, before the meeting. “To me, that’s just bad.’’
Environmentalists also urged caution. John Tynan, director of the Conservation Voters of South Carolina, said concerns remain about environmental protection oversight.
The plan takes away some duties from the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and gives them to DHEC. As a result, the state could lose healthy checks and balances between the two agencies, critics say. There are also concerns about losing the right to appeal environmental permits to the DHEC board because the board would be dissolved under the restructuring.
At Tuesday’s hearing, the only group voicing strong support for splitting up DHEC was the S.C. Farm Bureau. An agency representative said he needed to know more about the amendment.
The Farm Bureau wants the state’s oversight of water — which farmers need to irrigate — to come from one agency, instead of two. The bureau has been an advocate of less regulation for farms that it says need leeway to grow crops that provide food for people’s tables.
“We are very concerned at Farm Bureau and the agricultural community of the need to have water located under one agency,’’ Bureau president Harry Ott said. “You’ve got DHEC doing part of it, you’ve got DNR doing another part. What we run into often times is they don’t agree.’’
In summary, “we need a one-stop shop,’’ Ott said.
This story has been updated to show the bill is on Thursday’s House Ways and Means Committee agenda.
This story was originally published April 26, 2022 at 9:12 PM.
