We must move quickly and act boldly to get South Carolina through coronavirus crisis

We are now more than a month into the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic in South Carolina.

My hometown of Camden was initially the hardest-hit community in our state.

We learned valuable lessons early of what to do, what not to do and how to build community support; more importantly we learned that short-term and long-term planning matter.

Too often we are reactive in South Carolina, but now is time to take proactive next steps.

We need new plans and tactics, and we need them quickly.

For example, since the Great Recession our state has dramatically reduced funding for colleges and made their operating budgets almost exclusively reliant on tuition, fees and other revenues. But when students cannot attend class, live in dorms or pay for parking, these funds disappear — and this loss will exceed $100 million through the end of May alone.

The reality is that some of South Carolina’s colleges could financially collapse if we do not take action.

Our hospitals are working overtime and expending vast sums to fight the coronavirus. While they tirelessly fight this battle, they are not performing the normal elective procedures that generate most of their revenue. Our state has already seen mass layoffs in health care. We must develop long-term plans on how to maintain the financial viability of our hospitals.

Here are just a few more issues that we must face:

▪ How would we handle a massive coronavirus outbreak in our prisons?

▪ How will our state parks maintain themselves if no one is paying to visit?

▪ Are we ensuring that our day care centers are maintaining the safety of children and staff?

▪ Will South Carolina need a jobs or public works program to assist unemployed workers when we’re able to go back to work?

And there are many more issues to address.

The State Legislature made a good first start this month when it agreed to disburse funding and ease regulations to assist our colleges, hospitals, schools and counties while also allowing Gov. Henry McMaster to receive and spend federal stimulus funds. This legislation must still be finalized, but the state does not have detailed plans in place on how these funds will be managed..

The people of South Carolina need leadership that is aggressive, flexible and moving quickly.

Gov. McMaster clearly loves this state, and he has worked hard to manage the coronavirus crisis by implementing social distancing policies and closings. But our state has not yet recovered from previous years when former Govs. Nikki Haley and Mark Sanford treated government as the enemy and gutted state agencies. As a result our agencies have not performed as well as we deserve.. Too often in South Carolina we don’t seem to want professional and competent government until we need it— and by then it’s too late.

It’s time to catch up.

Our leaders must appoint a coronavirus task force with members who have a deep understanding of our state government operations, our private sector and our health care, economic and education systems — and this task force must be led by someone with a proven ability to get things done.

This task force must quickly meet to create a plan for Gov. McMaster and state leaders to execute. We need this group to design how to provide funding in needed areas, plan the management of the coronavirus crisis and change laws and regulations to assist the public and private sectors.

We must act now. We don’t have time to waste.

A Democrat, state Sen. Vincent Sheheen represents District 27, which includes Kershaw, Lancaster and Chester counties.

This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 2:59 PM.