Editorials from across South Carolina: HB 2, seismic testing, school funding

Learn from backlash over N.C. law

The decision by calmer voices in South Carolina’s Legislature to kill a bill that would have mimicked North Carolina’s controversial HB 2 is looking better every day. …

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Columbia could join hunt to host NCAA postseason tournaments

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(T)here are more lessons that South Carolina can learn as we prepare for the January legislative session: First, lawmakers need to be wary of seeking solutions to nonexistent problems. The bill South Carolina’s lawmakers proposed certainly wouldn’t have addressed one issue its chief sponsor, former Sen. Lee Bright, suggested it would fix: sexual abuse of vulnerable children by adults.

Second, backlash is inevitable if South Carolina revisits this issue. North Carolina lost an immense amount of business — the ACC football championship alone had an economic impact of $32.4 million for Charlotte, according to a report by the News & Observer in Raleigh. Certainly that state’s lawmakers did not see this train coming down the tracks, but they should have. The only way for the state to recover the lost business is likely to reverse course on the law.

Finally, South Carolina already knows about the consequences of a bad decision, namely the short-sighted compromise in 2000 that took the Confederate flag off the Statehouse but did not remove it from the Statehouse grounds. That was followed by an NCAA ban on postseason events here that was lifted in 2015 after the flag finally was taken off the Statehouse grounds. Though the flag has been moved, the state’s image has not totally recovered. However, South Carolina does potentially stand to gain from North Carolina’s misstep.

Don’t allow seismic testing off S.C. coast

Often business interests and environmentalists are at loggerheads: Development versus conservation.

But the two have found common ground on a worthy issue affecting the Atlantic Coast. They oppose seismic testing for offshore oil.

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Coastal communities ready to fight latest danger: seismic testing

Ariail on seismic testing off the SC coast

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Of course, Big Oil is an exception. It wants to test for oil deposits in case the federal government changes plans and permits drilling offshore.

But business owners and organizations from New Jersey to Georgia have stepped up to oppose testing because, despite what the oil companies promise, they know the damage such testing can do to marine life. …

(D)rilling poses the very real danger of black crude oil spills gumming up the beaches and stretches of marsh that feed tourism. Then there are the exceedingly ugly industrial complexes needed on shore to support the drilling.

That’s not what tourists come to see. And it’s not why people decide to move to the coast, buy real estate, pay taxes and shop.

Pay for schools

Thumbs up to (Francis Marion University) President Fred Carter for telling it like it is. At the Education Summit, he was asked what outcome he would like to see in the Abbeville vs. the State of South Carolina lawsuit that is about equitable funding in poor and rural school districts. …

“I want equity in K through 12 education, and I want higher education well funded. And I want roads I can drive on. And I essentially want Medicaid expanded across the Pee Dee region to help more sick people be treated. You lay all those things out and you’ve got to begin a process of prioritization, and I think that’s what they’re doing. And many of you are not going to like this, and I’m sorry about that, but it also means that all of us in this state are going to have to pay more taxes and more user fees to make this state more livable. I’m sorry, but that’s a fact. Our tax structures in this state are at a level that are not excessive, but our quality of life is getting to a level in some areas where it’s not livable.

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Scoppe: Can money make a difference? Is this a serious question?

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“Somehow we have to reconcile the two, and the way to reconcile it is to look at raising those user fees and raising those taxes, and especially for people like those of us sitting in this room, and it’s not enough that we say, ‘You’re right.’ What we ought to be doing is going out there and championing the effort to do those kind of things. That’s how we resolve those issues. Now I will tell you this, and I’ll only say this one time: The funding for K through 12 in my mind trumps the funding for higher education any day of the week.” An increase in the state’s low gas tax would be a good place to start.