Editorials from across South Carolina: Conservation Bank, DOT reform, police video

Conservation Bank

Everyone can appreciate the state’s natural beauty and historic assets — and how conserving those assets contributes to the state’s quality of life. And to a sound economy.

A bill in the S.C. Senate would strengthen one of the state’s best tools for seeing that important conservation goals are met — the Conservation Bank. It deserves full legislative support.

Since 2004, the bank has done impressive work to conserve significant natural resource lands, wetlands, historical properties and archeological sites across South Carolina. In Charleston, for example, it was instrumental in assuring that Morris Island would never be developed.

But it has done so with a handicap. Legislation establishing the Conservation Bank requires it to be reauthorized periodically. And its funding is at risk every year of dwindling or disappearing altogether. …

South Carolina is growing and attracting people from across the country, in part because of its natural beauty and recreational opportunities. Overdevelopment is threatening natural assets.

With legislative support, the Conservation Bank can continue to play a key role in protecting those assets for future generations.

DOT reform

If there is any need for more evidence South Carolina’s Department of Transportation needs to be reformed and more funding is needed to upgrade the state’s infrastructure, consider a report in Sunday’s Greenville News.

In that story, reporter Tim Smith revealed the dangers hydroplaning poses to South Carolina drivers, and the expense it means for state taxpayers. While lives lost certainly outweigh any financial costs of unsafe roads, both should be added to the list of reasons the Legislature needs to improve transportation funding this year.

According to that report, dozens of lawsuits in the past 20 years have been filed against DOT on behalf of people killed or injured in hydroplaning accidents. Those suits have resulted in millions of dollars in payments. …

South Carolina lawmakers need to get serious about passing DOT reform that includes a stable, recurring funding source to increase available resources for bringing our roads and highways up to a reasonable condition. That should occur without offsetting income tax cut, but such a cut may be an acceptable fallback if it results in more DOT funding.

Our economic future depends on this, because employers want safe and efficient roads to bring goods to market and to attract potential employees. Our quality of life depends on it.

And our very lives depend on it when road conditions become so bad that the risk of being involved in a deadly accident dramatically increases.

Police video

Two years is too long for the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division and the City of North Augusta to hold on to the dashcam footage of the North Augusta officer-involved shooting that killed an unarmed man in February 2014.

For roughly 730 days, the state’s top law enforcement agency and a police agency in Aiken County have held video reportedly showing former North Augusta Department of Public Safety officer Justin Craven’s fatal shooting of 68-year-old Edgefield County resident Ernest Satterwhite Sr., who was sitting in his car, reportedly unarmed.

Craven’s attorney, Jack Swerling, has maintained his client “feared for his life” the night of Feb. 9, 2014 and that Satterwhite reached for Craven’s weapon after a high-speed chase that started in North Augusta and ended in Edgefield County..…

Without the video, the newspaper, along with other media outlets who have fought for the right to see the footage, will never know what happened that night until Craven goes before a trial by jury expected this year.

This story was originally published February 15, 2016 at 1:59 PM.