Category: Reform & Restructuring

  ‘NULLIFYING’ COMMON CORE WON’T MAKE IT GO AWAY, BUT A BILL NOW IN THE LEGISLATURE WOULD GIVE TAXPAYERS SOME SAY IN THE MATTER The first step toward removing Common…

THREE PROVISIONS THAT SHOULD BE AMENDED, PRONTO Today, a Senate Select Committee on Ethics will consider H.3945, the ethics bill that failed to make it out of the Senate last…

WONDER WHAT YOUR LAWMAKERS WERE UP TO IN 2013? IT’S ALL HERE. Our annual guide to the year’s legislative session, The Best & Worst of the General Assembly, has been…

S.C.’S ROAD POLICY: BUILD NEW ROADS WITHOUT FIXING EXISTING ONES Since the close of the 2013 legislative session, the confused priorities of the state’s transportation authorities have been on full…

  THINK THERE ARE GREAT ARGUMENTS FOR ELIMINATING THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX? SO DOES ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE. AND YET . . .  In a red, “conservative” state like South Carolina,…

THERE IS NO COMPARISON. LITERALLY. South Carolinians have become accustomed to seeing their state placed at or near the wrong side of a variety of national rankings. Early childhood education,…

 2013 WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE ‘YEAR OF ETHICS REFORM.’ IT WASN’T. SO DOES ANYONE CARE? At the conclusion of the 2013 legislative session, as the Senate prepared to vote…

  THIS ISN’T JUST A THEORETICAL DEBATE With the launch of SCPC’s Project Conflict Watch – and now with the release by Senator Vincent Sheheen of his tax returns and…

WHY THE BUDGET TAKES HALF A YEAR TO PASS, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT It has become an almost yearly tradition for the South Carolina General Assembly to use…

 WHAT’S THE PROBLEM: PRIORITIES OR FUNDING? This week, the Senate Finance Special Subcommittee on Transportation Funding kicked off a series of meetings to discuss several bills that could make big…

  CLEARLY, LAWMAKERS HAD GOOD REASONS TO KEEP H.3945 SECRET The talk this week has been mainly about the ill-named ethics reform bill being debated in the South Carolina House.…

S.22 ISN’T ABOUT SEPARATING POWERS. AND IT NEVER HAS BEEN On government restructuring, it’s déjà vu all over again. As happened last year, the Senate passed a weak restructuring bill, S.22, that…

It’s the beginning of April and lawmakers‘ two-week furlough is almost up, leaving us at roughly the half-way point of the 2013 legislative session. This was supposed to be the…

  CURRENT DOA BILL WOULD FURTHER FLOUT CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES [UPDATE: Late yesterday the full Senate passed S.22 by a vote of 35 to 10. The version passed by the Senate…

Lawmakers say it’s about accountability. The only trouble is: Their bill doesn’t achieve it.  On Thursday, January 10, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee – the subcommittee dealing…

  CAN SOMETHING SO SIMPLE REALLY BE SO DIFFICULT? Among the state’s commentators and editorialists, ethics reform is expected to be the issue of the 2013 legislative session. What exactly…

A FEW IDEAS WORTH KEEPING FOR NEXT YEAR . . . The 2013 legislative session will begin in January, and many lawmakers and pundits have predicted that this will be…

WHY THE HOUSE & SENATE ETHICS COMMITTEES SHOULDN’T EXIST – AND WHY IT MATTERS South Carolina is often said – correctly – to be dominated by the legislature. What does that…

OR, WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THESE GUYS STICK AROUND TOO LONG? We’re sometimes asked: Where’s the harm in the fact that South Carolina has a longer legislative session than most other…

  SC LAWMAKERS SPEND MORE THAN HALF THE YEAR IN COLUMBIA. TIME TO ABBREVIATE. THE BACKGROUND South Carolina has one of the longest legislative sessions in the country. Legislators spend almost…

 FOR STARTERS, YOU MIGHT LEARN THE REASONS FOR SOME OF YOUR LAWMAKERS’ VOTES Suppose for a moment that you disapprove of a particular vote cast by your lawmaker. You think…

Politicians Shouldn’t Be in Charge of Ethics Reform, SCPC President Says Columbia, S.C. – August 29, 2012 – Today South Carolina Policy Council President Ashley Landess stood with an ideologically diverse…

THE DOA BILL HAS DIED IN THE SENATE. DID IT DESERVE ITS FATE? It’s been more than a month since we last saw the Department of Administration bill being debated…

The House of Representatives has finally unveiled their amendment to the Department of Administration bill – after crafting it behind closed doors for more than two months. It sailed through…

Yesterday the Senate passed what many are calling the most significant restructuring plan this state has seen in decades. By a vote of 44-0, the South Carolina Senate passed H.3066…

  South Carolina elected officials claim to be restructuring government, but is anything changing?  Are we moving toward real separation of powers, or is the status quo being preserved?  Below are…

What’s wrong with the structure of South Carolina’s government? All the power is held by five-member boards, like the State Financial Affairs Authority and Budget and Control Board. Major functions…

A new amendment to the Department of Administration bill has hit the Senate floor. Although it’s a moving target, here’s an overview of what the bill would do with state…

The Senate is currently debating potentially the most important government restructuring legislation in decades (H.3066). The bill is intended to concentrate accountability by separating executive from legislative functions. But what’s…

The Senate is currently considering legislation (H 3066) that would eliminate the Budget & Control Board (BCB), devolving the BCB’s responsibilities to a cabinet-level Department of Administration and a newly…