What to Watch at the Organizational Session
THERE’S MORE AT STAKE THAN YOU MIGHT THINK At this week’s organizational session, South Carolina House lawmakers will be asked to make several important decisions, including who becomes Speaker of the House…
House Committee Proposes Rule Changes
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE IMPROVABLE Last week we wrote about some of the bills proposed by the House Ethics and Freedom of Information Act Committee, the committee created…
Good & Bad Ideas on Roads
WHAT YOUR POLICYMAKERS ARE HEARING & SAYING Two recent meetings – the House Ad Hoc Transportation Review Committee, and a York Town Hall addressed by Rep. Gary Simrill (R-York) –…
New Ethics Measures Proposed, Debated
WHAT IS SO HARD ABOUT ELIMINATING EXEMPTIONS AND LOOPHOLES? On Monday the House Ethics and Freedom of Information Act Ad Hoc Study Committee met to consider six proposals. Two of…
New Ethics Proposals Made Public
ARE WE HEADED INTO ANOTHER YEAR OF WEAK ETHICS LEGISLATION? HARD TO SAY. The indictment and subsequent conviction of former Speaker Harrell on ethics charges has brought renewed calls for reform…
Roads: Is Raising Taxes Really the Only Option?
LAWMAKERS SEEM TO THINK SO. A LITTLE EFFORT MIGHT BE IN ORDER. Tax hikes are on the mind of legislators. At least that’s what the October 30 meeting of the…
How “Restructuring” Gave the Legislature More Power
NEW POWERS FOR LAWMAKERS? Much has been made of the restructuring of state government through the Department of Administration bill passed in January. Proponents of the bill have labeled it historic…
Best & Worst of the General Assembly
HOW’D THE LEGISLATURE DO? Every year since 2009, we’ve given readers a guided tour of the legislative session’s follies, misadventures, missed opportunities, and accomplishments. This year’s guide includes sections on…
Does the Education Superintendent Matter?
NOT AS MUCH AS IT SHOULD A recent debate between the two major party candidates vying to become South Carolina’s next Superintendent of Education failed to reveal many substantive policy…
Why Raising the Fuel Tax Is a Terrible Idea
MONEY’S NOT THE PROBLEM. PRIORITIES ARE. The issue of road funding – or, to put it slightly differently, the question of how South Carolina should fix its broken road system…
Testimony: Reforms to House Rules
SCPC PROPOSES REFORMS TO NEW COMMITTEE ON HOUSE RULES AND PROCEDURES [Editorial note: The following testimony was delivered by Policy Council Director of Research Jamie Murguia to the House Ad Hoc…
Getting Politics out of Money
WHAT THE McDONNELL CASE TELLS US ABOUT GOVERNMENT ‘DEVELOPING’ THE ECONOMY Last week former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell was convicted of 11 counts of corruption related to his acceptance of…
Why “Publicly Owned” Resources Get Neglected
IS YOUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT DOING A GREAT JOB OF MAINTAINING PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE? IF NOT . . . The Nerve recently reported on a lawyer who is simultaneously serving as a…
How S.C.’s Legislature Bullies Local Governments
WHEN WILL LOCAL GOVERNMENTS PUSH BACK AGAINST ALL THIS MEDDLING? The House of Representatives returned for a special one day session on August 27 to address a mere two bills…
What Will the State Do with the Surplus?
PROBABLY NOT WHAT CHESTER ARTHUR WOULD HAVE DONE You might have recently heard that South Carolina ended the fiscal year with a higher-than-expected surplus – a surplus big enough to…
Is South Carolina at War with the Homeless?
EQUALITY OF THE LAW OUGHT TO MEAN SOMETHING South Carolina has a homeless problem. That’s especially true in Columbia. The problem isn’t that the state and city are overwhelmed by…
Why Another Earned Income Credit Won’t Help
MORE LAYERS OF GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS WON’T ADDRESS THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY. BUT SOMETHING ELSE WILL. South Carolina is among the poorest states in the nation. That’s no secret. But with a…
A New Opportunity for the Policy Council
A LITTLE MORE WORK AND TRUE REFORM CAN HAPPEN. The Policy Council has been advocating legislative and fiscal reform in South Carolina for many years, and we’ve never seen a moment like this…
Public Colleges Don’t Need More of Your Money
ONE BLOATED COMPENSATION PACKAGE IS ONLY A TINY PART OF THE PROBLEM Late in 2013 University of South Carolina (USC) President Harris Pastides was making hat in hand entreaties to the…
Common Core: It’s Bigger Than You Think
COMMON CORE IS EVERYWHERE – BY DESIGN. REJECTING IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN A BILL. Across the country, parents and teachers are waking up and forcing their states to reject the…
A Return to Non-Adversarial Policing?
FEDERAL FUNDING HAS ENCOURAGED LOCAL POLICE DEPARTMENTS TO MILITARIZE. THERE’S AN EASY WAY TO CHANGE THAT. The image of the public servant police officer committed to protecting the average citizen…
Do South Carolinians Have the Right to Work?
REMEMBER, THE FREEDOM TO WORK MEANS MORE THAN THE ABSENCE OF UNIONS Last year during National Employee Freedom Week, we posed this question: Is South Carolina really a “right-to-work state”? Of…
Why Common Core Fails Special Needs Students
ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL IS GREAT, UNLESS YOU’RE THE WRONG SIZE Common Core, whatever else may be said about it, is a one-size-fits-all standards regime. Parents of special needs children therefore have every reason…
Nothing New about the New Markets Job Act
ANOTHER IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME AND GONE “Public-private partnerships” with innocuous-sounding names have become extremely popular in South Carolina over the last decade. The latest endeavor in the trend…
The Unseen Costs of the Export-Import Bank
THE EX-IM BANK GIVES FOREIGN COMPANIES AN ADVANTAGE, COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER . . . TIME TO LET IT EXPIRE In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution,…
Government Transparency vs. Individual Privacy
IN SOUTH CAROLINA, THE TROUBLE WITH THE PUBLIC SECTOR IS THAT IT’S BECOMING PRIVATE . . . AND VICE VERSA It’s common shorthand to refer to the governmental and non-governmental…
Burwell: What Does It Mean?
THE BOTTOM LINE: WASHINGTON DOESN’T FORCE; IT BRIBES. Halbig v. Burwell, the legal case that’s now threatening to unravel ObamaCare, reaffirms this basic principle: that the federal government rarely usurps state…
Why S.C. Needs a Constitutional Carry Law
MORE FREEDOM, LESS CRIME A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be…
How Federal Funding Has Ruined S.C.’s Roads
AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT As South Carolinians hit the roads for summer vacations, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to discuss the state’s poorly maintained roadways. The potholes,…
Medicaid Expansion by Any Other Name
WHY THE ‘PRIVATE OPTION’ ISN’T PRIVATE AND SHOULDN’T BE AN OPTION ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion destroys states’ budgets, inflicts serious economic harm, and does little or nothing to help the uninsured. Many officials in “red”…