STATEHOUSE REPORT | ISSUE 14.18 | MAY 1, 2015
Regulated to regulator: DHEC head nominee has big industry ties
By Bill Davis | If the Senate approves Catherine Heigel as the next executive director of the sprawling Department of Health and Environmental Control later this session, she will have travelled a path more and more agency heads in state government seem to be taking: from regulated to regulator.
Heigel, appointed last week by the DHEC board and subject to approval by Gov. Nikki Haley and the S.C. Senate, was previously the president of Duke Power of South Carolina. Its parent company, Duke Energy, this week announced it would dig up 4 million tons of waste from a Hartsville coal ash retention pond that reportedly was releasing toxins into a nearby lake.
Heigel is also a member of the state board that oversees Santee Cooper and is a former trustee of the state chapter of the Nature Conservancy. She is currently an attorney and “corporate strategies officer” in the Upstate office of a regional tax, accounting and consulting firm.
Statehouse Report could not reach Heigel for comment. Two DHEC officials said she wouldn’t be available for comment through the agency until after she has been officially appointed
Heigel’s nomination by the agency’s board developed after the governor’s choice, former state agency bigwig Eleanor Kitzman, removed her name from consideration in the face of mounting resistance within the General Assembly. In response, DHEC held a new hiring process, accepting close to 100 applicants, including one from Jenny Sanford, the former first lady of South Carolina.
Fox guarding the henhouse?
Sue Berkowitz, director of the state’s Appleseed Legal Justice Center, which advocates for the “little guy,” said she was in no way surprised that someone with such close ties to the “big guy” would be appointed. For Berkowitz, the whole thing looks like the fox is being invited into the henhouse.
Given half a second, Berkowitz will rattle of a short list of recent cabinet members who came from “industry” backgrounds. For example, Cheryl Stanton, who became head of Employment and Workforce in 2013, was a labor attorney in private practice and public service.
According to Berkowitz, the path is most worn between industry and the state Department of Insurance where four executive directors were insurance professionals prior to taking office:
- Ray Farmer, the current head, was most recently a lobbyist for the industry before taking office during the Haley tenure.
- David Black, who was replaced by Farmer, had been the president of an insurance company for 25 years before taking the office and then later resigning without comment.
- One of Black’s predecessors, former state Sen. Scott Richardson, was an Allstate broker before then-Gov. Mark Sanford named him to replace Kitzman.
- And one of Richardson’s predecessors, Ernst Csiszar, had been a national insurance company head before taking office during Gov. David Beasley’s tenure.
“Look at me, I’m the perfect example of what [Berkowitz] is talking about,” said Csiszar, taking a break from a regional insurance meeting Friday in Charleston. “I went from being an association president to a lobbyist to a regulator.”
Richardson, working in insurance again, said Friday he “understands” Berkowitz’s concerns, but added it would be folly to look outside the industry for leadership.
“You want somebody who knows something about it, or your could go with somebody who is blind, with the noble thought that they would not be subject to passing out favors,” said Richardson.
Richardson said he spent some of his time in the Senate as part of the work in the legislature to clean up the appointment process for the Public Service Commission. He deemed the commission as being the biggest “old boy network” in the state, making hundred-million dollar decisions without any real knowledge in the area.
Confirmation will boil down to trust
With Heigel, Richardson said it would boil down for the senators will be an “issue of personal integrity – if they don’t trust her, then they shouldn’t vote for her.”
Heigel’s name has already engendered trust in the conservation community.
Ann Timberlake, executive director of the environmental watchdog Conservation Voters of South Carolina, said she was pleased with the application process and the final name.
While she expects a “robust discussion” during Heigel’s confirmation hearings in the Senate, Timberlake added Heigel’s dedication to the environment in the past was important to her and the CVSC.
State Sen. Chip Campsen (R-Charleston), chair of the Fish, Game and Forestry Committee, said the “perfect” candidate to head DHEC doesn’t exist.
“You’d need someone who was a medical doctor, an environmental engineer, with a doctorate in public health, and a lawyer all rolled into one,” said Campsen.
Csiszar said because of its size and scope of work, what DHEC needed the most is a director with management skills.
On the other side of the aisle, state Sen. Brad Hutto (D-Orangeburg) said he already supported Heigel’s nomination, having worked with her in past state issues and found her to be competent and hard working.
State Sen. Darrell Jackson (D-Hopkins), who serves on Medical Affairs, said Heigel “may be the best we’re going to get.” But he didn’t sound like he was giving her a compliment when he added “… with Haley in office.”
A staff member at the Medical Affairs Committee in the Senate, which has first crack at vetting Heigel, said there is no calendar date for the first hearing as the committee is still waiting for paperwork from Gov. Nikki Haley’s office.
Bill Davis is senior editor at Statehouse Report. He can be reached at billdavis@statehousereport.com
2016 primary news resource now online
Just in time for all of the politicking and national candidates running for president is Statehouse’s daily news roundup of stories related to the Palmetto State’s first-in-the-nation primary.
Check our Web site every business morning (say, around 10 a.m.) for stories of interested that are related to the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries, which are slated for February 2016.
There’s going to be lots of chatter and news … and you can keep up with it through Statehouse Report. For even more news every day, you should check out our sister site, SCClips.com.
South Carolinian nominated to head federal agency
President Obama has nominated Charleston native and resident Kathryn “Kit” Matthew to be director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the federal agency that supports the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 35,000 museums to advance lifelong learning and promote cultural and civic engagement. The agency, which has about five dozen employees, administers a budget that was $225 million in 2013.
Matthew, a former director of philanthropy of the Historic Charleston Foundation, is currently undergoing the process of being confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Matthew has a distinguished resume with varied, professional experiences in the public, nonprofit and private sectors. She currently is chief science educator at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, a role she has held since 2014. She served as a principal consultant and a product manager at Blackbaud, Inc., from 2008 to 2013, worked at the Historic Charleston Foundation from 2006 to 2008, and was an exhibits consultant at Chemical Heritage Foundation from 2005 to 2006.
Skies not always friendly over South Carolina
Word that Clemson was asking for permission to spend as much as $6 million to buy a new jet for coaches and recruiters to better visit high school football players turned a few heads.
No tax dollars will be spent, as all the money will come from alumni donations or from football revenues, but the expenditure had to be approved by the legislature’s Joint Bond Review Committee and the state Budget and Control Board.
While some balked at the expense and the priorities it engenders, a new jet, while very expensive, could cut down on travel times for coaches and eliminate some charter flights for recruiting junkets.
Let’s remember, though, that South Carolina has had a very interesting past with planes:
- Just last year, former House Speaker Bobby Harrell (R-Charleston) stepped down, in part, after pleading guilty to charges he improperly used campaign funds for personal use related to his personal plane.
- Some think Gov. Nikki Haley and state Attorney General Alan Wilson may have violated state ethics laws a few years ago when they buzzed around South Carolina in the state plane to announce an ethics reform package.
- Jet-setting former Gov. Mark Sanford – well, ‘nuff said.
- Former state Sen. Jack Lindsay (D-Marlboro) took a state plane to Tampa in 1984 to attend the Super Bowl. Lindsay was later snared in Operation Lost Trust.
Bills on abortion, food stamps and STEM
As lawmakers headed toward the May 1 “crossover” deadline to receive bills from their companion chamber, they introduced few substantive measures over the last week. Of note:
IN THE SENATE
Selecting judges. S. 718 (Corbin) calls for a new process to put people on the Judicial Merit Selection Committees — having two people from each congressional district, with several provisions.
Abortion. S. 719 (Bright) seeks a resolution to propose a constitutional amendment to say life begins at conception and confer rights to fetuses. H 4093 (Chumley) is similar.
IN THE HOUSE
Food assistance limitations. H. 4066 (Gagnon) seeks to require the state Department of Social Services to limit SNAP food assistance benefits to three months out of every 36 with several exceptions.
Charter schools. H. 4084 (Stringer) calls for several changes to school charter schools, including making employees, board members and staff subject to state ethics and accountability requirements, with other provisions.
Pawnbrokers. H. 4090 (Bedingfield) calls for reforms to the state pawnbroker’s law with many provisions.
Department of Environment. H. 4105 (Neal) seeks to split the Department of Health and Environmental Control by devolving environmental responsibilities into a new Department of the Environment, with many provisions.
STEM education. H. 4108 (Rivers) seeks to create the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Pathway Resource Network to promote STEM education, with many provisions.
A shot in the arm here, but South needs more help
By Andy Brack | Talk about a shot in the arm for the southern rural counties of South Carolina. Witness the just-announced federal Promise Zone designation for a six-county area centering on Allendale County that should pump in millions of dollars of aid over the next 10 years.
But let’s be clear: It’s a hand-up, not a handout for people in the zone area of Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties. There’s a lot of hard work ahead for these counties, nonprofits, government agencies and businesses that are part of the effort to generate more jobs, improve education, reduce crime and get more affordable housing in a region where 28.1 percent of 90,000 residents live in poverty.
It’s not a handout because there’s not a big pot of money that instantly goes with the federal Promise Zone designation. Instead, the SouthernCarolina Alliance, the Barnwell-based economic development nonprofit that will coordinate the effort, will get five Americorps VISTA staffers to recruit and manage volunteers. These professionals also will provide much-needed expertise to help to write grant applications for existing federal grant programs.
In other words, these areas now will have help tapping into federal money and other opportunities to help achieve the Zone’s goals to grow jobs and reduce poverty. And when Zone counties apply for grants in more than 30 federal programs, they’ll be able to get a few extra points in the scoring process that should help them get grants that they may not have qualified for in the past.
So while there’s not big money now, it’s likely in the future, as highlighted by the success over the last 16 months by the only other rural area awarded a Promise Zone designation — an eight-county area in southeastern Kentucky. So far, its Promise Zone has generated more than $50 million dollars for new projects. An example of its success is how the Knox County Hospital in Barbourville is using federal funding to expand medical care services for 31,883 rural people and add more than 200 jobs. There’s also a new $20 million grant for a pilot project to help people receiving food assistance find jobs and work toward self-sufficiency.
The bottom line for South Carolina: There’s about to be a huge infusion in financial aid to the counties at the southern tip of the state where unemployment approaches 15 percent. Because of the unified vision of the zone counties, people’s lives and living conditions should get much better.
Critics will try to rain on the hope of South Carolina’s new Promise Zone. They’ll complain that the private sector — and not government intervention — should lead transformation of pervasively poor areas.
Question: So how’s that been working for, say, the last 150 years? If the private sector is the savior for people who live in these rural areas, why isn’t their economy better? The answer, of course, is that most of South Carolina simply forgot these areas as people moved in droves to metropolitan areas.
But now Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties have a new lease on life with the Obama Administration’s practical mechanism for local governments, nonprofits, universities and businesses like banks to work together to generate more economic activity.
The bittersweet note about this week’s Promise Zone announcement is how so many other impoverished parts of America need the same kind of help. In the second round of Promise Zone designations, there were 123 applications from across the country, but only eight were awarded. In the final round of designations next year, seven more zones will be announced.
Across the South, there’s a swath of poor counties — an area we call the Southern Crescent — that swings from the Tidewater region of Virginia south along Interstate 95 in the Carolinas. It shifts across middle Georgia and Alabama and turns north to the Mississippi Delta and part of Arkansas. This soft underbelly of the American South is home to millions who have been underserved for generations. People who live here tend to be more impoverished, have a higher rate of joblessness and a higher than normal incidence of a wide range of health problems.
They, too, need Promise Zones. They, too, need a hand up to slough off the shackles of being forgotten.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. He can be reached at: brack@statehousereport.com.
State’s hospitals support Certificate of Need program
By Allan Stalvey | South Carolina is among 35 states that maintain some type of Certificate of Need (CON) program to ensure access and quality of care for the citizens we serve. And while we recognize that the way healthcare is being delivered is changing around the country, we also understand that abrupt change leads to uncertainty, and uncertainty is not a favorable environment for business to thrive.
After all, for many South Carolina communities, hospitals are not only their largest employers, but also the chief economic driver and a critical piece of economic development that potential employers consider when deci
ding where to locate their next manufacturing facility or distribution center. That’s why South Carolina’s hospitals support CON reform that would maintain the program and provide certainty for an industry that continues to adjust to federal health care reform and other measures that drastically change the way we do business.
For its opponents, Certificate of Need is an issue that stifles competition and creates barriers to the “free market.” But what many do not understand is that for hospitals, health care is not a free market. Unlike other medical facilities, hospitals are required to provide emergency treatment to everyone who walks through our doors, regardless of ability to pay. Meanwhile, other facilities like physician practices and outpatient surgical centers have the authority to avert patients that are uninsured or underinsured that often end up in our emergency rooms. When you couple that with the fact that the U.S. government remains the largest purchaser of health care services through Medicaid and Medicare — providers with whom we cannot negotiate and reimburse hospitals less than cost — you begin to understand the need to properly plan for the health care needs of citizens so that everyone has access to treatment. That’s the importance of CON.
Without a health-planning process, specialty healthcare facilities could simply set up shop next to a hospital and siphon away the more lucrative services and commercially-insured patients, leaving hospitals only to manage the sickest and most indigent members of the community. This would lead to more community hospitals closing their doors as they lose the profitable service lines and commercially insured patients that we rely on to subsidize the services we offer to the uninsured and underinsured. Ask any hospital, and they’ll tell you, this is the business model we depend on to meet our mission to serve everyone in our communities.
The state’s rejection of Medicaid expansion has only intensified that issue, as hospitals continue to have a high number of uninsured patients that we must care for. One could determine that if the state were to take advantage of South Carolina’s federal tax dollars to provide health coverage to more South Carolinians, there would be less of a need for CON to protect access to our hospitals. Simply put, if more people had health insurance, hospitals would have less uncompensated care to subsidize. This would also likely lead to a reduction in cost for those that pay health insurance premiums. However, until we provide a solution for the state’s working poor, hospitals will be more concerned with protecting CON to maintain access to care.
But CON is not just about the economic interests of hospitals. Countless studies and medical literature overwhelmingly show that volume equals quality. That is to say, the more heart procedures that a facility performs, the better the outcomes that facility achieves. Eliminating the CON program could lead to a proliferation of services that reduces volume at certain facilities, thereby reducing outcomes. For hospitals, CON is not only about protecting access, but also quality. That’s the importance of CON.
Allan Stalvey is senior vice president of advocacy and communications with the South Carolina Hospital Association.
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Exceptionalism column sparks thoughts on America
To the editor:
I enjoyed your observations on American Exceptionalism. My wife is from France so I am familiar with many French families. I have always had mixed feelings about American Exceptionalism. While I know we generally believe in it, I have never been able to decide if we actually were exceptional. Many of the French that I know lead rather productive happy lives. Perhaps we have been blessed with a country that had so much natural richness it was just easier for us to possess wealth and be exceptional than it was and is for the more densely populated developed world.
What your article reminded me of is a concept I used to opine on quite often (nobody listens now or I would still be opining on it) which I called the “Collapse of Scope.” America once elected leaders who had a big vision for what America could or should be. They invented names for their visions: The New Deal, The New Frontier, The War on Poverty, etc. These great visions translated into dozens of programs all moving in generally the same directions. They were new and innovative. They tried approaches that had never been tried. Some were failures but others were successful. Some we stopped doing after the crisis was over and some we continue yet today. The Scope was broad and sometimes seemed unachievable (land on the moon) but they took the nation in a direction, moving forward, on to new achievements.
Now, we no longer elect such persons of vision and our political parties do not encourage their development. Our focus now is one derived from the past generation of management consultants. Our focus now is not on the great visions but primarily on “how do we do what we are currently doing more efficiently?” This focus on trying to do more with less translates into tax cuts and general distrust of government and government bureaucrats especially when they can’t produce more with less. They are cast as quasi-necessary evils. But attitudes about government are really not the point. The point is our focus is no longer on WHAT should be done but is more on HOW we do it. So we end up focused on continuing to do what we are doing but just trying to be more efficient about it. We seldom question why we are doing these things. It is just important that we do them more efficiently. Our scope has collapsed from the big visions about what we could achieve as a people to what we are currently achieving as a people and how we can do that better.
There is still innovation, but they are innovations in efficiency. Technology has been an important tool in this. But there is danger there. Technological systems, contrary to popular belief, are conservative. Once you put them in place (at least on the scale of government) they are big, complex and difficult to replace. It is far easier to maintain them and improve their efficiency rather than to replace them with better systems or to question the need for them at all.
Our military is another good case in point. We are still operating on organizational structures developed during World War II. There is the idea of a national enemy with well-defined characteristics. We did not predict or plan for an amorphous enemy that transcends national borders. We still seem to be stumbling and fumbling around with international terrorism with only a poor understanding of it and an even worse plan for dealing with it. Our most recent innovation in efficiency: the drone. We are still doing the same thing—seeking out pockets of terrorists and killing them—just more efficiently. Vietnam should have been an eye-opener but we learned no lessons there and effectively dislodged it from the national memory.
So I think we will continue becoming less and less exceptional because our national scope has collapsed. We no longer strive to be exceptional and have lost our big visions. We now focus on more efficient ways to contemplate our navel.
– Sam Griswold, Columbia, S.C.
Europeans have long-term thinking
To the editor:
Just left London. Good schools, no litter, no potholes, extremely low homicide rate and no Gov. Haley telling us we can’t afford to be the best.
People in Paris are enjoying life. Positive atmosphere, unlike Washington or Columbia. Long-term thinking prevalent.
– Tim Moore, Barnwell, S.C.
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Up for Zone, down for lawmakers
THUMBS UP
SouthernCarolina. Hats off to the SouthernCarolina Alliance, one of our underwriters, and its leadership team that won a much sought-after federal Promise Zone designation for Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties. This designation should help pump millions of dollars and help into the area to improve lives. For those who see it as government meddling, think about this: The private sector has had about 150 years to improve lives in this impoverished area. More.
Duke Energy. Hats off to the energy mega-company for agreeing to move 4.2 million tons of coal ash at a Hartsville-area power plant to a lined landfill. The announcement makes S.C. the only state in the Southeast where every utility has agreed to clean up coal ash that threaten groundwater and rivers. More.
Sanford. Kudos to Lowcountry Congressman Mark Sanford for switching his position on offshore oil and natural gas testing and drilling. “There’s something we have here (in the Lowcountry) that’s unique and ought to be preserved,” he is quoted as saying. More.
IN THE MIDDLE
Body cameras. The state Senate has passed a measure to equip law enforcement officers with body cameras. But we again warn: Technology can’t solve every problem. Authorities need to make more inroads to gain the public’s trust if we want safer communities.
THUMBS DOWN
19 senators. Thumbs down to 19 state senators who blocked consideration of one of the state’s top priorities — improved road funding to deal with billions of dollars of needs. The Senate fell four votes short on Thursday of setting a $800 million road infrastructure bill for special order. While those who voted against the measure say there is still time, some are complaining that the state GOP seems more interested in passing a bill banning rare abortion at 20 weeks than a comprehensive road funding. More.
Anderson. Rep. Carl Anderson, D-Georgetown, deserved the public spanking and $6,000 fine that he got for campaign violations stemming from an unsuccessful Senate bid. Memo to lawmakers: Keep better campaign records. More.
90,004
Number of South Carolinians who live in the just-announced federal Promise Zone, a special designation for all or parts of six counties in the rural Southern tip of the state. The designation will provide the impoverished area with new federal resources to apply for grants to attract and jobs, improve education, cut crime and add affordable housing. More.
Historic Charleston Foundation
Historic Charleston Foundation (HCF) sprang from the activities of the Carolina Art Association. In 1941 the association began a survey of historic buildings in Charleston, published in 1944 as This Is Charleston. In April 1947 HCF was incorporated as a separate organization to preserve buildings still lived in by their owners, instead of as museums.
To raise money, HCF sponsored its first Festival of Houses—a tour of historic homes—in 1948. Fund-raising efforts allowed the group to save numerous important buildings, including the Heyward-Washington House, Nathaniel Russell House, and Bennett Rice Mill. In 1958 HCF was the first preservation group in the country to establish a revolving fund for the purchase and restoration of historic properties; the fund was replenished when the buildings were sold to new occupants. Although HCF received national attention for its use of this method to improve the Ansonborough neighborhood, the project also displaced predominantly lower-class African American residents to make room for more upscale white owners.
In the closing decades of the twentieth century, HCF sought new ways to preserve the city’s history without such social effects. The building crafts program, piloted in 1987, provided job training in traditional building crafts for inner-city youth. In the wake of Hurricane Hugo, HCF undertook a fund-raising campaign to help low-income and uninsured property owners sustain the costs of the damage. The Neighborhood Impact Initiative, under way in the 1990s, brought the goals of the revolving fund and building rehabilitation to lower-class neighborhoods and employed the skills of the building crafts program graduates.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!