STATEHOUSE REPORT | Issue 14.48 | Nov. 27, 2015
NEWS: Wind energy could bring big payoff to state
BRIEF: New center at USC
COMMENTARY: Pandering to fear is not American way
SPOTLIGHT: Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina
MY TURN, Lynn Teague: Clariying the ethics debate for 2016
FEEDBACK: Send your letters
S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIA: Voorhees College
Wind energy could bring big payoff to state
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Denmark may offer a peek into the future of energy in South Carolina.
The country of 5.6 million on the North Sea is similar to the Palmetto State. Both have about the same number of people. Both are a mix of urban and rural. And both are on the coast with lots of low-lying areas.
But Denmark has been working hard for more than 20 years to make smart investments to save energy, while South Carolina has only just started to embrace renewable energy with a solar farm in Colleton County and others announced in Hampton and Calhoun counties. Studies show there’s a bunch of wind energy offshore, but the state is moving at a slow pace to put test turbines in the ocean to test the viability of the kinds of units being used across the world.
Fortunately, the stars are aligned well for South Carolina to benefit from renewable wind energy — if it makes the most of its advantages, which include having the nation’s only major domestic wind turbine facility at GE in Greenville, infrastructure that is already in place to distribute wind energy and more.
“We’re uniquely positioned for this,” said Elizabeth Colbert Busch, director of business development at the Clemson University Restoration Institute in North Charleston, which is home to the world’s largest wind turbine drive train test facility. “We have the fuel, the infrastructure and the grid. Our transmission lines are so robust that we don’t have to change them.”
State Sen. Paul Campbell, who led a state task force on wind energy, added, “Between Winyah Bay in Georgetown County and Cherry Grove in North Carolina, we have enough wind to give us a sizable production of wind energy — and we should do that.”
Campbell said he envisions a 1,000 megawatt wind farm several miles off the northeast coast of South Carolina. More than likely, wind turbines wouldn’t be visible to beachgoers, but if they were, they’d look like toothpicks, he said. An added benefit: There would be a great artificial reef created for recreational fishing around the wind farm, he said.
“(Off) Myrtle Beach is a great place to put these things,” he said. “Think of all of the power we could bring into Myrtle Beach and we could use it right there. It’s just an ideal location.”
The Danish model
Soren Hermansen is a green energy evangelist from the Danish island of Samso. Several years back, the home to about 4,000 people lost its major industry, a meatpacking plant. The local economy went into a nosedive. Then in 1997, the island applied for — and won — a national competition to transform itself into a green economy, independent of foreign fuels. Today using a combination of renewable energy from wind and biomass, 100 percent of its electricity and heat for homes and businesses comes from renewable sources.
“The moral of the story is they have lost a big part of their economy and they found a way to recover, but it took buy-in from everybody — and it worked,” Colbert Busch said.
Hermansen, who visited with Clemson last week to talk about green energy and its potential, outlined how the Samso experiment showed that local municipalities — without state subsidies — could use local resources in creative ways to create pervasive green energy. Among the keys: a lot of cooperation, long-term energy planning, goals and targets, use of technology, and investment by the private sector to help fuel robust change.
“You do your planning in the long run to utilize all of the resources embedded in the system,” he said. Waste, for example, is looked at as an asset, not a liability. For example, water used for cooling at plants that turn biomass into energy by burning it is used to heat homes and businesses through a network of pipes in Samso’s small communities.
Having a master plan is key, says Hermansen’s colleague, Mette Lassensen of the Ramboll Group, an international Danish engineering and consulting firm.
“It enables you to be smarter about your choices,” she said.
According to a 2015 study by the Danish Energy Agency, Denmark’s economy has grown 78 percent in the last three decades, while power consumption has been almost stable:
“The Danish Energy Model has shown that through persistent and active energy policy with ambitious renewable energy goals, enhanced energy efficiency and support for technical innovation and industrial development, it is possible to sustain significant economic growth and a high standard of living, while reducing fossil fuel dependency and mitigating climate change.
“In a nutshell: energy savings, optimized manufacturing and investments in green energy technology are good value for money.”
Next steps
In South Carolina, policymakers in the General Assembly have two bills to consider that would provide economic incentives to businesses that seek to grow the wind industry.
“I want to see 1,000 Megawatts of wind energy off South Carolina’s coast,” Campbell said.
If South Carolina wants to grow its wind energy economy, it could pay off in a big way with up to 20,000 jobs, Colbert Busch said.
Former Columbia Mayor Bob Coble, who met with the Danes last week, said South Carolina could benefit and learn from Denmark’s model.
“Denmark has been very aggressive and innovative in using green energy,” he said. “They have made commitments to reduce their carbon footprint with wind energy. I think with the Clemson University Restoration Institute, South Carolina has a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of wind energy.”
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
New civil rights center at USC
The University of South Carolina had two big, related announcements this week:
- Creation of the Center for Civil Rights History and Research at the Hollings Special Collections Library, and
- News that U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, the first African American from South Carolina elected to the U.S. House of Representatives since Reconstruction, would donate his congressional papers to USC.
“I am honored to add my congressional papers to the University of South Carolina’s significant civil rights collection,” Clyburn said. “The establishment of the Center for Civil Rights History and Research allows for my Congressional papers to be a part of a larger effort to give vibrancy to South Carolina’s history and credence to its civil rights activities.”
USC President Harris Pastides said the new center would be the state’s first location dedicated to telling South Carolina’s civil rights story. Learn more.
Pandering to fear is not the American way
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher
NOV. 27, 2015 | Recall Thanksgiving afternoon as you watched football and digested turkey after giving much thanks for your freedom, blessings and family.
Imagine hearing the doorbell as you’re dozing. At the door is a young brown woman, heavy with child. She’s wearing a scarf on her head. On the street, you see a beat-up car with a man inside.
The woman holds her belly. “Sir, my husband, Jose, and I have no place to stay tonight. We’re new to this country and haven’t been able to find steady work. We’re cold. We’re hungry. But we’re not any trouble. We’re legal — we’re refugees. Can you help us tonight?”
You’re perplexed, torn, conflicted. What should you do? Like most Americans, you’re generous. You’re kind. But this? Somebody else should deal with it, right? What do you know about these people, this woman who claims her name is Maria?
America, a nation made strong by immigrants, is once again confronting nasty, Joe McCarthy-like debates about immigration — about who should be in the country and who shouldn’t.
Most Americans seem to forget that in just about everyone’s background is an immigrant like Jose or Maria who turned up on these shores to start a better or different life, some as immigrants, some as slaves, and others as refugees from war and violence. With each wave of new arrivals, some Americans were frightened at first, worried by the backgrounds, baggage and competition that the newcomers brought. But over time, each new wave became part of the fabric of the nation, adding new strength to the diversity of people called Americans.
With just about every family’s immigrant past, it’s unsettling how quickly so many forget and fall into xenophobia, the fear or irrational dislike of foreigners. Case in point: Gov. Nikki Haley, a brown woman and daughter of Sikh immigrants who has joined 29 other governors — all but one Republican — in saying Syrian refugees shouldn’t be resettled in the Palmetto State.
Really, governor? The overwhelming majority of refugees, all of whom go through extensive background checks, are women and children. Where’s your Christian charity? Where’s your leadership? You could be a spokesman to highlight how America is the land of opportunity for all. Instead, you conveniently join the crowd of pandering politicians and seem to forget how your family was welcomed into the United States.
Meanwhile, GOP presidential candidates turn up the heat with vitriol and rhetoric, inflaming feelings of fear. Chief fearmonger is billionaire Donald Trump, who talks about maintaining databases of Muslims and making them wear identification, the same kind of labeling done in Nazi Germany to Jews, gays and Communists.
Ladies and gentlemen, this isn’t the America in which I grew up. We’re better than the political nonsense that is fueling the airwaves and social media. The Greatest Generation toiled and fought to preserve freedom for all, understanding what one president said: “The only thing to fear is fear itself.”
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee recently wrote that his state would continue to welcome refugees because it’s part of what being American is:
“The American character is being tested. Will we hew to our long tradition of being a beacon of hope for those chased from their homelands? I have always believed that the United States is a place of refuge for those escaping persecution, starvation or other horrors that thankfully most in America will never experience.”
Since 2002, South Carolina has accepted 1,813 refugees from 30 countries, according to federal sources. More than a third (680) were from Burma. Iraq was the mother country to 249 and Ukraine to 205. One refugee was from Syria.
Fear, as Inslee notes, is a powerful thing. If we succumb to it, aren’t we letting the terrorists win? Aren’t we letting them change our lives of freedom? We shouldn’t blame people running from terrorists into the refuge of America or France or Sweden for what the terrorists are doing. Instead, we, like other free countries, should welcome them so they can blossom from victims into capitalists.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina
The public spiritedness of our underwriters allows us to bring Statehouse Report to you at no cost. This week’s spotlighted underwriter is the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina. More South Carolinians use power from electric cooperatives than from any other power source. South Carolina’s 20 independent, consumer-owned cooperatives deliver electricity in all 46 counties to more than 1.5 million citizens. As member-owned organizations, cooperatives recognize their responsibility to provide power that is affordable, reliably delivered and responsibly produced.
- More at www.ecsc.org or www.scliving.coop
Clarifying the ethics debate for 2016
By Lynn S. Teague
NOV. 27, 2015 | The League of Women Voters of South Carolina agrees with Andy Brack’s commentary on November 13 – our senators have disappointed us, and many others, by their failure to pass ethics reform. What has led to the current impasse?
State Sen. Marlon Kimpson (D-Charleston) commented,“I voted for the [GOP Sen. Luke] Rankin plan, [but] the Republicans blocked it.” Kimpson said. “We really need a total do-over as the plans being discussed don’t get to the heart of the matter.” State Sen. Paul Campbell (R-Berkeley) also commented that he voted for this “independent panel.”
Other Republicans joined Rankin, a Republican from Horry County, and the Democrats in supporting Rankin’s amendment. The omnibus ethics bill with the Rankin amendment, S.1, was not blocked by “Republicans” but by those Republicans who had worked hardest for real ethics reform, led by state Sen. Larry Martin (R-Pickens), primary sponsor of the bill. Reformers blocked this bill because the Rankin amendment was not an independent panel by any stretch of the imagination.
The supposedly independent panel in question was to be a joint commission of the General Assembly charged with making initial determinations regarding complaints. The members were to be appointed by the House and Senate and by the governor and attorney general upon the advice and consent of the General Assembly. Four members were to be legislators, while five were to be members of the general public. No provision was made for legal or clerical staff for this new commission that would be independent of the existing General Assembly staff. No professional investigators would be hired. No provision was made for the commission to audit legislative ethics records or to act without someone having filed a complaint.
Does this sound like an independent panel? Legislators would control the appointment process. They would control the inadequate staff. Legislators who are members of the commission would need only one vote from a member of the public (appointed with their consent) to kill any complaint.
Some optimists have suggested that the long-standing animosity between the House and Senate would guarantee that this smoke-and-mirrors commission would be an effective watchdog. Nonsense. The certain outcome of this arrangement would be similar to the MAD nuclear strategy of the Cold War: Mutually Assured Destruction. Neither chamber would be willing to find fault with the other for fear of equal retribution.
In short, this “independent panel” would have allowed legislators to claim that they had enacted reform without actually putting themselves in danger of effective independent oversight.
The November 13 article also quoted state Sen. Kevin Bryant (R-Anderson) on his opposition to donor disclosure provisions. It is worth observing here that there are actually two such issues. One is a fix for existing law, a narrowed definition of a political action committee (PAC) that is needed because the current definition in South Carolina law did not survive federal court scrutiny. The existing law did not chill free speech in the many years that it was in place and restoring it should not be controversial.
It is likely that Senator Bryant’s concern is actually more focused on the “electioneering” provisions that affect organizations that do not have the primary purpose of influencing the outcome of elections. However, it is important to recognize that even in its controversial Citizens United decision, the U. S. Supreme Court observed that citizens must rely upon disclosure of donors to provide the sunlight needed to disinfect the big-money political process unleashed by that court decision.
So where are we now? The major House bill sent to the Senate was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee but an objection was filed by state Sen. Kent Williams (D-Marion) and it is stalled on the Senate calendar. However, the House of Representatives also passed a number of single-issue ethics bills in addition to the large omnibus ethics bill. The House strategy was wisely intended to bypass the possibility that not getting one element of reform would kill the whole effort. These more restricted bills were sent to the Senate and some of these also have been reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and appear on the Senate calendar.
However, all of those bills have had minority reports or objections filed against them by senators who do not want to see them pass. State Sen. Lee Bright (R-Spartanburg) put a minority report on the bill that would require donor disclosure. State Sen. John Matthews (D-Orangeburg) objected to the very important bill requiring disclosure of private income sources, as well as bills abolishing leadership PACs and even a bill allowing university faculty to share in the proceeds from their own discoveries and inventions. State Sen. John Scott (D-Richland) objected to a simple bill that would clarify how contributions are allocated in runoff elections. It seems that no reform is so uncontroversial that it does not draw opposition.
Senators can pass some aspects of ethics reform without passing the whole package envisioned by the South Carolina Commission on Ethics Reform in 2012 or pro-reform groups like the League of Women Voters. We would rather see comprehensive reform. However if that is impossible, we can pass some aspects now and work on the remainder in future sessions.
There are three crucial aspects of reform: disclosure of private income sources of officials and their immediate families, disclosure of donors who support messages that attempt to influence our votes, and truly independent investigation of potential ethics violations by legislators and their staffs. The League of Women Voters has no intention of giving up on any of these, but would welcome passage of bills in this session that address some of these concerns.
Those senators who say that current bills are inadequate or too weak to earn their support should work on realistic and meaningful changes to pass better bills. Without a sincere effort to improve the bills now before the Senate, claims that existing bills are too weak ring very hollow indeed.
Senators say that the public doesn’t care about this. They are wrong. The public loses faith in our government because many are convinced that reform is simply impossible and that all politicians are inherently corrupt. This isn’t true. We do have public officials of integrity. However until we have reform, we will continue to have legislators who vigorously lobby on behalf of their employers or their clients while hiding behind absurdly narrow interpretations of existing law on conflicts of interest. Without reform legislative ethics committees will continue to bury violations of existing law. Without reform, secret “consulting fees” will continue to buy the support of our officials. Without reform, some public officials will continue to adhere to their own private high standards of integrity but those without a strong moral compass (and there are far too many) will continue to work for their own benefit rather than that of South Carolina’s citizens.
We could and should have meaningful ethics reform in the coming session. Our democracy does not function as it should without the confidence of its citizens, and at present South Carolina’s citizens have every reason to believe that far too many public officials are working to benefit themselves rather than the citizens of our state.
Lynn S. Teague is a vice president with the League of Women Voters of South Carolina.
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Voorhees College
S.C. Encyclopedia | Located in Denmark, Voorhees College is a four-year liberal arts undergraduate institution. Founded in 1897 by Elizabeth Evelyn Wright and Jessie Dorsey, the school was first known as the Denmark Industrial School and was based on Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. Wright was Washington’s protégée and had determined that she wanted to “be the same type of woman as Mr. Washington was of a man.” On graduation she set out for South Carolina to develop a second Tuskegee.
Wright’s first efforts at Govan and in Hampton County were thwarted by a hostile white community, which burned buildings and building materials. Undaunted, Wright approached state senator Stanwix G. Mayfield of Bamberg County, who sold her twenty acres of land after she obtained an endorsement from Washington and collected pennies and nickels from black churches. The Denmark Industrial School became a reality when Wright and Dorsey taught 14 boarders and 236 pupils in the upstairs of an abandoned store. The curriculum included the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but the school’s primary mission was to develop students through an industrial-vocational system modeled after Tuskegee.
By 1902 Wright had successfully persuaded a New Jersey industrialist, Ralph Voorhees, to donate money that was used to purchase land and construct buildings. The institution was renamed for its benefactor, and the state legislature incorporated the school in 1904 as the Voorhees Industrial School for Colored Youths. The school now had almost 350 students and 17 faculty members and was supported by the local black community as well as through solicitation campaigns. Though Wright died in 1906, the school continued to prosper. By the end of World War I, however, Voorhees faced a financial crisis when gifts and grants decreased. In 1924 the school was taken over by the Episcopal Church’s American Institute for Negroes and remains affiliated with the Diocese of South Carolina.
The school’s name was changed in 1947 to Voorhees School and Junior College, and in 1962 it became Voorhees College. Earning full accreditation as a four-year school from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1968, Voorhees faced student unrest over civil rights and personnel issues. Voorhees students objected to the lack of blacks serving on the school’s board of trustees as well as student living conditions, wage scales for nonacademic workers, few black history courses, and a poorly equipped library. With tempers rising and protests growing, armed students took over the library in April 1969. The demonstration was reported in the national press but ended quickly when the National Guard was called to the campus by President John Potts and J. Kenneth Morris, chairman of the board of trustees.
Potts’s tenure as president of Voorhees from 1954 to 1970 was marked by both progress and protest. During that time the institution dropped its high school component and became a four-year college. Other accomplishments included increased enrollment, an improvement in the quality of the faculty, and an upgrading of the curriculum and programs. Several presidents who succeeded Potts did not prove to be as visionary in dealing with programs, finances, or students and were dismissed from office. Enrollment reached a high of one thousand students in 1976. In 2001 Voorhees had seven hundred students when it welcomed its seventh president, Dr. Lee Monroe. The college offers a traditional liberal arts program and awards bachelor’s degrees in eleven majors.
NOTE: Dr. Cleveland Sellers is the college’s current president. Founder Elizabeth Evelyn Wright is an honoree on AT&T’s 27th annual S.C. African American History Calendar for 2016.
– Excerpted from the entry by Louise Allen. To read more about this or 2,000 other entries about South Carolina, check out The South Carolina Encyclopedia by USC Press. (Information used by permission.)
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