SCORECARD: From farm aid and better pay to too much drunken driving

Thumbs up

Farm aid.  Congratulations to the General Assembly for approving a $40 million aid package for farmers hurt in last year’s flooding.  Let’s hope it can survive a gubernatorial veto pen.  More.

McMaster.  Thumbs up to Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster for ruling that an effort to attach Sen. Lee Bright’s “bathroom bill” to the budget was out of order.  Take that, North Carolina.  More.

Pleicones.  Hats off to S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Costa Pleicones for ordering state judges to attend a human trafficking summit to better understand the problem.

Pay raise.  Let’s hope a 4 percent pay raise put in the state budget by the Senate remains this year when we have a surplus.  If anybody needs to be rewarded for a challenging year, it’s state employees.

Better times.  The S.C. Leading Index climbed in March to 102.08, a signal that things are getting better in the Palmetto State.  More.

In the middle

Jasper port.  Hats off to Gov. Nikki Haley for looking to the future and realizing that we need to be setting aside money to build a $4.5 billion proposed port in Jasper County.  But we’re still not sure how this helps the Charleston port. 

Thumbs down

Refugee bill.  Thumbs down to the S.C. House Judiciary Committee for narrowly passing a narrow-minded bill that would require the state to track and monitor refugees who move into the state.  The author?  Yep, mossback state Sen. Lee Bright, the Spartanburg County who got the state into such a dither over bathrooms.  More.

DUI.  South Carolina is the nation’s fifth most dangerous state for drunken driving, a statistic marred by the state’s high traffic fatality rate.  Slow it down.  Don’t drink and drive.  Heard those before?  More.

Quote:   Un-American

“The simple fact of passing this bill sends an atrocious message around the world of who we are as Americans. … “This fundamentally offends the notion of who we are as a people and I am just beyond belief that we’d be proceeding.  I appreciate what my colleagues are trying to do to make a terrible bill less terrible, but you just can’t get there from here.”

— S.C. Rep. James Smith, D-Columbia, on a bill to require refugee monitoring.

Quote: Nothing to worry about

“No, not Nikki Haley. She wasn’t under consideration.”

— Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on whether South Carolina’s governor, who has bashed Trump, would be considered as a running mate.  Didn’t matter either — she said she wasn’t interested anyway.  More.