STATEHOUSE REPORT | ISSUE 19.51 | DEC. 18, 2020
STATE TREE: This is what the state of South Carolina’s official Christmas tree looks like when lit up at night outside of the Statehouse in Columbia. Click here to see the lighting of the tree via SCETV.
BIG STORY: Moratorium efforts against offshore drilling, testing to return
LOWCOUNTRY, Ariail: State of denial
COMMENTARY, Brack: McMaster’s pandemic leadership is a train wreck
SPOTLIGHT: Francis Marion University
MY TURN, Harrison: Fowler was a titan in S.C., national politics
FEEDBACK: Fowler will be missed
MYSTERY PHOTO: Eerie, dark image
EDITOR’S NOTE: Next week, we’ll publish an abbreviated holiday edition on Thursday.
Moratorium efforts against offshore oil, gas to return
By Gregg Bragg, special to Statehouse Report | Pawleys Island resident Peg Howell wants to see moratoriums to prohibit oil and gas exploration and ban seismic testing along the Atlantic coast. To be effective, state and federal action are required, she insists.
“The state legislature must act to protect South Carolina’s jurisdictional territory, the first three miles of our coast, but that won’t stop oil companies from drilling 3.1 miles away, “ said Howell, president of Stop Offshore Drilling in the Atlantic (SODA). “You may not be able to see a rig from shore, but the effects of a spill would be the same. Federal action is required if you really want to keep disaster from our shores.”
For the past five years, the issue of drilling off South Carolina’s coast has been a yoyo, in and out of the public consciousness, Howell said in a recent interview. But the current lack of state and federal activity on the issue shouldn’t be perceived as a victory by conservationists, she said. Rather, it is just a temporary reprieve.
Moratorium effort to crank up again
As the state of South Carolina gets ready to open another legislative session, one longtime legislative antagonist of the oil and gas industry, GOP state Sen. Chip Campsen of Mount Pleasant, said he prefiled a Senate bill (S. 119) to codify a moratorium against oil drilling and seismic testing.
“I’ve been down to Louisiana, down to the oil patch and it’s awful,” Campsen said. “There’s a skim of oil everywhere.
“South Carolina has 20 times the tourism industry they have in Louisiana. Why would you risk that for the amount of oil we’d be getting,” he asked this week in an interview.
Howell recognized the difficulty of getting prohibitions on offshore drilling and seismic testing passed in South Carolina. Because the General Assembly is not a full-time legislative body, there’s not much time for a bill to travel from start to finish in both chambers, she said.
“Campsen pulled a really cool move in 2018,” she said. “He couldn’t get his bill passed in time so he put in a budget proviso that prevents any infrastructure from being based in South Carolina.
Campsen said the Senate passed the proviso overwhelmingly on a 40-4 vote.
“The governor supported it, the attorney general [supported it], and that sent a strong message and so we’ve begun to take the position that we oppose seismic testing at the state level. We’ve done that. We’ve changed the debate.”
He added that South Carolina politicians of all stripes widely embrace the debate that drilling would ruin paradise.
“Industry executives are telling us they expect to earn $7.5 billion [per year] from oil in 15 years, versus the $20 billion we earn from tourism right now. Why would you risk that?”
Federal action questioned; Bleak future without it
Howell also recommended that federal elected officials take action to ban offshore drilling and seismic testing. She lamented the recent loss of U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham, a Democrat who represents the Lowcountry until the new Congress starts. His bill to protect the eastern coast from drilling and testing passed the U.S. House, but didn’t get through the U.S. Senate.
Cunningham’s loss, she said, leaves only one of the state’s members of Congress — U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn — on record as opposing offshore drilling and seismic testing. Howell said she’s not hopeful for support among the rest of the state’s congressional delegation.
Howell delivers a presentation, on request, that paints a bleak picture of a future with energy development off our coast. Leases would be granted, she said, and four years into production, there might be a catastrophic blowout that closes beaches until investigators find a solution. If a hurricane then ravages Charleston, it would take years before “normal” operations could resume as the pungent scent of raw oil lingered.
She stabs home the point by observing that none of this is hypothetical. Leaks are an unavoidable by-product of drilling for oil, and the scenario she uses has happened in the Gulf of Mexico in the last 10 years.
Gregg Bragg is a freelance reporter who lives on Johns Island. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
State of denial
Enjoy this week’s cartoon by Robert Ariail, republished from our sister newspaper, the Charleston City Paper. Love it? Hate it? What do you think: feedback@statehousereport.com.
McMaster’s pandemic leadership is a train wreck
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The straw that broke the camel’s back on South Carolina’s pandemic response for state Sen. Mia McLeod was when Gov. Henry McMaster pushed for students to stay in classrooms five days a week as the virus exploded.
“We’ve lost teachers and coaches in my district,” the Columbia Democrat said with frustration peppering her talk. “This is impacting our students, who are impacting our parents and grandparents.”
On Dec. 9, McMaster held his first pandemic press conference in three weeks. He urged South Carolinians to “redouble our efforts” to fight the virus as state officials again called for residents to wear masks to protect themselves and others.
But the governor added, “Parents should not have to choose between their child or their job. But that is what the decision of the school districts who have not gone back to five-day face-to-face education are requiring these parents to do. And it’s not the right thing to do.”.
McLeod, who has been quiet in public criticism in recent weeks, said she thought when new cases passed 2,000 per day — and then 3,000 cases — that McMaster would pivot to push stronger action.
“To him hear say the same old lame stuff he’s been saying, it’s obviously not working,” she said. “To have almost 10,000 new cases over a weekend and 114 deaths is mind-boggling.”
In a scathing Dec. 16 letter, McLeod called for the governor to come up with a real plan, not more rhetoric.
“We’re nine months into this deadly pandemic,” she wrote. “COVID-19 exposures are reaching new record highs every day. More and more South Carolinians are dying. Our hospitals are nearing capacity and our fragile healthcare system is on the verge of collapsing. Our healthcare professionals are frustrated and exhausted. More teachers are forced to leave the profession they love.
“Many employees are lured back into unsafe workplaces with minimal protections and pay. Record numbers of South Carolinians are unemployed…struggling to put food on their tables and keep a roof over their heads. With pandemic unemployment benefits ending this month, hundreds of thousands of our unemployed citizens are feeling hopeless, while we brag about spending almost a billion dollars to keep S.C. employers from having to pay higher unemployment taxes.”
South Carolinians, she said, literally are dying for real leadership to beat the pandemic.
“South Carolinians deserve a government that works together in a bipartisan way to protect and serve them,” McLeod wrote. “We deserve a governor who communicates with candor, owns his mistakes and has the courage to put people above politics.”
What needs to happen isn’t rocket science. But it needs collective leadership from the top down to curb the virus and its deadly 20+ percent positivity rate of those taking tests to see whether they have it.
“As the chief executive officer of our state, I’m simply asking that you act like it,” McLeod wrote in her letter. “Thanksgiving slogans like, ‘Test Before Turkey’ are lame, ineffective and lackadaisical. You have the power to slow the spread, save lives and bolster business:
- Issue a statewide mask mandate.
- Reissue temporary occupancy restrictions.
- Voluntarily close schools and businesses to help prevent involuntary shutdowns.
- Establish and enforce protocols that public health experts recommend.
- Articulate a plan to help stop the bleeding and secure a sustainable path forward.
“We can’t wait on a vaccine to fix this for us.”
Everything about the pandemic is a hot potato, causing many state’s leaders to skitter like roaches when a light is turned on.
The governor’s office, as usual, did not respond to a request for comments. Neither did several Republican and Democratic legislative leaders.
But McLeod said she’s heard from colleagues.
“A number of them agree this is a train wreck, going nowhere fast.”
In the letter, she went further, straight for McMaster’s political jugular: “Your gross mishandling of this pandemic is the type of political malpractice that borders on criminality.”
As a state, we must join together — like we did in World War II and after the Sept. 11 attacks — to beat the virus before it kills more of our friends, family and neighbors.
The virus doesn’t care what our elected officials are doing, but we should. We must hold them accountable.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. His column also is published in the Charleston City Paper, Florence Morning News, Greenwood Index Journal, The (Seneca) Journal, Camden Chronicle Independent and Hartsville Messenger. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Francis Marion University
The public spiritedness of our underwriters allows us to bring Statehouse Report to you at no cost. We’re happy this week to shine our spotlight on Francis Marion University, a public university located in Florence, S.C. It was founded in 1970 with a mission to provide the people of the Pee Dee, and of South Carolina, with high quality, yet accessible, university education. FMU has stayed true to that mission for nearly 50 years. In any given year, more than 95 percent of the university’s students are South Carolinians, and FMU is, by most measures, the most affordable college in the state.
Francis Marion University is, of course, named for Revolutionary War hero, General Francis Marion, who was nicknamed “The Swamp Fox” for his uncanny ability to use terrain, local knowledge and just plain old South Carolina common sense to outfox the British. Today, FMU prides itself on providing a strong liberal arts education for its 4,000 students, while at the same preparing them for careers in a broad range of fields.
The University offers professional schools in health care, education and business, as well as graduate programs in business, education and psychology. FMU’s new School of Health Sciences is adding new programs, designed to help deliver critical medical services to the community, on an almost annual basis, so great is the demand by students and the need in our region and state. Recent undergraduate additions to the University as a whole include Health Care Management and Industrial Engineering. The latter, just begun in 2014, is already one of the fastest-growing majors on campus.
The campus is situated on over 400 wooded acres of beautiful foliage and landscaping. A significant campus presence in historic downtown Florence is also developing. FMU’s Performing Arts Center is located there along with the Carter Center for Health Sciences, and the FMU Recording Studio, The University recently acquired more downtown property near the Carter Center, which will help support future academic expansions.
FMU has managed to grow while at the same time providing South Carolinians with, as noted, an affordable university education. FMU’s total net cost — tuition plus room, board and other fees, less scholarships and grants awarded — is South Carolina’s lowest, and by a considerable margin, according to calculations performed by a third party, CollegeFactual.com. FMU has managed this unusual balance of quality and affordability by avoiding capital debt, minding administrative costs carefully, and developing a culture of giving among its many friends and supporters in the Pee Dee and beyond.
- To learn more about Francis Marion, visit online at fmarion.edu.
Fowler was a titan in S.C., national politics
Editor’s Note: 2020 Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jaime Harrison posted the following thoughts on Facebook soon after the Tuesday death of Don Fowler, the Columbia politico who chaired the state and national Democratic parties and served as a mentor for hundreds of people in politics.
By Jaime Harrison, Dec. 16, 2020 | We have just learned that Don Fowler, a titan in politics, has passed.
Words can’t express how much I loved and admired Don Fowler. If there was a logo of a Democrat, it would be Don. Next year was going to be his 50th year as a Democratic National Committee (DNC) member.
Don was DNC chair, South Carolina Democratic Party (SCDP) chair and president of Young Democrats. There will never be another Don Fowler.
My first memory of Don was when I was an intern for U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. Don was the DNC chair and we had just gotten a huge delivery of peaches from South Carolina. Don asked me to deliver peaches across Washington, S.C., and my last stop was the prize — the White House. I was overjoyed and so appreciative of Don.
Since that moment, every major step I’ve taken in Democratic politics, Don has been there to guide and mentor me. From SCDP Chair to my races for DNC chair to U.S. Senate, Don has been in my corner. I even taught his class with my friend and former S.C. Republican Party Chair Matt Moore.
Don and [his wife] Carol Fowler are beloved across the nation. Let’s share our love for Don with Carol Fowler and Donnie Fowler. Hold them up in prayer.
Don was an icon. He served the nation well in the military and continued his service in politics. I will miss my friend Dr. Don Fowler!
Jaime Harrison ran for U.S. Senate in 2020.
Fowler will be missed
To the editor:
Don Fowler was a friend since 1965. He was everyone’s Mr. Democrat and a great party leader.
He was a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina and headed his own company, Fowler Communications. He will be sorely missed by his many students, friends and family.
— Bud Ferillo, Columbia, S.C.
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Eerie, dark image
This could be a tough one, but look on it as a holiday challenge. Where is it? (Yes, it is in South Carolina.) Send your guess to feedback@statehousereport.com. And don’t forget to include your name and the town in which you live.
Our previous Mystery Photo
Our Dec. 11 photo, “A view from below,” was tougher than we guessed. Only two readers — George Graf of Palmyra, Va., and Kevin Mertens of Greenville — correctly guessed that it was a picnic shelter at Paris Mountain State Park. Way to go, guys!
- Send us a mystery: If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com and mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
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