BRACK: Legislative session again is down to the wire

By Andy Brack  |  With just two weeks to go in the regular legislative session, the General Assembly has three full plates of work. 

Overall, legislators scored a “D” this session, writes longtime analyst Holley Ulbrich of Clemson, “for being even later than usual with their homework or failing to turn it in, claiming that the other guy’s dog ate it.” And the House, she said, gets no extra points for passing a $12 billion budget in a single day, which “smacks of reading Cliff Notes instead of the book!”

The state’s budget plate will be dealt with, one way or another.  The Senate and House plans include a $1 billion reduction in income taxes but what remains to be seen is how lawmakers will deal with a $1 billion tax rebate that the Senate wants and how much of a pay increase teachers will get.  We hope they invest in teachers and employees over a giveaway that is an election year gimmick that uses public money to curry favor with voters in the fall.

What happens with the General Assembly’s two other filled plates isn’t as clear.  One plate that is about to topple over includes things legislators should do before the clock runs out, while a third includes bad proposals that need to die by May 12, the last regular day of the session.  The other is packed with what it should avoid.

Still to do

Election reform.  Part of the reasoning for the need for election reform is the false narrative that there’s election fraud (there just isn’t).  But good government advocates say what legislators have come up with this year will improve election processes and voter confidence.  “Voters want early voting,” said Lynn Teague of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina.  “Election officials badly need more time to process absentee ballots and other helpful measures.  Voter confidence and election management would benefit from risk limiting audits.  It will be very unfortunate if these die in the final days of the session.”

Education improvements.  For years, teachers have wanted more time to spend planning for students, a measure now poised to pass after years of work, said Sherry East, president of the S.C. Education Association.  If it goes through, teachers would get a big win.  They would have more to celebrate if all teachers got pay hikes, not just new teachers.  Too many teachers are leaving the profession.  Let’s bump their pay so they stick around.

Medical marijuana.  For seven years, lawmakers have gotten closer to approving medical use of marijuana to relieve suffering of too many sick South Carolinians.  It’s time to pass this measure and stop messing around.

Other work legislators should finish with are to pass a hate crimes law, close the “Charleston loophole” to keep guns out of the hands of bad people and fix the state’s sexual predator registry, which the courts found to be unconstitutional. It can be fixed by providing an adjudicatory process for adding or removing someone.  

“The main thing (overall with state government) is to do something,” observed Steve Skardon of the Palmetto Project.  “The public is very cynical about the government just now and part of the reason is that it does not appear to be doing anything to solve problems.”

What to ignore

But lawmakers should avoid the poison on the jam-packed third plate of pending legislation that includes a warmed-over proposal for vouchers that seeks to use public money for private schools.  They should get off the “critical race theory” bandwagon that tries to fight a culture war that doesn’t exist in South Carolina (talk about your Don Quixote-type bills).  They need to stop fiddling with abortion.  And they need to stop picking on transgender kids who want to play sports.  (Schools already have a way of dealing with this and legislators don’t need to poke their nose in it just to score points.)

Bottom line:  Do what needs to be done, but cause no more harm.

Andy Brack is publisher of the Charleston City Paper and editor and publisher of Statehouse Report.   Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.