By Lindsay Street, Statehouse correspondent | Senators bucked Gov. Henry McMaster this week by rejecting two state agency nominations, while a key nomination remains unnamed.
The full Senate rejected the nomination of Steven Morris for the Department of Aging and a Senate committee rejected the nomination of former S.C. Attorney General Charlie Condon for Santee Cooper. So unless something changes quickly, the head of the department and board chair of Santee Cooper may not have a Senate-confirmed leader until next year.
In the meantime, the Governor’s Office has yet to release the name of its nominee to become the state’s first Child Advocate. On March 5, McMaster received three names from the legislative panel charged with evaluating candidates. Those candidates included: Mary Williams, who has worked with S.C. Department of Social Services (DSS) and with federal child welfare; Amanda Whittle, who is legal staff with S.C. DSS; and Candace Lively, who is an assistant solicitor in Horry County.
The state Child Advocate will lead a small agency designed to consolidate and oversee child services in the state.
According to McMaster spokesman Brian Symmes, the nominee would be announced this week, but Symmes had a personal health issue that waylaid the announcement. He said in a conversation Friday morning that the announcement could be made as early as this evening, however.
The position is slated to begin July 1. If a nominee is not made and confirmed prior to the end of session, one of the three finalists will be chosen as an acting head of the oversight agency until Senate confirmation next year, according to S.C. Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, who was on the panel selecting the finalists.
In other news:
Veterans affairs office made a cabinet agency. House Bill 3438 was signed into law recently and it puts the S.C. Veterans Affairs Office under the governor’s office. The agency was previously a division under the Office of Executive Policy and Programs.
Weekly update on Palmetto Priorities
Throughout the legislative session, we have been providing relevant updates related to our list of Palmetto Priorities, which are 10 big policy areas where major progress is needed for South Carolina to escape the bottom of lots of lists. Over the last week:
EDUCATION: Largest protest in years descends on Statehouse. Comparisons were inevitable with a 10,000-strong education rally in Columbia on Wednesday. Some compared it to the 2000 anti-Confederate flag protest (although that one was reported to number 45,000), while others compared it to another anti-Confederate flag moment in 2015 (a bit closer in scale; that one was reported to number 10,000). Regardless, this week’s event appeared to be the largest education-focused rally on the Statehouse. The moment was hard to ignore, though the legislative session went on inside the Statehouse as usual. According to an analysis of social media mentions of #AllOutMay1, the hashtag associated with the rally, more than two-thirds of mentions were in support of those that turned out.
GUN REFORM: Action event announced for May 9. Arm-in-Arm is holding an event titled “Ideas into Action: Children, Guns and Safety” May 9 in Mount Pleasant. The event will feature a panel discussing the impact of gun violence on children and communities in the state. Click here for more information.
UTILITIES: Solar stymied by statehouses. The Center for Public Integrity released a report this week that shows state policies encourage or discourage renewable energy and directly relate to how much solar power is produced. Read the report here.
Looking ahead
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