The Answer to Road Funding: Tax Hikes?
THE LATEST PROPOSAL TO FIX OUR ROADS ASSUMES STATE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY Last week, H.3412 was placed on the Senate calendar for consideration. Originally the bill would have merely shifted revenue from the sales tax of motor vehicles – currently dedicated in part to the Education Improvement Act fund (EIA) – to the [...]
Going Backwards on Ethics Reform
DOES THE HOUSE BILL ‘MOVE THE BALL FORWARD’? On Tuesday – just in time for the May 1st “crossover deadline” – the South Carolina House passed what supporters called major ethics reform legislation. The final vote was 113 to 7. The Nerve exposed the weirdly secretive process by which legislators rammed the bill through the [...]
Transportation Funding: The Current Options
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM: PRIORITIES OR FUNDING? This week, the Senate Finance Special Subcommittee on Transportation Funding kicked off a series of meetings to discuss several bills that could make big changes to the state’s transportation system. At the April 23 meeting, the Subcommittee Chair said they plan to have these bills reported on by May [...]
The Ethics Reform That Isn’t
CLEARLY, LAWMAKERS HAD GOOD REASONS TO KEEP H.3945 SECRET The talk this week has been mainly about the ill-named ethics reform bill being debated in the South Carolina House. It’s ill-named because, despite a strong provision requiring income disclosure, the bill actually weakens ethics laws in several areas. The most obvious problem with it, [...]
Renewable Energy: What’s the State’s Role?
HOW STATE FAVORITISM HURTS TAXPAYERS AND DRIVES UP ENERGY PRICES An attempt to loosen South Carolina energy regulation and licensing constraints for the benefit of solar energy firms has gained a fair amount of attention recently. A bill now in the legislature seeks to enable a process by which solar companies lease solar panels to [...]
Liberty, Equality … and Corporate Welfare
HOW ECONOMIC INCENTIVES COMPROMISE AMERICA’S MOST IMPORTANT VALUE Equality and liberty are not always compatible and in some cases directly opposed, but there is one notion of equality that is a necessary component of liberty, and that is “equality of opportunity.” Although this term is used differently on opposite sides of the political spectrum, advocates [...]
Restructuring Update: déjà vu all over again?
On government restructuring, it’s déjà vu all over again. As happened last year, the Senate passed a weak restructuring bill, S.22, that would eliminate the Budget and Control Board (BCB) and replace it with an agency overseen by the same five politicians and with the same powers over bonding and procurement – the State Fiscal Affairs [...]
Making a Flawed School Choice Bill (Slightly) Better
IF LAWMAKERS WANT TO IMPROVE A BADLY FLAWED “SCHOOL CHOICE” BILL, HERE’S WHERE TO BEGIN We recently released our initial analysis of S.279, the most prominent “school choice” bill currently before the General Assembly. While it may be encouraging to see lawmakers discussing the expansion of school choice, the bill is flawed. The tax deductions [...]
Boeing Bond Deal Needs Explanation
WHY THE RUSH TO PUT FUTURE TAXPAYERS 120,000,000 MORE DOLLARS INTO DEBT? The news broke this week that Boeing plans to expand its existing North Charleston campus to include an information technology “center of excellence.” The expansion, according to a company spokesman, will create 2,000 jobs. State lawmakers quickly announced plans to issue $120 million [...]
Half Time Ethics Report
It’s the beginning of April and lawmakers‘ two-week furlough is almost up, leaving us at roughly the half-way point of the 2013 legislative session. This was supposed to be the Year of Ethics Reform, but is it? Below is a “half-time report” detailing what’s been done already and what’s yet to be done. While some [...]