By Paul Gable
The legislative session that opens today in Columbia has every opportunity of demonstrating just how weak and ineffective S.C. Government really is.
Several months ago, the S.C. Supreme Court ruled that S.C. government isn’t doing enough to ensure students in poor, rural school districts receive even the “minimally adequate” education required by the state constitution.
South Carolina has reached a critical juncture where a maintenance plan must be developed to fix its crumbling roads and bridges.
After hearing throughout Gov. Nikki Haley’s first term in office about horrors in the S.C. Department of Social Services, the governor and DSS acting director Susan Alford were served this week with a federal class action lawsuit seeking injunctive relief to “remedy specific deficiencies in the South Carolina Department of Social Services in order to safeguard and prevent harm to foster children in DSS custody.”
And there remains the ever present question of ethics, especially among members of the General Assembly who seem to develop ever more creative ways to divert unused campaign funds to what appear to be personal uses.
The problem is that those elected to legislative and executive branch offices don’t have a clue about how to govern. They appear to believe that their responsibility to the citizens ends with getting elected.
Once election is secured, it’s time pass a couple of laws to help their big-money donors, then, sit back and collect even more campaign donations so they can take bigger and better vacations than the year before. Don’t worry about the big problems facing the state, they’re not really what we’re in Columbia for.
It’s the S.C. Government version of Nero fiddling while Rome burns and I expect it will be on full display starting January 13th when the General Assembly opens session.
Speak Up…