Tag: Sen. Luke Rankin

Rankin Defends Current Process for Selecting SC Judges

Horry County Senator Luke Rankin spoke for approximately one hour on the SC Senate floor last week defending the current process for electing judges in the state.
Rankin, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and current Vice Chairman of the Judicial Merit Selection Commission (JMSC), spoke during debate on the Senate floor about possible changes to the way in which judges are elected in South Carolina.
A major point of contention is that lawyer/legislators in the General Assembly have too much influence in the process. A change currently being considered is to not allow attorneys to serve on the JMSC, a point Rankin ridiculed during his speech. Candidates who pass screening are then voted on by a joint session of the General Assembly or the county legislative delegation, depending on the judicial position. South Carolina and Virginia are the only two states in the nation in which the legislatures play the primary roles in electing judges.
A member of JMSC since 2017, Rankin, several times during his speech, likened the current process of electing judges to “kicking the tires of a car” when considering purchase of a new vehicle. Rankin spoke of the several “touch points” during the process which include inputs from appointed citizens committee, the SC Bar review and what is known as the ballot box technique of collecting anonymous comments about judicial candidates, all of which are available to the JMSC when it considers judicial candidates. Candidates are reported out of the JMSC as qualified or not qualified for consideration for the judicial position they are seeking.

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SC General Assembly Must Amend Impact Fee Law to Allow Local Government Freedom

Horry County Council is again wrestling with the question of how to raise impact fees to help offset the cost of providing needed infrastructure to serve the ever-increasing number of new homes being built in the county.
While county council investigates to increase impact fees, the state enabling legislation governing those fees provides the largest hurdle to overcome.
In 1999, the General Assembly passed legislation governing the imposition of impact fees by local governments with enough restrictions and obstacles to make them virtually unworkable for local government use. The development industry launched a huge lobbying effort against the law and was generally successful in making the law extremely difficult for local governments to use.
The legislation dictates how the local governments must use the money and in what time frame it must be used. It also requires commercial structures to be treated the same as homes with respect to taxing, something that makes impact fees on commercial structures an excessive burden.
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Rankin Stops Flow Control Ban

Horry County Sen. Luke Rankin (R-Dist 33) performed well for his friends and contributors in the last month of the recent legislative session by holding off Senate passage of a bill that would have eliminated a government monopoly on garbage disposal in Horry County.

Called the “Business Freedom to Choose Act”, Rankin worked hard on the Senate floor to keep the bill from receiving passage in the final month of the legislative session. As a result of his work, the Horry County Solid Waste Authority will continue to monopolize garbage disposal at the expense of businesses and municipalities.

The irony in Rankin’s actions was open for all to see when he spoke against efforts by poor, rural communities to amend a telecommunications bill. The amendment would have provided some type of incentive to extend broadband communications coverage into currently unserved areas, probably through small cooperatives.

Rankin said, “We want to instill competition in the state and do not want to provide advantage for a tax subsidized provider. If you’re going to compete, you cannot do it at a subsidized rate.”

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