JUNE 5, 2009 -- Gov. Mark Sanford this week stayed the course by issuing 10 vetoes for roughly the same reasons he’s vetoed most bills in the past.
At least one of the bills he vetoed stands a decent chance of being sustained when the legislature reconvenes for three days starting June 16.
Despite confounded critics in the General Assembly -- and there are legions of them -- who say, “I’ve given up trying to guess what this governor is going to veto,” Sanford’s vetoes continued to revolve around the same old themes.
Shrinking government. Cutting taxes. Keeping Big Brother out of personal lives.
Sanford, a free-market libertarian, shot down a bill that would create what he saw as an unhealthy advantage for in-state vendors bidding jobs and services with state government. He also vetoed a payday lending bill that would placed further regulations on the industry. Why? Because it represented too much governmental intrusion into private lives.
The bill, approved as a compromise by the General Assembly, seeks to limit several aspects of the payday lending market, including how much could be lent and the number of short-term loans a person could carry
In his veto message, the governor said it was not the role of state government to protect individuals from their own actions, unless they impacted others. The impact of the payday lending veto could reverberate when the legislature returns next week.
Sen. Kevin Bryant (R-Anderson), who phoned the governor to ask him to veto the bill because, said, “the database the state would create to track the loans would be an invasion of privacy.”
Other vetoes on fire departments, exemptions, more
Sanford, the budget hawk, was a busy bee, vetoing bills that would extend grants to volunteer fire departments, as well as extend tax exemptions on improvements done on houses less than six years old, create a new statewide housing office and create “enterprise” campuses at five of the state’s technical colleges.
In his veto messages, the governor argued:
- The VFD bill required a local match;
- Tax exemptions on relatively new homes would shift $1.5 million in property taxes to current homeowners and businesses;
- There was already a housing office that had $1 billion it could tap and had already helped put together more than 5,000 homes; and
- More enterprise campuses could lead to more “ephemeral” research, like what has been done on the confederate H.L. Hunley submarine.
Sanford, the governmental streamliner, torpedoed a revamping of the State Ports Authority governance, because the proposed bill would strip his office from removing board members at his displeasure. The governor has fought long, and with middling results, to create a more executive branch-friendly form of state government.
Payday lending veto may pay off
That the governor vetoed the payday lending bill surprised few, and set the stage for what could be Sanford’s best chance of getting one of his vetoes sustained in the Senate, where fewer votes are needed to block a bill that already had left some questioning its wisdom and timing.
At the end of the session, with a House version in hand, the Senate worked late to pass a compromise payday lending bill.
Sen. Larry Martin (R-Pickens) said the push to complete a bill came, in part, from the Senate recognizing that there had been little legislative accomplishments this session.
Holding it over to next session, he said, wasn’t attractive because there was no guarantee anything would get accomplished because of expectations that House elections and a continuing bleak economic outlook dominating the legislative agenda in 2010.
“My personal view was that there was no way we were going to make this bill a whole lot better because there were too many disparate views on the matter,” said Martin.
He said that because of Sanford’s current political situation, having just been handed a major defeat over accepting $700 million in federal stimulus funds, “it would likely not be until the next governor before we could really get another shot at this.”
Martin agreed the debate came down to the same thinking going into a man getting a bad haircut. “It’s better than no haircut at all.”
Martin, whose coif resembles that of Murray from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show, said the concern in the Senate now was whether Sanford would be able to muster enough votes from sympathetic Senate Republicans and Democrats dissatisfied with the bill to block it.
Generally speaking, Sanford can count on about 12 Republicans in the Senate, the so-called “Juicebox Caucus,” on any given bill.
But he would need only four or five more Democrats, like Sen. Gerald Malloy (D-Hartsville), depending on how many senators made it back for the additional week, to sustain this veto.
Bryant, whose hair is reminiscent of Officer John Baker of “CHiPs” fame, said there was a “real chance” the veto would be sustained because five or six Republicans would object on privacy issues to go along with Democrats like Malloy.
“I haven’t made up my mind,” said Malloy, when asked if he was leaning toward sustaining the payday lending veto. “I haven’t talked to anyone else, and I need to go back and study the governor’s veto message.”
Malloy, whose hairline more resembles that of Kojak, led the fight against the payday lending in the final days of this year’s session, because he felt it didn’t go far enough to protect consumer interests.
Malloy, however, did criticize the thinking behind the governor’s payday lending veto, because, he said, a real free-market thinker would have allowed payday lending to die and let the market provide a solution.
“I would like to point out, using the ‘bad-haircut’ argument, that my dear friend from Pickens, Sen. Martin, wants only to go half-way, whereas I have gone whole hog,” said Malloy.
Crystal ball: Yes, Malloy was dissatisfied with the payday lending bill as it now stands. Yes, he’s got a great opportunity to shop his vote in exchange for something down the road he holds dear. No, Malloy is not going to lead a contingent of Democrats in voting to sustain Sanford’s veto. One, it’s what Sanford wants. Two, Malloy said increased regulation is required only because the legislature “created” the industry in 1998 in this state when it voted to allow it to take root in the first place. Three, Malloy knows nothing will get done next year and probably doesn’t like the idea of his constituents suffering until 2011, when a new governor takes office and the legislature can have a second crack at correcting the problem.