MAY 2, 2014 -- A year and a half after becoming a national joke for letting hackers steal personal and corporate data from the state Department of Revenue, South Carolina is about to get another black eye.

Next week, ABC News is expected to broadcast a major story on the deaths of scores of children involved with the state Department of Social Services, according to several people interviewed for the story.

“The report, when it airs, will once again be painful for all of us who love this state to watch,” said former DSS Deputy Director Linda S. Martin of Columbia. “They talked with a lot of folks and what they found was frightening.”

Since 2009, more than 300 children who have had some involvement with the agency have died, according to multiple reports.  As of today, the State Law Enforcement Agency has 380 child fatality cases that are open and being investigated, according to spokesman Thom Berry. Since 2001, the agency has closed 2,286 child fatality investigations, he said.

Koller is in eye of the storm

In recent months, pressure has been building at the agency, particularly on its director, Lillian Koller. Not only is there the coming national news story, but state senators plan to grill Koller again next week over escalating events: 

• In late 2012, 33 mostly Republican state legislators sought an audit of the agency for complaints about its management and operations, including children’s deaths while under the jurisdiction or custody of DSS. More.
  
  
• In September 2013, a state senator announced he was looking into the agency’s personnel decisions and consulting contracts. More.
  
  
• Then in October, the hammer dropped with legislative testimony that as many as 312 children involved with DSS died since 2009.   More.
  
  
• In the months since, there have been high-profile hearings of a special Senate committee in which senators have called for Koller to resign or to be fired. Former state judge and legislator Tom Ervin of Greenville announced he was running against Haley in the GOP gubernatorial primary because of the mess at DSS. (He later said he’d run as an “independent Republican” in the general election. )
  
  
• Just this week, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott pointed to the agency for not following up on a case involving the death of another child. On Wednesday, Koller announced the agency would change a policy to require workers to contact law enforcement officers within 72 hours if DSS can’t locate a child or family. 

Scandal becoming more political

And now, the agency’s troubles are becoming so political that a conservative blogger who has backed Haley  wonders whether it could cause serious trouble for her re-election bid.

“Unlike the other ‘scandals’ that have been run up the flag pole by Haley’s opponents, this one is becoming all too real and the governor herself is making it so,” according to Charlie Speight of Lexington who writes for TheWatchlog.com.  “Loyalty is a fine and noble trait, but the governor’s loyalty to Lillian Koller must be sacrificed for loyalty to our children. ... If the voters of South Carolina pay attention to this ungodly crime drama, DSS’s next victim could very well be Nikki Haley.”

On Thursday, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen called for a Senate investigation into whether Gov. Nikki Haley’s office tried to interfere with the Senate committee’s review of DSS.  More.

Haley also has been criticized by Senate leaders for having “strongly urged” cabinet secretaries to attend a recent hearing in which Koller testified to show unified support for her. 

Neither Haley’s office nor Koller's responded to questions for this story. 

Calls for new leadership increasing

Despite being in a hot gubernatorial campaign, Haley continues to back Koller, who came to South Carolina from the companion DSS agency in Hawaii soon after Haley became governor. 

But the calls for Koller to be fired are increasing. Haley’s Democratic opponent, Sen. Vincent Sheheen, and state Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, say Koller should go. 

Sen. Joel Lourie, D-Richland, this week told Statehouse Report that the agency was in “complete meltdown” because of poor leadership. He emphasized that he’s not advocating for Koller’s removal for political reasons, but because children were dying and that the legislature had a responsibility to help and protect children.

“For the governor to sit here and praise her [Koller] and compliment her shows the governor is completely out of touch with what’s happening at the agency,” Lourie said. “She’s ignoring the truth, living in a completely different world and she’s violating the trust that people have put in her to make executive decisions. At the end of the day, I think Nikki Haley has to be held accountable for this.”

Lourie said two things needed to be done now beyond getting rid of Koller:

• Keep the agency alive. Lourie said Haley and a bipartisan team of state leaders needed to meet with DSS workers across the state and “beg them” not to leave their positions. They, he said, generally aren’t the problem; leadership is. Several sources said morale is so low and caseloads so burdensome that DSS professionals are adrift, which is boosting the agency’s downward spiral.
  
  
• Total overhaul. Lourie said child welfare leaders in the House and Senate needed to look at the agency from top to bottom to make it work, potentially with significant restructuring. “It won’t happen without new leadership and a bipartisan commitment to make it happen. I believe there is broad-based support for it in the General Assembly,” he said.”

Other problems at DSS

In addition to leadership, training and morale problems at the agency, advocate Sue Berkowitz says the agency has significant problems in helping children who are taken into custody.

“There are children, who are being sent to a permanent, yet inappropriate, ‘permanent placements’ causing them to lose services and benefits when DSS closes the case,” said Berkowitz, who is head of the S.C. Appleseed Legal Justice Center.

“I spoke with a young man last week who was talked into returning home only to lose help he would have received from DSS with graduation and college.  Because they sent him home four days before he turned 18, he did not receive any help and ultimately ended up living on the street.  That should never happen.  He has told me of others that have ended up in similar circumstances.”

A lot of work ahead

Both Lourie and Berkowitz agreed that there was a lot of work ahead for the state to improve DSS.

“National exposure should help take this issue out of politics and put the focus back to the children,” Berkowitz said. “I am shocked that our governor dismisses all of the problems and allegations and it is hard to believe that is happening for reasons other than political.  This should never be the case when it comes to the safety of our children.  

“I think Koller’s ‘leadership’ has taken an agency that has always struggled and broken it.  ...  The work of DSS is hard, the people  the agency serves are often those who others want to ignore, it will take a lot of work, but it cannot be business as usual.”

Lourie added: “The longer that the governor continues to ignore the problem, the worse it’s going to get. Quite honestly, it’s shameful.”

Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report.  He can be reached at: brack@statehousereport.com.

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With the Senate scheduled to take up debate at noon Tuesday on the state’s annual budget, don’t look for many committee meetings next week. The House, however, has several meetings scheduled involving wildlife and business issues. Of interest:

• House LCI. The Insurance committee will meet 2:30 p.m. May 7, or 1.5 hours after house adjournment, to discuss a measure involving coastal insurance rates. Agenda.

• House Ag. The Agriculture subcommittee will meet 9 a.m. May 8 in 410 Blatt to discuss several measures, including a bill allowing wave dissipation devices. Agenda.

• All Senate meetings.

• All House meetings.

If legislators keep a proposal in the Senate Finance Committee’s budget proposal to add $25 million more for pre-K education funding, the state might effectively have universal 4-year-old kindergarten. Under the proposal, new funding for the Child Development Education Program would allow it to be available in the handful of school districts where 4K education isn’t available for poor students. 

If the program is available to poor students in all of the state’s school districts and if you factor in all of the kids who get education through Headstart, private child care centers, private kindergartens and other programs, just about every 4-year-old kid in the state should be getting some kind of pre-kindergarten education to be readier for school.

With the Senate Finance Committee approving a draft of the $7 billion 2014-15 state budget on Thursday, all eyes turn Tuesday to the Senate floor for a week or two of debate on how to spend state tax dollars.

The lion’s share of new funding in the budget would go to K-12 education and state employees. Not only did the Senate budget writers include $29 million approved by the house for a “Read to Succeed” elementary program, but they added $25 million to expand a statewide program for 4-year-old kindergarten to the whole state. Last year, Democrats pushed the Senate to add $26 million to the early education. Of the $260 million in new recurring revenues in the budget, about half go to public education, sources said. Because Republicans get the reading program and Democrats get the pre-K program, education funding is not expected to be controversial.

The Senate proposal also includes $57 million for increases to the state health plan for state workers, as well as $22 million for state employee pay raises.

Among the flash points possible during next week’s budget debate:

• Legislative pay raises. Senators included an extra $2 million for an additional $12,000 a year for district expenses for each legislator.
  
  
• Local government funding. The budget would cut about $16 million from funding for local governments, although it would be restored if tax collections are better than anticipated.
  
  
• Abortion. Conservative senators could take the floor to raise Cain about abortion funding through the state health plan.
  
  
• DSS. The embattled agency’s troubles might become part of floor debate in an attempt to get change moving more quickly.
  
  
• Gay-themed books. Finance Committee members voted to restore about $70,000 in funding to the College of Charleston and USC-Upstate for gay-themed student reading selections. 

This is relevant in light of a new book by 94-year-old retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens who suggests six amendments to the U.S. Constitution to make the federal government work better. A major recommendation is to put “reasonable limits” on campaign contributions to keep rich people and corporate interests from overly influencing elections. He also called for limiting individual gun rights, ending the death penalty, ending gerrymandered congressional districts, requiring states to enforce federal laws and removing governmental immunity from liability.

You might not agree with anything Stevens advocates, but it’s good that he’s suggesting ways to make government work better on a federal level. In turn, that leads us to thoughts about how amending our state’s 119-year-old constitution -- or just completely rewriting it -- might make state government much more accountable, more transparent, less cumbersome, less bureaucratic and less paternalistic.

The current constitution, you might recall, was written by white guys -- the only people who effectively could vote then -- in the Jim Crow era. It still includes archaic language on things like literacy tests and countywide senatorial districts that have been ruled out of order by federal courts.

“What we’ve been doing for more than a century is amending a document that arose in the days after the Civil War when horses and buggies were a primary means of transport and the telephone was a newfangled invention,” wrote Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen in his campaign treatise, “The Right Way.” “The constitution that South Carolina operates under today continues to reflect populist urges present on the state level in the late 1800s and an approach to government and governing that are no longer wise in the 21st century.”

Sheheen believes the current state constitution needs to be overhauled completely to get rid of the deadwood and bring it up-to-date. To do so, voters would have to agree to a constitutional convention of delegates picked by the General Assembly. The alternative to updating the state constitution is to slog through changing it via the amendment process, which also requires voter approval.

“I am not opposed to healing our government incrementally,” Sheheen wrote. “I am, however, skeptical that our current leaders will finish the job with that approach. I believe that when a government has reached such a level of dysfunction and disintegration as South Carolina’s, it is time to return the power to the people.”

In the current legislative session, lawmakers proposed about 60 constitutional amendments, some of which were duplicates. They called for making several constitutional officers (lieutenant governor, adjutant general, agriculture commissioner, comptroller general, secretary of state and state superintendent) to become appointed, not elected. They sought to use the amendment process to change divorce law, limit spending, limit legislative terms, change ethics laws, set a minimum wage, dedicate a continuing revenue stream to the state judiciary, allow raffles and make shorter legislative sessions. Perhaps the most important change introduced was to require public schools to deliver a “high-quality” education, instead of the minimally-adequate education interpreted in 1999 by the state Supreme Court.

As of this week, the General Assembly has sent 161 measures to the governor that have been ratified into law. The only legislative proposal involving a constitutional amendment was to ask voters if they wanted charitable organizations to be able to hold raffles.

In other words, despite lots of talk, huffing and puffing about changing the constitution, not much is really being done on a constitutional structural level to make things work better. 

Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report.  You can reach Brack at: brack@statehousereport.com.

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By Victoria Middleton

Special to Statehouse Report

MAY 2, 2014 -- I was at the Statehouse Wednesday with a brave woman named Julie. Julie is the devoted mother of three beautiful, healthy children. She came to South Carolina to share her story of when she and her family made the decision to terminate a pregnancy – and to ask our legislators not to make things even harder for a woman facing a similar decision.

Julie’s pregnancy was very much wanted and planned for. She and her husband were thrilled to learn that their son would soon become a big brother.

Sadly during the routine 20-week ultrasound, Julie did not hear what she had hoped. Julie learned that her pregnancy had developed a severe medical condition. The doctor told Julie that her son might not survive delivery. At best, the doctor told her, her son would have developmental ability of a two-month old.

After meeting with several specialists, much discussion and with the support of her family, Julie and her husband made the heart-wrenching decision to terminate the pregnancy.

Julie travelled all the way from Maryland to Columbia to testify at the Statehouse because South Carolina legislators are working to pass a law that could interfere in this intensely private decision to end a pregnancy. House Bill 4223 bans abortion after 20 weeks – before the point in pregnancy when a woman may find out the complete health of her pregnancy.

Imagine if Julie and her family had lived in a state that had passed a law preventing her doctors from providing the care she needed. An already-difficult circumstance would have been much, much worse.

Julie felt it was important to tell her story to legislators who are considering passing this ban.  

“I would not wish the grief I experienced on any other person,” she said, as she urged legislators to leave this complex, highly personal decision to a woman and her family.

It was brave of Julie to testify, and she understands – both as a woman who experienced this first hand and as a psychologist who now researches and treats women who have had reproductive problems like her own -- that it is painfully hard for a woman to come forward with such a story. Many things can happen in pregnancy and Julie’s story illustrates that our legislators should not presume to know what’s best for South Carolina families. 

I sincerely hope that South Carolina legislators take the moral of Julie’s story to heart: These difficult personal, private medical decisions should be made by a woman, her family and her doctor.  Politicians have no business interfering with such a decision.

Victoria Middleton is executive director of the ACLU of South Carolina.

To the editor:

Thanks for a good discussion on state college funding. Very interesting.  There has been the recent argument that lottery money, for example, goes disproportionately to colleges and not to K-12.  Looks like it needs to.  Add to that the idea that we need the education base to continue to attract and grow business.  

-- Don McDonough, Charleston, S.C.

Education. Thumbs up to the state Senate for injecting millions of dollars into proactive reading and pre-kindergarten programs. Investing in education is the only real long-term solution for getting the state out of doldrums of statistics