Statehouse may reform 'Big House'Commission works to increase safety, reduce costsBy Bill Davis, senior editor JAN. 15, 2010 -- Fingers are crossed in the Statehouse and beyond that all of the hard work and meetings that have gone into the Sentencing Reform Commission will result in legislation that will save the state money and better protect its citizens.
 With a little luck, observers say the commission’s recommendations will avoid the political graveyard that’s snared several “sure thing” bills over the past few years. A future bill could be debated as early as March, sources say. A draft report will hit members’ desks next week with a full public report to follow Feb. 1.
Without a little luck, the recommendations might become a political football in an election year in the House, where candidates could kick recommendations around as a series of soft-on-crime mistakes.
 The commission was formed in 2008 by state Sen. Glenn McConnell (R-Charleston,) the president pro tempore of the Senate who chairs the chamber’s Judiciary Committee. It was to craft recommendations to change the state’s guidelines for felonies, reform its parole system and offer alternatives to incarceration.
While some hoped the commission would begin the process of rolling back what have been described as overzealous legal reactions to crack cocaine, the impetus behind the commission’s creation was more financial than empathetic.
Financial background for recommendations
Over the past three decades, the state has seen its criminal justice system become increasingly more expensive and expansive. In 1983, the state spent just over $63 million on prisons, according to state Sen. Gerald Malloy (D-Hartsville), who McConnell named to chair the commission.
 In 2008, by contrast, the state spent more than $394 million, a 500-percent increase. Malloy, the former president of the state’s association of trial lawyers, said that annual per-inmate spending climbed from $14,000 to $29,000 over that time.
Prison population has more that tripled, too, from 7,526 in 1978 to 24,460 this past summer.
Currently, the state’s total corrections budget is $487 million, but the Department of Corrections has regularly exceeded its allotment, carrying a hefty deficit for several years.
Preview of recommendations
Malloy said many of the recommendations would center on how the state handled non-violent drug offenders. The rise of crack and mandatory sentencing, he said, has added to the overcrowding and increased expense.
Expected recommendations in next week’s draft report will include revisions to mandatory sentencing rules, a reassessment of “three strikes and you’re out” sentencing, and potentially new alternative sentencing options.
Judges, argued Malloy, should have clearer sentencing guidelines that allow them the flexibility take into account the true nature of a crime.
Victoria Middleton, the executive director for the state ACLU chapter, said a wrinkle in state law has been that a person carrying drugs in their car gets a heightened sentence if they happen to be stopped in front of a school.
She said they were often not dealing or using at a school setting, but ended up getting a “proximity” charge added to their woes, and the state gets added prison expenses.
Alternatives take on importance
Malloy said the recommendations would not go easier on dealers, traffickers or manufacturers. But they would push for cheaper, and some argue, more effective sentencing alternatives, such as treatment and supervision.
“If we can take a drug offender through ‘drug court’ and treatment for $5,000, it’s much better than the $15,000 we’re spending to incarcerate them,” said commission member and workgroup leader State Rep. Murrell Smith (R- Sumter).
 Smith, an attorney and former public defender, said the push for alternative sentencing in the recommendations could “dovetail easily” with state Attorney General Henry McMaster’s proposed middle court system that seeks to divert non-violent crime away from costly incarceration.
A fan of treating addicts versus just punishing them, the ACLU’s Middleton criticized the middle court plan because it would create extra cost and, under gubernatorial candidate McMaster’s proposal, be housed under his office and not the judicial branch.
Election year pitfalls
Changing sentencing guidelines, according to several sources interviewed, could become the most problematic -- especially in an election year -- and pose the most obvious obstacle to influencing legislation.
For example, if a legislator advocates diverting first-time, non-violent drug offenders to treatment, such a position could easily become “putting druggies back on the street” in the hands of a political challenger.
And what would be said to those already serving longer sentences for similar drug charges? Malloy shrugged. “The best we can do is put the state in a better position for the future.”
Additionally, there has been a push across the state and the Statehouse for other controversial recommendations, such as warrantless searches for parolees that could create further obstacles to sentencing reform.
Middleton decried what she said was the obvious unconstitutionality of warrantless searches. Smith said libertarians didn’t like the idea of the police being allowed to rifle through people’s private homes without a warrant because they had a parolee over for a visit.
Crystal ball: That McConnell tabbed a minority member of the opposition party to head up the commission speaks to the bipartisan support any resulting bill will likely have. All of the players seem to be on board with the idea of reserving precious prison beds for the truly dangerous. Now, with positive reviews and buzz around the Statehouse, the only thing that could muck up the works, is politics. RECENTLY IN NEWS
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12/18: Poll shows electorate tired of Sanford's woes
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Lots of meetings next weekWith the General Assembly back in session, there has been an expected surge in scheduled meetings. The House’s docket next week will be dominated by a long series of budget and proviso subcommittee meetings. Click here to see these meetings. Also next week:
In the Senate:
Tuesday, Jan. 19:
Thursday, Jan. 21:
- Medical Affairs. The full committee will meet at 9:30 a.m. in 328 Gressette to discuss bills to restructure DHEC, Department of Disabilities and Special Needs, and the Department of Mental Health.
In the House:
Tuesday:
- 3M. The full committee will meet at 2:30 p.m., or an hour and a half after adjournment, in 427 Blatt, to discuss a host of medical-related bills, including one that would allow a family to demand an autopsy if a family members dies in a hospital.
- Judiciary. The full committee will meet at 2:30 p.m., or an hour and a half after adjournment, to discuss several bills, including one that would allow police officers to conduct warrantless searches of parolees and probationers.
Other meetings:
- The ETV Commission will meet at South Carolina Educational Television 10:30 a.m. Thursday in the Jefferies Conference Room at 1101 George Rogers Blvd. in Columbia.
- The S.C. Wildlife Federation will host a gubernatorial candidate forum at 3:30 p.m., Jan. 23, in the Clarion Hotel, Camden.
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Eco-devoHouse Speaker Bobby Harrell (R-Charleston) will unveil a bill next week to address the “structure” of economic development efforts in the state in an attempt to brighten the state’s economic climate.
Harrell has been meeting with private industry leaders from across the state and the bill will likely be introduced on Tuesday. One emphasis will be for the state to help existing businesses to create more jobs, rather than just hunt big game like Boeing.
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Censure, Boeing, ESC, moreCensure. It took the House all of 21 minutes to censure Gov. Mark Sanford for allegations stemming from a state trip he took last year to South America to visit his mistress. House Speaker Bobby Harrell (R-Charleston) lambasted the governor’s actions, but said they did not rise to the level of impeachment.
At just 21 minutes, it’s clear the legislature, at least the House, wanted to get this matter behind it. The vote was 102-11, with the following representatives voting against it on the second roll call vote: Brantley, G. A. Brown, Erickson, Gilliard, Herbkersman, Kennedy, Knight, Merrill, Rutherford, M. Smith, and Umphlett. The matter now moves to the Senate. Sanford could still face charges from the state Attorney General’s office and fines from the state Ethics Commission.
Even quicker. The Budget and Control Board came off as less than deliberative this week when it took a whopping three minutes to pass a massive tax credit package to cement the deal with Boeing to expand its manufacturing facilities in the Charleston area. The vote was unanimous, including Gov. Mark Sanford, who has campaigned strongly against site-specific tax cuts in the past. The package included a $270 million tax credit and a $102-million bridge loan.
First step. S.C. House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham (R-Cayce) introduced a bill to partially reform the Employment Security Commission. The embattled ESC has been a political target of just about everyone in the legislative and elected branches after a year that exposed massive financial shortfalls and incomplete warnings. Bingham’s bill would restrict payments to potential beneficiaries fired for gross misconduct or drug use, and restrict claims filed by employers who cost the system more than they contribute. It would also force the ESC to work more closely, and openly, with other state agencies. A full reform package is still in the works.
Watching the dollars. S.C. Treasurer Converse Chellis this week unveiled his 11-point plan to put the state on a better fiscal base. Many of them already have some support in the General Assembly. The plan includes:
1) Increase the size of the General Reserve Fund.
2) Delay use of the Capital Reserve Fund during the fiscal year.
3) Respond more quickly to reduced revenue projections.
4) Create a government streamlining commission.
5) Eliminate the TERI Program.
6) Reinstate 30-year retirement.
7) Create a Department of Administration.
8) Shorten the legislative session.
9) Enact a biennial budget.
10) Reform and streamline the capital improvement project process.
11) Implement zero-based budgeting.
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SC needs to wake up to fiscal realitiesBy Andy Brack, editor and publisher JAN. 15, 2010 – Wake up, South Carolina! If we don’t start investing in our state, we might as well submit to being serfs to the Chinese.
 Simply put, we need to tax ourselves more. We need to use the money to revitalize education, our business environment and the parts of state government that attract jobs.
Yes, the idea of raising taxes is a bitter pill for many to swallow. But South Carolina has become so blinded by the addiction of always wanting more tax cuts that the state is bleeding a death of 1,000 paper cuts. We need to go cold turkey on tax cuts and be smart for a change. We need to take a longer-term view that focuses on making new tax investments that will pay off.
Lawmakers have to face this music: our state’s revenue sources have been sliced past the bone:
- The state’s current budget of $5.1 billion is $1.6 billion less than in 2007. That’s a 23.6 percent drop in just three years.
- The state’s current budget also is only 0.2 percent more than it was in 2000. In other words, we’re at the same place fiscally today that we were 10 years ago. And, Lord knows, the costs for health care, education and prisons have gone up way more than 0.2 percent over the last 10 years.
- Future state revenues are projected for years to rise only 2 percent annually when common sense dictates costs will rise more than 2 percent every single year.
- Our tax base is shrinking dramatically. Ten years ago, the state collected sales taxes on 48 percent of the state’s gross sales. Now, thanks to tax breaks and cuts, sales taxes are collected on only 41 percent of our gross sales.
- Over the last four years, lawmakers have approved tax cuts of more than $1.2 billion. Major sources of revenue drops are the ill-conceived property tax swap from three years ago, elimination of sales taxes on groceries, elimination of the bottom income tax bracket and a cut to corporate income tax.
Ladies and gentlemen, our lawmakers have been giving away the store, gutting the government that is here to serve us all. Seemingly lost in a dogmatic zeal to cut taxes at any cost just to score political points with a lemming-like electorate is need of children in the Palmetto State to go to decent schools, get decent health care and face a decent future.
 Meanwhile, the Chinese are investing in education and infrastructure at record paces (not to mention lending billions of dollars to us as we sit in Barcaloungers and eat junk food).
Robert Fogel, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics a few years back, wrote in the new issue of Foreign Policy magazine that China is poised to claim 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product by 2040 with the U.S. contributing just 14 percent.
Imagine that – the Chinese, quietly manufacturing and lending while we sit back and spend without investing, end up being the superpower. We are on track to take a back seat to China – unless we start investing in ourselves more. Not only does each family need to save more for the future, families need to invest unselfishly in the state so it can provide the educational and business foundations that students need to be successful in the economy of the future.
What does such investment mean here in South Carolina?
- It means broadening our tax bases -- paying a little more in taxes and spending it on education.
- As the state Chamber of Commerce says, we need to repeal the Act 388 property tax swap and replace it with something fairer for businesses and schools.
- Instead of giving away $2.5 billion in special-interest sales tax exemptions every year, we need to cut many that are outdated and use the revenues as an investment or to reduce tax rates to make the state more attractive to business.
- More than anything, we need to stop having kneejerk reactions anytime the word “tax” is mentioned.
If the choice for South Carolina’s future is between raising taxes a little and letting Communist China win, I’ll pick a little more in taxes every time. Let’s bite the tax bullet, improve our tax structures, raise a little more revenue and invest in our future. RECENT COMMENTARY
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S.C. Association of Counties The public spiritedness of our underwriters allows us to bring Statehouse Report to you at no cost. This week's featured underwriter is the South Carolina Association of Counties. The SCAC was chartered on June 22, 1967, and is the only organization dedicated to statewide representation of county government in South Carolina. Membership includes all 46 counties, which are represented by elected and appointed county officials who are dedicated to improving county government. SCAC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that operates with a full-time staff in its Columbia offices. It is governed by a 29-member Board of Directors composed of county officials from across South Carolina. The Association strives to “Build Stronger Counties for Tomorrow” by working with member counties in the fields of research, information exchange, educational promotion and legislative reporting. More: http://www.sccounties.org.
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For Fab Four: Myth of SC's fiscal conservativesBy Ashley Landess
President, S.C. Policy Council
JAN. 15, 2010 -- Legislative leaders recently spun their policies as “fiscally conservative” in an article they wrote together. (See “Responsible reforms will stabilize budget,” Jan. 4, The State) It’s time for some blunt talk about why their claims of “fiscal conservative policies” are absurd and misleading.
 Senators Glenn McConnell and Hugh Leatherman, House Speaker Bobby Harrell and Rep. Dan Cooper credit themselves for “holding the line on taxes.” They don’t point out that they blew through a billion-dollar budget surplus, raised fees, used one-time stimulus money to fund recurring programs and grew spending to the point that it is unsustainable today. Lawmakers warn that “essential government services” are being cut. Perhaps, but that’s only because lawmakers decided to cut them instead of their favorite projects.
What’s being funded while teachers and law enforcement officers are furloughed? Salaries of government lobbyists, hundreds of millions of dollars in “economic incentives” for private companies (paid for by businesses that don’t have lobbyists), ad campaigns featuring people dressed like corn and tomatoes, empty buildings for universities, conferences for “hydrogen research” (so dubious that President Obama’s administration doesn’t want to fund it), high-priced PR firms and secret venture capital funds.
The worst spending is on economic development deals for special interests, a short-sighted policy that puts politicians in the role of venture capitalists with taxpayers’ capital. Credible economists have questioned the practice for years. In Unleashing Capitalism, economists show that despite spending billions on incentives over the past 14 years, the state didn’t produce more jobs or higher income levels. In fact, South Carolina’s ranking in both categories is among the worst in the nation.
What’s worse? As The Nerve [the Policy Council’s new reporting arm] reported this week, the real cost for those incentives is not what politicians claim. In fact, the emerging price tag for the much-touted Boeing deal is several hundred million dollars more than what lawmakers first said it would be, and some of that money will be up-front straight out of the treasury.
"Ultimately, one reform that would have the greatest impact on the budget is a substantive spending cap. That’s the only way to force politicians to spend money wisely and on those functions that are truly the role of government."
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Giveaway programs don’t pay off for most taxpayers. They benefit select companies, politicians, lobbyists, lawyers and consultants. For the rest of us, wealth creation will not happen in the Statehouse. To the contrary, there are nothing but examples of the failure of “Statehouse Economics.” For example, lobbyists and lawmakers promised that the Clemson restoration center would create jobs. It hasn’t, but that didn’t stop politicians from giving it more money. And the University of South Carolina’s Innovista project has not only failed to attract private investment, it has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. There are many more examples, and they all cost money that could have been returned to struggling taxpayers.
Legislators need to cut all their economic development spending right now. Economists warned it wouldn’t work, and it hasn’t. Instead, it is crippling the private sector. It benefits no one but Columbia insiders and their friends. Surely it isn’t as critical to taxpayers to fund a hydrogen fuel cell conference than to pay teachers!
Legislative leaders refer to the shrinking General Fund, but never mention that it’s the smallest of the three budget categories. The “other funds,” comprised of fees and additional costs imposed on businesses and taxpayers, totals $7.1 billion. Lawmakers won’t examine programs funded by those revenues, and most legislators don’t know how it’s spent because it is never debated during the budget process. In fact, the only ones who likely know where the money goes are the “Fab Four” legislative leaders who make the spending decisions behind closed doors.
Ultimately, one reform that would have the greatest impact on the budget is a substantive spending cap. That’s the only way to force politicians to spend money wisely and on those functions that are truly the role of government.
McConnell, Leatherman, Harrell and Cooper made one true statement in their article: as legislative leaders, the financial health of state government is their responsibility. The mess in our economy proves they haven’t managed it well. Smart leaders recognize their own failure and change course toward a successful strategy. Fortunately, such a strategy exists and it has worked. It’s called the American free market. Fiscally conservative legislators should know that.
RECENT MY TURN COMMENTARY
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Vent about South Carolina (or us!)MAD ABOUT something we wrote about increasing taxes or criticizing lawmakers? Send us a letter to the editor and we'll print it (as long as it isn't libelous!). Please include your name and town for identification purposes.
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In the middle, down Boeing. The Budget and Control Board passed a $270 million tax credit package and $ 102 million start-up loan to make sure the North Charleston expansion can begin quickly and generate much-needed jobs. On the other hand, this could cost taxpayers in excess of $400 million.
Censure. Yea, the House censured the governor for his bad Argentine behavior. But this doesn’t really do anything, many say. More importantly, what’s with the Senate? Doing even less?
 Cigs. South Carolina failed in every category in the American Lung Association's State of Tobacco Control 2009 report released this week; having the lowest cigarette tax in the nation did not help. More.
Senate. First week back and, with all the problems facing the state, close to the top of the agenda was debating a nonbinding health care resolution the federal government is just going to ignore anyway? Glum start.
$185k. That’s how much Gov. Mark Sanford spent on lawyers to defend himself against a host of allegations and impeachment efforts over the past year. More.
DNR. Can’t make payroll to its employees. More.
Grooms. Dark horse gubernatorial candidate state Sen. Larry Grooms (R-Bonneau) announced this week he was leaving the race. And so the discussion narrows.
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