Ever want to say something about Atlantic Beach’s latest predicament, but weren’t
sure what? Thursday’s editorial offers help:
If Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes
were arrested, or Conway Mayor Alys Lawson, or Surfside Beach Mayor Doug
Samples, our newsroom would quickly shift into overdrive. Reporters and
photographers would be sent to dig up background. Front pages would be
redesigned. Sources would be mined for information. Competition would be fierce
for every nugget of information. Articles and editorials already in the works
would be moved to the back burner to fit in news and commentary on the arrest.
When Atlantic Beach Mayor Retha
Pierce was arrested – again – this past week, the reaction around here was a
bit more muted. Rather than “Oh my God!” it was more of an “Oh, her again?”
Kudos to S.C. lawmakers – and
particularly Murrells Inlet Republican Sen. Ray Cleary – for pushing through
legislation to give voters the chance to allow churches and other nonprofits to
hold fundraising raffles.
Is ethics reform hard? Yes. Is it
possible? Of course. Sunday’s editorial urges legislators to keep trying until
they get it right:
It’s time for South Carolina ethics reform to stand up and
walk.
Any parent knows the process children
go through as they learn to walk for the first time. It starts not with the
body, but with the head. Long before they’re actually able to actually
coordinate their limbs and balance their weight, babies begin to try. And they
fail. And they get frustrated and cry about it. And then they try again. And
fail again. It can be months between when a child knows what he wants to do and
when he’s actually able to do it. They’re not able to tell us, but it’s likely
that all those false starts make the success at the end even sweeter.
Legislators are returning to Columbia this week from a
self-imposed furlough with a number of big items to work on before the session
ends this summer. We echo Gov. Nikki Haley, who hoped in a conference call with
editorial writers from around the state on Thursday that they return ready to
work, especially when it comes to ethics reform.
Tuesday’s editorial makes the
argument once again that it’s time to get rid of some of these down-ticket
races that are just cluttering up the ballot:
Can you name the state education
superintendent? How about the state adjutant general? Comptroller general?
Commissioner of agriculture? If you can, kudos to you, you’re ahead of the
game. If you can’t, the situation we suspect most residents are in, it’s time
to ask once more: Why are these elected positions?
The short answer, of course, is that
the state legislature has never trusted the person in the governor’s office to
appoint these positions. Heaven forbid that the person in that seat might
actually have some larger measure of control over state government. Instead, it’s
left up to voters to choose the winners of these posts every four years, voters
who most likely have little if any knowledge of who they’re voting for. We
suspect most voters simply pick the person in the party they identify with, in
which case the real contest is not at the polls, but in the internal pushing
and shoving among candidates to be the one on the ballot.
With the governor’s signature Friday
on a bill banning sweepstakes gambling in the state, we hope another chapter in
the state’s on-again, off-again relationship with video poker has come to an
end. Gambling proponents will no doubt soon search out another loophole in
state law to burrow through, but legislators and the governor were wise to
stamp out this incarnation before it grew any larger.
Hopefully, the
S.C. House’s face is feeling properly spited. We’d hate to think that members
cut off their nose this week in vain.
House members
were offered two choices on Medicaid, the federal program that provides health
care to the poor. They could choose between a three-year expansion of the
program, insuring hundreds of thousands of previously uninsured South
Carolinians, with the federal government picking up the whole tab. Or they
could vote to let S.C. residents continue to pay the billions in federal taxes
earmarked for the expansion, but refuse to actually allow the expansion to go
through, saving no money and insuring no new patients.
Friday’s editorial is on SNAP
benefits and restricting unhealthy foods:
We’ve all watched belts loosen over
recent decades as America
struggles to keep its weight under control. The resulting health issues are
quickly becoming a national crisis that threaten to exacerbate already rapidly
growing health care costs. But becoming the government food police is not the
answer.
Sunday’s editorial urges lawmakers to
act sooner rather than later to address our state’s crumbling infrastructure:
South
Carolina’s roads are crumbling beneath us, and ignoring the problem
will not make it go away. Action is needed soon -- this year, this month --
because the cost to fix our roads rises with every day that passes. And it will
mean tough decisions that require substantially more funding, not just
leftovers and scraps that are found here and there.
Not convinced? Read through the report
on South Carolina’s road system put together for the state and issued in
December by a diverse group of transportation experts. It’s only 13 pages long,
but it sets out in stark detail the enormous challenges facing our state and
the almost total lack of solutions in the works to meet those challenges.
Thursday’s editorial attempts to
explain why privatizing the state’s school bus system really isn’t a great deal
for taxpayers or students:
If the state budget decreases and the
size of S.C. government shrinks, does it mean taxpayers are also benefiting and
paying less money? Not necessarily.
Take school bus privatization, which
Gov. Nikki Haley proposed once more in her 2013 executive budget, released Dec.
20.
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