McConnell: House hides by ‘good ol boy’ politics
In a two-house legislature, one house should be more deliberative and slow down the excesses of the faster house to ensure that the public interest is served. By looking closely and questioning the work product of each, a better bill can be drawn from the efforts of both, provided the parties work toward a solution.
Instead, the South Carolina House of Representatives has embarked on a course of building itself up by trying to criticize the South Carolina Senate. To cover its own political agendas and mistakes within its chamber, it has used the old political tactic of a blame game.
Look at what has happened this year. House Speaker Bobby Harrell wrote an op-ed describing a legislative session that had ended and with no budget in sight unless the Senate dealt with Workers’ Comp and DOT reform. There was more bologna in that op-ed than in a delicatesse
For starters, the op-ed piece claimed the House had passed workers’ comp reform for the past three years. A review of the journals reveals that the House passed no such bill in 2004, none in 2005, one in 2006, two months before the end of that session, and only a partial comprehensive amendment to the Senate’s more comprehensive reform package in 2007.
So poorly drawn was the House proposal that it would have exposed employers to employee lawsuits for injuries incurred outside their regular duties. This would require additional liability insurance probably not available in the marketplace. Who can afford that kind of reform?
On DOT reform, the House quickly passed a bill, but the Senate struggled on what to do, ultimately passing a reform bill. When negotiators from each body met to iron out the differences, the House insisted that the price of reform was for the Senate to agree to send hundreds of millions of dollars from the state treasury to the State Infrastructure Bank, so that the bank could borrow millions through bonds to cover special projects.
Binding state taxpayers to hundreds of millions in debt for years to come without a dedicated source of revenue amounts to an annualization nightmare — a series of unfunded liabilities in future years. This reckless spending would guarantee us a future shortfall and a tax increase with no dedicated source of recurring revenue. So focused was the House on this money for earmarks that it drafted a bill full of problems.
A few examples of drafting errors are: interchanging the words elected and appointed to describe the DOT board; calling it a commission in one paragraph, a board in another; and requiring the board to meet qualifications before taking office but putting no qualifications in that section of the bill. To get a bill, the Senate responsibly offered $40 million of nonrecurring surplus as a jumpstart to repair the roads, but the House refused without the money for their projects — a case of agenda over public good.
Two weeks before the end of the regular session, the Senate sent to the House a resolution to extend and wind up the session in an orderly fashion. The House failed to concur in the resolution until the last day of the regular session. During these two weeks, the House refused to meet and work out the budget differences in order to get a budget completed.
Finally, on the last day of the regular session, it agreed to most of the Senate’s workers’ comp reform. Then, in the last two hours, it reversed course on DOT reform, no longer holding it hostage for funding projects but offering up a warmed-over, grammatically challenged bill, almost as defective as before.
Dizzy and confused from its own rhetoric, the House says in a news flash it adjourned sine die on June 7, 2007, but earlier that day, it had voted to extend the sine die adjournment date to June 29, 2007. The brinksmanship of delay in order to point a finger of blame at the Senate resulted in slowing reform. It additionally required legislators to deal with thick and complicated bills in minutes, thereby risking unintended results from poor drafting.
House strategies have delayed tax cuts and have left us with a questionable budget situation. While bringing Washington-style politics to Columbia, the House has gone home as mixed up about sine die adjournment as it blithely was about the defective wording of its bills. In a case of style over substance, it’s not really reform but a masqueraded retreat to “good ol boy” politics.
- This op-ed ran in The Greenville News and The State on June 16, 2007
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