South Carolina Statehouse Blog

Yesterday morning, I made my first excursion to the South Carolina state house to interview Republican Representative Nathan Ballentine of Lexington County. Ballentine’s name is on the list of representatives in the House Ways and Means committee supporting the recent “Appropriations Bill Earmark Disclosure Act.”

This Earmark Disclosure Act, officially referred to as House Bill 4356, will require that congressmen complete a file for their earmarks that includes their name, district, what they want to secure funds for, and a description of the problem. The form would be released onto the Appropriations Committee webpage within 3 business days and a copy of the bill would be kept in the statehouse during office hours.

For those of you who don’t know, earmarks are provisional requests included in a bill in which congressmen try to secure funding for certain aspects of their counties or districts. Although earmarks are not always sneakily slipped into bills, a common belief, they are known to be kept well under the table at times and are unknown to the public and oftentimes members of congress until the bill has passed.

Ballentine and other members of his committee have been concerned with earmark disclosure since last summer, he told me. Following protocol, they brought it up in front of their caucus this year.

“No one really said ‘Yeah, that’s great’ or ‘yeah, that’s bad.’ It wasn’t really on their radar”, said Ballentine. The congressman said he thought it would get passed because it is an election year.

“You might have people who signed on to the concept because they thought it might look good back home. So there was really no opposition.”

Despite the lack of opponents, Ballentine doubts the bill will get passed this session. “I would like it to become a law, but I don’t think it will,” he said. I asked why. “At this point, we have to get the bill out and over to the Senate by the May 1^st cross-over deadline,” he said, “Which is probably not going to happen. We’re going to work on other things first.”

He assured me, however, that the bill will be proposed next year and that it should get through.

Why though, are earmarks so important to him?

Ballentine used the example of a water facility to explain it to me.

Say, for example, a district upstate wants money for their water facility. “I would ask: Where is it? Who wants it? What’s it doing?” explained Ballentine. “Is it a town that’s exhausted all local efforts to get more sewer lines or is it someone getting a Frankie’s Fun park?”

Clearly this is where the problem of earmarks appears. The great debate though, is when the funds are for more sewer lines. Is that necessarily a “bad” earmark?

“Personally, I think state funds should be used for state functions,” Ballentine said. ”We all know that some state funds are going to go to some state towns or municipalities, whatever, but this gives us a chance to weigh them. I’m not saying all earmarks are bad.”

Ballentine had mixed responses from his constituents concerning earmarks. He told me that some of them didn’t care and said not all earmarks are bad. Some, on the other hand, cast earmarks as the eighth deadly sin.

Representative Ballentine recognizes the facts either way.

“Whether you agree or disagree, at least debate it in the open so everyone can see. What does it say about the process if you’re going to slide something in so no one knows about it?”