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?”

Recently, I sat down with Representative Nikki Haley to talk about a “green bill,” House Bill 4892. This bill is an attempt to turn South Carolina more green, in that it effectively supports the building and buying of homes that are environmentally friendly. Specifically, this bill states that;

1. Homeowners associations and/or local municipalities may not prohibit the installation of solar energy heating or cooling systems
2. Residential builders who construct a house that is certified as a high performance residence may receive a 1000 dollar non-refundable tax credit
3. To receive the certification of a high performance residence, the house must meet the qualifications set by National Build Green Program, EarthCraft, and/or the US Green Building Council‘s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.(LEED)

Rep. Haley explained that this will hopefully encourage builders to delve into energy efficient home building. The 1000 dollar tax credit to the builder can also be passed on to the homeowner if they wish. Rep. Haley said that she has already received emails from builders that are anxiously awaiting this bill’s passing and are excited to try out the new energy efficient technology.

Further benefits of the bill include the better choices for homebuyers and hopefully, natural resources in South Carolina will be used more sparingly. Rep Haley also mentioned that with new things like this, new opportunities are created, and hopefully it spurs some growth in technology and jobs.

This bill explicitly states that energy efficient materials, like solar panels, may not be prohibited by local municipalities and homeowners associations. This is because there are currently some who do in fact prohibit the use of such materials on houses. Their reasoning is that they do not like how solar panels look, as they believe it can be an eye-sore, or it simply does not conform to the look of the rest of the neighborhood.

When asked if this move toward more up-to-date green legislation is something we might see more of, Rep Haley happily explained “We’re starting to see a General Assembly that is going more green.” Therefore, we can clearly expect more “green bills” in the not-so-distant future in South Carolina.

Rep Haley says that she has literally seen no opposition to this bill, showing a vast support and reception of the move to support environmentally friendly homes. Furthermore, she said that whether you are green or not used to be a partisan issue; but, now “Everyone sees the need to go green and improve the lives of South Carolinians.” Certainly, this bill will encourage the building of environmentally friendly homes in South Carolina, showing its stride into the twenty-first century and the improvement of life in South Carolina.

This week, the debate about whether or not the list of concealed-weapon permit holders should be accessible through the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) is taking place in the South Carolina Statehouse. A bill, House Bill 3528, would amend the current law in a couple of ways that would restrict the access to the list. The bill would make it so that:

1. The list can only be released to law enforcement or others by court order.
2. Those in possession of the list that do not fall into the above two categories must destroy their copy.
3. SLED (South Carolina Law Enforcement Division) is now to publish an annual report with statistics of how many gun permit holders there are, how many were denied, and reasons for a persons denial of a permit.

Representative Michael Pitts of District 14 is one of the main proponents of House Bill 3528, which would limit who the list of concealed-weapon permit holders is revealed to. I was able to interview Representative Pitts about this bill and the following is based on that interview.

Representative Pitts started off by stating that he supports the FOI and believes that the public should have an insight to what the government is doing. However, he also believes that there is a big difference between personal information and what the government should have to release to the public. Therefore, there has to be a balancing act between an individual’s privacy rights and the publics’ ability to access government information.

According to Rep Pitts, this balance is achieved with H.3528. The public will still be able to access the statistical knowledge about how many permits were given out and how many were denied but the actual names and addresses of permit holders will be protected. As a compromise, the press will be able to see the information about those who were revoked.

“If someone’s [permit application] is revoked,” Rep Pitts states, “then the press will have access to that and as to why it was revoked.”

Therefore, if someone violated a crime and tried to apply for a permit, SLED would be obligated to hand over to the press that person’s information that includes a explanation about why their permit was revoked.

With the list of those who were denied available, Pitts feels that it is unnecessary to release the list of those currently holding a concealed-weapons permit. If this list was made public, the names and home addresses of those on it would be available to the press.

“There are wives of police officers in this state that have a concealed-weapons permit for a reason,” Rep Pitts states, “They don’t need their names published.”

One of his fears is a repeat of what happened in Virginia when the Roanoke Times released the whole concealed-weapons permit list. A recent article concerning this topic in Charleston’s The Post and Courier has some details about the Roanoke event.

When the question was asked of Bill Rogers, the lobbyist for the press association, what will keep what happened in Roanoke from happening in South Carolina, his answer was “integrity” of South Carolina’s press. However, Rep Pitt doesn’t put to much faith in the press citing two incidences where the press’ integrity has come into question. One incident he cited was The State releasing a list of all state legislators with a concealed-weapons permit and the press’ coverage of Prince Harry’s Afghanistan tour.

Representative Pitts believes that the main steam media often doesn’t exercise the same responsibility with the First Amendment as he, a gun owner, does with the Second Amendment.

To sum up how he felt, Representative Pitts quoted Shakespeare by stating “the pen is mightier than the sword,” a warning that the powers of the press are often greater than any weapon.

South Carolina Statehouse Blog is now officially up and running. There may be a few site additions here and there as we decide what is going to work best for our site. However, we are now beginning to conduct interviews with various State legislators so stay tuned.

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