The Nerve

This legislative interference never ends By HANNAH HILL An interesting bill was filed in the House last week. H.4091 would abolish the five-member board of the Pioneer Rural Water District (currently elected by its customers) and replace it with a seven-member board selected by the Oconee and Anderson County legislative delegations. At the end of […]

Sneak attack on liquor stores pops up in budget By PHILLIP CEASE Yesterday, during the budget debate, the Senate took up an interesting piece of legislation. Amendment 39 would require any retail liquor dealer that wanted more than three stores to pay a fee “equal to the average gross sales” for each of the retailer’s […]

  These ethics bodies just aren’t working – and we have proof By PHILLIP CEASE Last week the House approved the first round of nominees for the state’s new Ethics Commission. On Wednesday, Senator John Courson appeared before a judge to post bond dealing with criminal ethics-violation charges. These two events, which happened within hours of each other, are […]

By ELISABETH PARKER Sneaky provisos come out, come out Each year the legislature passes provisos within the appropriations bill: one-year laws that sunset with each year’s budget and may not go against a law. They give legislators an easy way to pass pork or ill-advised public policy without much scrutiny. One proviso that has reappeared […]

By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ   Construction advocates bring convenient report Another player emerged yesterday in the debate on a gas-tax increase: TRIP, a Washington, D.C.-based, nonprofit transportation research organization. The group released a report detailing ways in which South Carolina motorists lose $5.4 billion a year, as much as $1,850 per driver, it maintains, due to roads […]

By PHILLIP CEASE Only some restrooms need apply There’s another bathroom bill in the legislature this year, but this one only deals with stadiums. H. 3792, which passed the House unanimously by a vote of 101-0, carves out an exemption in the building code for bathrooms in middle and high school stadiums. In an Associated Press […]

By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ Some data say SC’s, like the nation’s, aren’t that bad “The state’s crumbling road system” — that phrase and its variants seem to be uttered almost nonstop in South Carolina as the General Assembly mulls the latest gas-tax increase legislation. South Carolina Department of Transportation Secretary Christy Hall has been outspoken, saying […]

By PHILLIP CEASE Conflicts of interest begin to seem standard Last week, as the state Senate discussed the so-called pension reform bill, Senator Sandy Senn stood up to ask a few very specific questions about a proposed amendment and how it would affect law enforcement officers. In looking into why she had a very narrow […]

Here comes the pork. On Wednesday we learned from the policy team at the South Carolina Policy Council (The Nerve’s parent organization) that budget-writers in the House have resuscitated the Competitive Grants program. That program, you may remember, was relentlessly derided by Gov. Mark Sanford as the legislature’s “slush fund.” We don’t endorse that sobriquet, […]

By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ $57 million spent on Bank of America cards Vendors made billions of dollars selling goods and services to the state of South Carolina last year, according to data compiled by the comptroller general’s office — about $5 billion in all. That’s roughly one-fifth of all state appropriations. Leading the list: Blue Cross […]