The Nerve

The state has some huge electricity bills By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ In the wake of Santee Cooper and SCE&G abandoning construction of two nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer site in Jenkinsville, there’s been a lot of media discussion about who’s to blame and who will pay. The fear for many is that the electricity customers […]

Friends of the Earth says post them all By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ Tom Clements of environmentalist group Friends of the Earth has been a longstanding critic of the V.C. Summer nuclear reactor project that went belly-up last week. In May, long before partners Santee Cooper and SCE&G decided to pull the plug on it, he sent […]

If only we’d seen that coming By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ When Santee Cooper and SCE&G pulled the plug on their shared project to build two nuclear reactors in Jenkinsville at the beginning of last week, it was a “wow” moment and rightly so. For one thing, several thousand employees were thrown out of work with no […]

South Carolinians could be protected from Wells Fargo By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ Wells Fargo, the world’s second-largest bank, is facing scrutiny for its unsavory practices yet again, now by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco — and this time it could affect South Carolinians who’ve had auto loans through the bank. Not so long ago Wells […]

South Carolinians fall short on education, finance, wealth By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ South Carolina businesses are much more likely to be white-owned than businesses on average in the U.S., and less likely to be owned by women. Does that affect its prosperity? At the same time, businesses owned by men and by whites are more valuable […]

Now we’re up a creek with Santee Cooper By HANNAH HILL When the multi-billion V.C. Summer nuclear reactor project was scrapped this week, the question on everyone’s mind was “Who’s going to pick up the tab for this?” SCANA, SCE&G’s parent corporation, wasted no time in asking the Public Service Commission’s permission to pass the […]

There’s a big mess in Jenkinsville to unbuild By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ The announcement earlier this week that SCE&G and state-owned utility Santee Cooper were pulling the plug on construction of two nuclear reactors in Jenkinsville has left questions that keep multiplying. In the run-up to the decision, one factor driving it was that the partly-completed, […]

Not peachy-keen on tax-credit schemes By HANNAH HILL Tax credits can be some of the worst policies a government can pass. Taxes, as a rule, should be broad-based (everybody pays them) and low-rate (nobody pays much). Tax credits usually violate that principle – after all, tax cuts are different from tax favors. The former lowers […]

Santee Cooper proposes raising residential rates by almost 10 percent By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility, is notifying customers that it wants to raise its rates by more than 9 percent over the next several years, in part to cover “costs associated with nuclear construction.” The reference is to its share of the $11 […]

Consulting jobs for ex-agency heads are costly and unnecessary By ABBY NUGENT According to a contract obtained by the Post and Courier, the former head of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, Catherine Templeton, accepted a contract with the agency just one day after she left her position in January of 2015. […]