South Carolina Policy Council September 7th Rally in the Alley

The Aiken Standard published a good report on the rally but it is not easily available on the Aiken Standard website so I have posted it here.If you have not read it please take the time to do so.

 Aiken Standard Article September 8, 2010   

I had the opportunity to speak with Senator Tom Davis and Representative Ralph Norman after the rally. Both are dynamic speakers and importantly they believe in term limits. They are committed to taking on the entrenched dysfunctional system that gives too little power to the Governor and way too much to the legislature. We need to return to the idea of citizen legislators rather than career politicians!!!!

In 2004 Governor Sanford tried to rein in government growth after detailed review of their proposed budget which embodied 20% growth.  He issued vetoes on 107 line items which State agencies said they could do without. In an egregious display of arrogance and power of the legislative leaders the vetoes were overridden by unrecorded voice votes in 53 minutes! At the rally Senator Davis said that by 2008 the government had grown by 45 percent.

The only way we will ever get SC budgets under control is remove legislative leaders who use their power of control over committee assignments to threaten Senators and Representatives. A recent example of this abuse of power was SC House leader Bobbie Harrell taking important committee assignments away from Nikki Haley because she insisted upon pushing legislation that would require all house votes to be recorded.  We heard at the rally that this approach of punishing those who do not support the leadership is standard operating procedure in Columbia.  This means that representatives whom we send to Columbia end up having more incentive to side with the leadership there than to represent our interests.   Both Rep. Norman and Sen. Davis made this clear.

There will a leadership showdown in November following the general election. Representative Ralph Norman is campaigning to replace Bobbie Harrell as Leader of the House. The Republican members will caucus to elect its leadership for the new term. The current rules allow the “election” to be held by an open voice vote instead of a secret ballot. This means that Bobbie Harrell can punish anyone who does not support him and therefore he is assured of enough votes to be elected again. The only way to remedy the situation is for the caucus to agree to a secret ballot which is the very essence of democracy. Understandably Harrell opposes this idea as he knows that he might well lose.

It is ironic that Harrell insists on unrecorded votes on issues important to us, so that the votes of our representatives are invisible to us, and we the interested parties cannot hold our representatives accountable.  When his interest is at stake and he is now the interested party, he insists on a vote that should be secret but is visible to him so that he can dole out the rewards and punishments.   In order to give democracy a chance it is essential that all the members of the Aiken Delegation stand together and demand a secret vote. Our representatives should be made to understand how strongly you feel about the issue!