This week, the House Republicans ushered through sweeping government reforms that will truly make our governor a chief executive and make our government more accountable. This is the fifth time in six years that we have approved this legislation – which has never made it to the governor’s desk.

Last year, we came within a final-hour Senate filibuster with this legislation. After six years of debate, we’re here again.

At issue is the “Department of Administration.” Currently, South Carolina is the only state that operates with a “Budget and Control Board” – a strange hybrid of the legislative and executive branches that essentially controls most major functions of our state government.

This year, we have worked with the Senate to approve substantively similar versions of the legislation that moves human resources, information technology, and administration of the state’s physical plant and vehicles under the control of the governor. This plan moves nearly 90 percent of the old Budget and Control Board’s functions to the governor’s cabinet – where these basic administrative functions belong.

Last year’s version of our legislation included a large reduction in the number of state employees (mostly unfilled positions). That was not included in this year’s package because the House rolled those reductions into this year’s budget.

The House Republican Caucus has worked with both Governor Sanford and Governor Haley to consolidate our state’s administration. We believe this move will make government more accountable and make our Governor a true chief executive. Above all, no matter who lives at the governor’s mansion, it is the right thing to do.

We’ve taken additional steps to empower our chief executive over the past several years. Next year will be the final time our state elects a different lieutenant governor. Beginning in 2018, the voters have decided they will run on the same ticket. In addition, another constitutional amendment is in the Senate that would make our state’ Adjutant General – the commander of our National Guard – appointed by the governor. General Livingston, a Medal of Honor recipient and our current Adjutant General, is actively supporting this legislation (which is being held up by a few Democrats).

Our state government can be a cumbersome and unwieldy entity at times, with our governor overseeing a few things, the General Assembly overseeing others, and the Budget and Control Board overseeing even more. As conservatives, we are fundamentally for a smaller, more streamlined government. That desire is at the heart of this legislation.

One small vestige of the old Budget and Control Board will live on. The new State Contracts and Accountability Authority will continue to oversee the state auditor, bonding authority, insurance services, and annual retirement assumptions. We had to keep this separate because of concerns about how putting all of that under the control of the governor might threaten our state’s AAA credit rating.

It is an honor to serve you and your family in the General Assembly.  If you ever find yourself in need of assistance navigating state government, or if you have ideas on issues you want me to share with my colleagues in the House, don’t hesitate to contact me at 963-0337 or at my office in Columbia at 803 734-3045.

The House of Representatives adjourned for a week after finishing a successful “crossover week” and getting important House legislation moved to the Senate. We’ve nearly completed our agenda with more than a month left in the session.

Once again, the House Republican Caucus has worked hard to get important conservative legislation debated, approved, and moved so the Senate has plenty of time to consider it.

The House has approved election reform and ethics reform, new legislation protecting private data in the hands of the state, and fought Democrat attempts to radically expand Medicaid and force the state to accept Obamacare. In addition, we approved an infrastructure package for 2,000 new Boeing jobs, restructured some of our Constitutional officers, expanded pro-gun legislation, added mental health to our state’s firearms background checks, and passed legislation that will increase access to capital for small high-growth businesses.

But this gets me back to an issue that has been on Republican Caucus agendas since you gave us the House majority in 1994. This year, we also approved legislation that would shorten the session by nearly two months. That legislation is also in the Senate and we hope our colleagues will take swift action on it.

All of this was achieved by May 1 while still taking a month of furlough time.

Here are a couple of the major items we approved this week:

• Ethics Reform: I’ve written about this several times, but the House approved the biggest change to our ethics laws in a quarter of a century and sent the bill to the Senate. This legislation expands the requirements that lobbyists register at the local level, expands income disclosure for elected officials, and ends the practice of House members and Senators policing themselves.
• The “Boland” Bill: This bill expands restrictions to gun access for the mentally ill following the near-tragedy at the Ashley Hall school in Charleston. As Republicans, we stand solidly in support of our Second Amendment rights, but there are people who should not own guns. I’m proud the NRA supported us in this effort.
• Early Voting. We approved the state’s first early voting period, opening the polls to people for nine days (Sundays excluded) before an election.

The only major piece of legislation from the 2013 Caucus Agenda that has not passed is S. 22, the “Department of Administration” restructuring bill. The House began debate on it this week, but debate was postponed by procedural motions by the Democratic leadership. Since this is a Senate bill, it did not need to be approved before the May 1 “crossover” deadline.

The House of Representatives has a solid record of achievement through the first 14 weeks of session. The House proved this week: It’s time to shorten our legislative session.

It is an honor to serve you and your family in the General Assembly.  If you ever find yourself in need of assistance navigating state government, or if you have ideas on issues you want me to share with my colleagues in the House, don’t hesitate to contact me at 963-0337 or at my office in Columbia at 803 734-3045.

http://youtu.be/FU0Wjsip3sI

The House approved dozens of pieces of legislation this week in advance of the “crossover” deadline on May 1.  The Early Voting Act, and the Affordable Care Resistance Act were the two that attracted the most attention.

The Early Voting Act also merited a 5 hour debate.  The bill as adopted provides for a streamlined election calendar, establishes a 9 day early voting period, and eliminates fusion voting which allowed candidates to have their names appear on the ballot more than once in the past.

The Affordable Care Resistance Act provides that no agency of the State, officer or employee of this State, acting on behalf of the state, may engage in an activity that aids any agency in the enforcement of those provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

The most important piece of legislation on our calendar was a major reform package to our two-decades old ethics laws.

First, a little background. The House Republican Caucus, the House Democratic Caucus, and the Governor’s Office each had study committees into the matter. All of the committees shared information and ideas over the past six months. The Republican Caucus and the Governor each submitted final reports of what each would like to see in the law. Dozens of meetings were held, public testimony was taken, and public input was encouraged.

Over the past two months, House Majority Leader Bruce Bannister, Caucus Ethics Study Committee Chairman Murrell Smith, and others took the best ideas and began discussing ethics with their counterparts across the aisle and in the Governor’s Office. The result is the legislation that we will consider on Tuesday.

The legislation:

• Abolishes the House and Senate ethics committees and replaces them with a new, bi-partisan commission that includes public officials and members of the general public.
• Creates a “Public Integrity Unit” to receive and investigate criminal complaints from the new commission.
• Abolishes “Leadership PAC” contributions to elected officials.
• Requires all lawmakers to disclose all sources of income – public and private – in an attempt to root out conflicts of interest.
• Requires lobbyists to register if they lobby local governments or school districts, but keeps all of the same exemptions for members of the public and “local” organizations such as PTAs, homeowners’ associations, or churches.
• Strengthens criminal penalties for violations of the Ethics Act.
• Eliminates the “blackout period” right before an election when candidates do not have to disclose donors.
• Expands when a public official must recuse himself from a vote to include all levels of the legislative process down to the subcommittee level.

Ultimately, this is a significant change in how the public will hold their public officials accountable. One major complaint from the public was that the House and Senate judge themselves on ethics, and even though most states and Congress operate in the same manner, it was time for our state to lead on ethics reform.

We have long touted our ethics laws as some of the strongest in the nation, and they were when they were originally written two decades ago. Since that time a lot has changed in politics. We have a proliferation of political action committees, but more importantly, we use tools today that weren’t widely used in the early 1990s – simple things like cell phones, ATM machines, and the Internet. Even six years ago, people rarely contributed to political campaigns online. We hardly give any of these things a second thought today, but our law doesn’t reflect those changes.

It is time to change. It is time for our conservative state to promote a conservative ethics reform plan that strengthens the law, streamlines the complaint process, and makes public officials more accountable.

It is an honor to serve you and your family in the General Assembly.  If you ever find yourself in need of assistance navigating state government, or if you have ideas on issues you want me to share with my colleagues in the House, don’t hesitate to contact me at 963-0337 or at my office in Columbia at 803 734-3045.

Two bills received key committee approval this week, setting up critical floor debates before the “crossover” deadline on May 1.

The House Judiciary Committee approved a substantial ethics reform package that has been the result of months of debate and discussion between Republicans and Democrats, the House and the Senate, and the Governor.
Here are a few highlights of what is included. The bill:

• Abolishes the State Ethics Commission and the House and Senate ethics committees. They will all be replaced by a new commission that has the power to investigate and sanction both executive branch officers and lawmakers.
• Abolishes “Leadership PACs”.
• Requires all lawmakers to disclose all sources of income in an attempt to root out conflicts of interest.
• Requires lobbyists to register if they lobby local governments or school districts.
• Eliminates the “blackout period” right before an election when candidates do not have to disclose donors.

A Judiciary Subcommittee moved my Department of Administration restructuring bill this week. This legislation mirrors the bill approved by the House and Senate last year that eliminates the Budget and Control Board and moves most of its duties directly under the Governor. The Department of Administration legislation is not just a shell game, however, it cuts the size of the government as we eliminate duplicative services.

The House Ways and Means Committee approved our “High Growth Small Business Economic Development Act.” This is a bill we have passed several times that will expand tax credits for the “Angel Investors” who invest money in small, risky companies that have explosive growth potential. This bill strictly limits the types of businesses that qualify for the investment – such as biotech companies or technology companies. Angel Investors were critical in the initial development of some of America’s biggest tech companies. The next company – and our next major employer – could start right here thanks to these investors.

Also this week, the House finalized an incentive package for Boeing that will help fund infrastructure improvements for the company’s planned expansion. We approved it with the stipulation that if Boeing does not live up to the 2,000 jobs it promised to create, the state will be repaid by the company.

Finally, the House overwhelmingly approved a bi-partisan measure to add people who have been deemed mentally unstable by a judge to the federal gun background check registry. This follows the incident in February where a woman who had been indicted of a threat to kill President George W. Bush went to Charleston’s Ashley Hall School and attempted to shoot people. The gun did not fire because it was not properly loaded. Our state narrowly avoided a terrible tragedy.

It is an honor to serve you and your family in the General Assembly. If you ever find yourself in need of assistance navigating state government, or if you have ideas on issues you want me to share with my colleagues in the House, don’t hesitate to contact me at 963-0337 or in Columbia at 803 734-3045.

The House adjourned Thursday for our traditional two-week furlough for Easter. Before we left town, we had a lot of work to do so we could vote on all of the legislation still pending on the House floor so we may start fresh when we return on April 9th.

Here are four items of note that the House debated this week:

RESTRUCTURING – The House approved legislation that would allow the state Adjutant General to be appointed by the Governor. The legislation – actually a state constitutional amendment – gives the voters of our state the right to decide this in the November, 2014, election.

Currently, we are the only state in the country that elects our Adjutant General, and the current holder of the office, General Bob Livingston, has been very outspoken in his support of the amendment. It is important to have someone with experience leading our National Guard, which is not guaranteed if it remains an elected position. This bill now goes to the Senate.

“SWEEPSTAKES” – The House also approved legislation that bans the “Sweepstakes” machines that some businesses are installing across our state by exploiting a loophole in the law. This comes a dozen years after the state Supreme Court banned video poker.

FOIA – The House sent legislation to reform our state’s Freedom of Information Act back to a committee to strengthen the bill. We support reforming the “FOIA” to make government information more accessible to the taxpayers who fund the government.

An amendment was added to the bill late in the process that would eliminate the “legislative exemption”. We support reforming the exemption. However, in the weeks since the amendment was introduced, a number of issues have arisen. Constituents frequently write legislators about issues with the Department of Social Services or the Department of Revenue that have private and confidential information in them. Also, the House does not currently have the full-time staff or technology available to effectively comply with a new Freedom of Information Act while preserving the privacy of our constituents. We don’t want to inadvertently create an issue that would require the state to spend millions of dollars to comply.

In addition, constituents contact us on private e-mail addresses, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets. Archiving that information is not easy.

We can solve these issues easily, and the committee is the best place to do so. We will fight to get this back out of committee and to the House floor again as soon as possible.

ETHICS – The House began the ethics reform process with two reform bills in a subcommittee hearing on Thursday. As with the FOIA legislation discussed above, it has been decades since we have substantively updated our strong ethics laws. Social Media, cell phones, electronic campaign contributions, even ATMs and credit cards were not widely used (or even dreamed up) when the ethics laws were written. We look forward to diving into this issue when we return from our furlough after Easter.

It is an honor to serve you and your family in the General Assembly. If you ever find yourself in need of assistance navigating state government, or if you have ideas on issues you want me to share with my colleagues in the House, don’t hesitate to contact me at 963-0337 or at my office in Columbia at 803 734-3045.

Next week, the state House of Representatives will debate the state budget for 2013-2014. This is the traditional half-way mark in the legislative session and it’s a good time to look back and see what we have accomplished.

Election Reform – Our most recent accomplishment came with the approval of our election reform package. The House approved legislation that not only fixed the ballot debacle of 2012, but also expanded access to the ballot and ensured people who want to run for office in our state will have an opportunity to do so.

We removed the “statement of economic interest” form from the requirements for filing and placed it squarely under our ethics laws. Candidates will still be required to file it, but this reform means challenger and incumbent will be held to the same standard. We also made a technical change to the filing procedures for public office, simplifying the procedure so you file with your local election commission and you can get the filing papers from the Internet – rather than having to track down local party leaders (which can be troublesome in some parts of our state).

The House Judiciary Committee sent legislation to the House floor this week that creates a window for early voting in addition to the traditional 30-day window for absentee voting.

State Data Security – The state has already made some significant changes in the way data is handled. The House budget fully funds the current push to enroll all South Carolinians in identity theft protection, and we are also appropriating money to pay for a potential tax credit if you would rather use a different ID theft service than the one provided by the state.

Update Our Ethics Laws –One of the first things the House did this session was reform of the House Ethics Committee by changing its rules to expand the committee and add more Democratic members to the committee. This was only the first salvo in ethics reform, and not the end of the job, to be sure. A Republican Caucus study committee presented language for a comprehensive change in the laws.  Our study committee quickly realized that our 1991 Ethics Laws are inadequate to meet today’s reality.

Oppose Obamacare – The House approved legislation that puts our state’s opposition to the Obamacare state health exchanges in state law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that the states have the option to reject the Medicaid expansion and reject the healthcare exchanges. My Republican colleagues and I have made a commitment to support and uphold both of those Supreme Court rulings. We anticipate a strong Democratic effort to expand Medicaid in the budget next week. The Caucus will fight these efforts.

Real Tax Reform – We knew last year’s efforts at tax reform would be a multi-year process. We have re-filed legislation that will lower and flatten the personal income tax, eliminate the corporate income tax, cut the business property tax rate, and eliminate the outdated sales tax exemptions. The House Ways and Means Committee has been busy crafting the state budget in advance of the debate next week, but these bills will be on the committee’s agenda later this month.

Grow our Economy – The House has approved legislation to dedicate the sales tax paid on cars to pay for road and bridge repairs. Infrastructure has been identified as a major issue for our business community. We are also advancing bills that require bureaucrats to provide financial impact statements for new regulations and require all regulations to get an up-or-down vote in the General Assembly. One final bill in this area is a repeat from the past several years that will free up private capital for “high-growth” start-up companies.

Government Restructuring – There has been a lot of movement on this item. The Department of Administration legislation that came within a last-second Senate filibuster of approval last year has been filed in the House and approved by the Senate. House staff is working to analyze both the House and Senate versions of the legislation so we can take action on it after the budget debate.

The House approved a constitutional amendment to shorten the legislative session – as we have nine times previously. The House is moving on another constitutional amendment to let the voters decide of the state Adjutant General should be appointed by the governor (supported and promoted by General Livingston), and we are excited to see the Senate moving on a similar amendment to allow the governor to appoint the Superintendent of Education (supported and promoted by Superintendent Zais).

The House also has legislation to expand transparency and access to state information through expansion of the state Freedom of Information Act. That bill is also on the calendar to be taken up as soon as we are through with the budget.

It has been a busy first half of the session, and we are looking forward to passing a conservative state budget next week.

It is an honor to serve you and your family in the General Assembly.  If you ever find yourself in need of assistance navigating state government, or if you have ideas on issues you want me to share with my colleagues in the House, don’t hesitate to contact me at 963-0337 at home or 803 734-3045 at my office in Columbia.

Promises, promises.

President Obama made billions of dollars in promises during his State of the Union. It brings me back to one huge Federal promise that stuck directly on the backs of the taxpayers in our state – the “Affordable Care Act.”

South Carolina’s Democrats make the same promises. It’s been more than a month since they promised to put 40% of our state on some form of government healthcare. They promised hundreds of millions in new education spending. They want billions in new spending on roads.

Like the President, our state’s Democrat leadership has no ideas about how to pay for any of their promises. But since they are a small and shrinking minority in the state House, they have the luxury of not having to make tough decisions. They don’t have to tell you they’re going to fight to raise your taxes (but we’ll all get to see them in action when the state budget is on the floor of the House next month).

A new healthcare proposal this week highlights the basic difference in philosophy between our two parties.

House Ways and Means Chairman Brian White and the Health Care Budget Subcommittee Chairman Murrell Smith proposed a plan that opts out of the massive Obamacare Medicaid expansion, and instead invests in measures to create accountability and better health outcomes for our state’s Medicaid system.

The proposed plan focuses on five main areas:

• Holding healthcare providers accountable for providing the best care at the lowest cost;
• Investing our limited taxpayer resources where they are needed most – our rural areas and the areas of our state with a very high density for disease and illness;
• Strengthening primary care by directing resources to these basic providers;
• Providing inventive payments to providers for implementing innovative ways to treat illness while simultaneously driving out excess cost; and
• Exploring ways to replace our outdated care model with a more efficient and effective method.

Chairman White said this week that we have two options: Taking the easy road of more government money and dependency outlined by the Washington Democrats or creating South Carolina solutions to reform Medicaid. He also thanked Governor Haley for helping with the proposals.

The plan does not require any additional state resources. The plan of just expanding the Medicaid system promoted by Democrats does nothing to work on improving outcomes. It is only focused on spending more taxpayer money with the end goal of nearly 2 in 5 South Carolina residents being on some sort of government healthcare by 2020.

Taxpayers in our state spend nearly $6.5 billion each year on Medicaid. What we have to show for it is a state that ranks 46^th nationally in overall health, 49^th in diabetes, and 42^nd in obesity – with more than a third of our state listed as obese.

There is no doubt that our healthcare system has major flaws. As the federal government insists on throwing billions more into an already inefficient system, it destroys any possible market forces that may be left to hold down costs. The Chairman’s plan works to reform and stabilize the system instead of drafting hundreds of thousands more South Carolinians on to government health rolls.

Is this the end of the reforms needed?  Not by a long shot.  This is just the first step to address the issue of Medicaid, and Medicaid expansion.

It is an honor to serve you and your family in the General Assembly.  If you ever find yourself in need of assistance navigating state government, or if you have ideas on issues you want me to share with my colleagues in the House, don’t hesitate to contact me at 963-0337 at home or 803 734-3045 at the office in Columbia