McConnell calls for audit of Patriots Point
July 30, 2010 by senatormcconnell
The state loaned a historic landmark in Charleston, Patriots Point, $9 million to repair the warship Laffey. However, that destroyer has not been brought back to the museum yet. For reasons, such as this one, Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell of Charleston has written a letter to the Legislative Audit Council concerning the state-owned historic museum.
“I wrote about a three page letter to the Legislative Audit Council and asked them to do a management performance audit at Patriots Point. A management performance audit looks at how they’re performing, how are they utilizing their resources, are they doing it efficiently, where are they headed, do they have a good blue-print for the future? And, it lets in the light on their bookkeeping, their accounting, their inventory, what are they spending on consultants, lawyers, and all these sorts of things.”
Patriots Point Executive Director Dick Trammell says he welcomes the opportunity for an audit. Trammell says they have sent a letter to Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman explaining the plan Patriots Point has to pay back the $9 million. Trammell says they do not see the audit as a negative.
McConnell has 19 inquiries in the letter and says an audit of the museum could save Patriots Point. He says he sent the letter due to years of frustration.
“Years ago, Patriots Point got into difficulty. The taxpayers forgave I think almost $5 million in debt, allowed them to move forward. Since that time we find out that they are sitting on a liability, they have not kept the Yorktown up. The Yorktown is a future liability. The Laffey was in terrible shape.”
McConnell says he and other lawmakers saw the bad shape the Laffey was in, so they agreed to the loan.
“They came to Columbia and asked for a $9 million emergency loan from the taxpayers to fix the Laffey. We gave it to them. They said they could pay it back with stimulus money and they had some other plans. We made it clear it was a loan to save the Laffey.”
So, the Laffey is now fixed, but-
“Now they claim they don’t have the money to put the Laffey back because they allowed the docks to be built in too close to the ships, and you got to take the docks up to put the ship back in. That’s a $400,000 expense. Then they turn around, and they are renting space on the Cooper River where people can’t go see the Laffey, and they have it docked there, and they’re going to pay $140,000 a year to dock it there.”
But, that’s not all, says McConnell.
“And, then they turn around several months later and come back to Columbia without telling us how they are going to pay off the loan and they want authorization to take $1.2 million in Phase 1 out of their reserves to go build a new parking lot when they already have a parking lot.”
McConnell says there seems to be a contradiction.
“It’s amazing to me that on one hand you claim you don’t have the money to put the exhibit back, and then you want to build a parking lot for people to come see the exhibit, and you haven’t got all the exhibits out there and you have a big parking lot . And, if you got a reserve, why then didn’t you have the money then to put the Laffey back?”
The Legislative Audit Council will review McConnell’s request by September.
SC Lawmakers Not Deterred By AZ Judge’s Ruling
July 30, 2010 by senatormcconnell
Senators Vow To Push Similar Bill On Illegal Immigration
PICKENS COUNTY, S.C. –
Sen. Larry Martin, a Republican who represents Pickens County in the state Senate, is home in Pickens after the 2009-10 legislative session ended in June. But Martin is already thinking about next session.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a big job ahead of us,” said Martin.
Some of that work is aimed at what Martin called a “top priority” early in the next session when it comes to South Carolina’s crack down on illegal immigration.
“I believe that we do have the ability to make it a state law violation,” said Martin.
Right now, cracking down on illegal immigrants is in the hands of the federal government, something Martin said is a big problem for local and state law enforcement officers.
“They know when they make that call to the immigration folks, they’re not coming,” said Martin. “What we’re trying to do is set up a policy that discourages illegal or undocumented folks from coming to South Carolina.”
A bill that Martin said would have allowed local and state law enforcement to arrest a person in the state illegally died last session because lawmakers ran out of time.
Martin said he and other lawmakers are paying attention to what’s going on in Arizona, regarding that state’s controversial immigration law.
A federal judge put most of the law on hold this week, including sections that require immigrants to carry their papers and law officers to check on a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws.
Martin said a similar bill will be reintroduced when lawmakers go back to Columbia in January. He said it will send a strong message to illegal immigrants.
In 2008, a law forcing businesses to verify all workers are documented passed in South Carolina.
Martin said that was the beginning of the crackdown on illegal immigration.
- Mandy Gaither, WYFF News 4 Reporter
An Arizona Style Immigration Law in SC
July 30, 2010 by senatormcconnell
Barack Obama and the Democrats in Washington seem intent in having the federal government overstep its bounds. The most egregious example, not too long ago, was when Congress foisted a big-government health care bill on the American people. Across the country, people are tired of it. And now comes an activist federal judge stepping into Arizona’s state affairs and gutting its anti-illegal immigration law.
Here in South Carolina, the Senate is committed to both fighting the overreaching from D.C. and standing up for the rule of law by passing our own illegal immigration bill. Just three years ago the SC General Assembly passed what newspapers called “the toughest immigration law in the nation.” Unfortunately that plan was founded on federal immigration programs that Nancy Pelosi and her liberal regime have consistently threatened. Like failing to secure our borders, the federal government has dropped the ball on promise after promise.
That’s why State Senator Larry Grooms filed an Arizona style immigration plan in the Senate last year and why, yesterday, Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell vowed to continue the push for an Arizona model in our state when the legislature returns in January.
On the day the court decision was handed down, McConnell said, “We see today’s decision as only the first step in an important legal struggle. This ruling will not deter me from continuing to work on this issue. I am committed to continuing full steam to have a bill ready for the Senate and for us to pass a stronger Arizona style immigration bill when we return in January.”
State Senator Larry Grooms weighed in on the subject as well: “The number one responsibility of government is to protect its citizens. Because the federal government has failed miserably, the states took action to protect our borders,” Grooms says. “With yesterday’s decision the feds have failed us twice.”
Many of the talking heads are saying that the ruling will place a chill on state efforts to properly enforce immigration policy. As of right now, there are 17 states pursuing legislation in the Arizona mold. One judge’s ruling in violation of states’ rights won’t deter state legislators from making the right move.
“We’re still early in the innings of a major legal contest,” Sen. Larry Martin said in The Washington Post this morning.
The judge’s decision isn’t the end for common sense immigration reform. It’s the beginning. Will you stand with the Senate in its fight against illegal immigration, even if it means taking on the federal government too?
Please click here now and give us your thoughts on how our state legislature should best deal with the illegal immigration problem plaguing our state.
- South Carolina Senate Republican Caucus
Majority Leader Harvey Peeler
Patriots Point scrutinized
July 27, 2010 by senatormcconnell
CHARLESTON — Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell wants to play Twenty Questions with the cash-strapped, state-owned tourist attraction at Patriots Point, and not one of them is a softball.
He’s got 19 inquiries, to be exact, all spelled out in a letter to the director of the Legislative Audit Council, an organization that conducts oversight evaluations of state agencies and programs when requested by legislators.
Five lawmakers must come together to get an audit, but McConnell and House Speaker Bobby Harrell, both Charleston Republicans, can make it happen with their requests alone.
In his letter, McConnell expressed his concern that Patriots Point “has drifted into a state of inertia and has become overcome by its disabilities.”
What really gets him, though, is that the agency that runs the attraction spent more than $9 million in state loan money to repair its sinking warship Laffey, has no means to repay those funds or even to bring the destroyer back to the attraction’s docks, and yet asked to spend $1.2 million from its reserves on a parking lot.
“The taxpayers deserve better answers and cannot be looked to for a bailout,” McConnell wrote in the letter dated last Friday. “Patriots Point must work its way out of this hole, not only for the benefit of the monument attraction and the state but also because a bailout is out of the question.”
He said an audit could save Patriots Point. In his request, he seeks a host of answers, including:
Whether Patriots Point has an adequate business plan for the future and for repaying the Laffey loan.
How the attraction plans to generate the money needed to return Laffey to the docks.
·Whether Patriots Point complies with the U.S. Navy’s requirements for maintaining its ships and how much revenue the attraction must generate to properly conserve them.
Whether the attraction’s board complies with public information laws during its meetings.
Whether staff meets the needs of the attraction and whether administrative responsibilities overlap.
Patriots Point executive director Dick Trammell, who took over the position in April 2009, welcomed the opportunity for an audit.
“The situation we are dealing with at Patriots Point, the backlog of maintenance, has been building for 35 years,” he said.
“We had some hard choices to make,” Trammell said. “We could’ve not requested any assistance and potentially witnessed the Laffey sinking right there, or we could ask the state for assistance for emergency repairs. That’s what the board chose to do.”
Patriots Point Development Authority chairman John Hagerty plans to send a letter to Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, a Florence Republican, laying out a plan for repaying the state loan. Trammell and Hagerty, neither of whom had seen McConnell’s letter to the audit council, would not discuss the plan in advance of their letter to Leatherman.
The Legislative Audit Council will review McConnell’s request and, if accepted at its September meeting, assign a team to the project, according to director Tom Bardin. He said that team would then meet with Patriots Point’s executive management and discuss each issue raised.
Once they finish the “field work,” they would write a report with findings and recommendations. If any require changes in law, they would address them to the General Assembly. The rest go to Patriots Point.
The legislative watchdog group previously conducted an audit of the Mount Pleasant maritime attraction in 1998, reviewing land development practices and foreshadowing the financial turmoil ahead. The council found that the museum could generate enough capital to feed its operations but that it was tough to accurately estimate future ship repairs and that the agency could need state funding.
The council noted that the deteriorating fleet of warships could pose both environmental and safety risks. Then, 12 years ago, and now, if another audit begins, the council’s findings and recommendations serve only as that — recommendations with no legal obligation.
By Allyson Bird – The (Charleston) Post and Courier
Prisons full, coffers empty
July 23, 2010 by senatormcconnell
Southern Republicans think it’s time to slow down the growth of locking up
On the outskirts of Columbia, South Carolina’s capital, lies a rolling swathe of farmland where cattle graze, tomatoes sprout and razor wire glints in the afternoon sun. This well-tended campus is home to seven of the state’s 28 prisons, including both Broad River, where inmates sentenced to die are lethally injected or electrocuted, and Campbell, which houses prisoners on work-release, who spend their days at fast-food restaurants or laundries and return to their “dorms” to sleep.
Part of their earnings goes to repay the cost of jailing them. And it is a cost: from 1983 to 2008 spending on the state’s prisons increased more than sixfold, as its prison population rose from just over 9,000 to almost 25,000. That rise had several causes, among them the greater number of people imprisoned for non-violent crimes and the heavier sentences that came with new laws laying down mandatory minimum terms.
Another factor was the decision of South Carolina, like many states, to adopt statutes in the mid-1990s that said certain criminals had to serve 85% of their sentence before becoming eligible for parole. Those serving such sentences now account for 42% of the state’s total prison population. Not only do these inmates clog the system, they are also less likely to take advantage of vocational training or education in prison, and more likely to be put back behind bars after their release.
On June 2nd South Carolina joined a growing number of states trying to bring their growing prison population—and the associated costs—to heel by changing the way criminals are sentenced. The bill that Mark Sanford, South Carolina’s Republican governor, signed into law that day, after it sailed through the Republican-dominated legislature, allows non-violent drug offenders to be eligible for parole or probation rather than automatically being sent to prison. It requires drug offenders to pay a fine, which then goes to drug-treatment programmes.
It also improves post-release and parole supervision, easing prisoners’ transition from incarceration to the working world and ensuring that fewer prisoners will be locked up for non-criminal breaches of their parole. At the same time, it increases penalties for some violent offences. The Pew Center on the States, which helped the state’s sentencing-reform commission analyse data, believes this bill will save the state almost $250m in prison building and operating costs over the next five years.
Similar sentencing reform has taken hold in some unlikely places. Hang-’em-high Texas, by financing drug-treatment and mental-health services and improving post-release supervision, has dramatically slowed the rate of growth of its prison population. Mississippi has also avoided an expected increase by making non-violent prisoners eligible for parole after serving 25% rather than 85% of their time. The Pew Center is helping to draw up reforms in 22 states; the two most recent recruits are Arkansas and Indiana.
“The Economist”
July 22, 2010
Voting ease, legitimacy
June 21, 2010 by senatormcconnell
General Assembly can still pass a law that would safeguard and expand process.
It is reasonable to ask voters to prove their identity before they are allowed to cast a ballot. It is also wise to give them more time and more locations for early voting, both for their convenience and to alleviate the massive crowds that plague the most important elections.
It is possible that South Carolinians will get both of those things this year, but time is running out and partisan gamesmanship is building up.
Some Democrats are fighting the idea, saying that requiring voters to show a state-issued ID is racist and ageist. They claim it would discourage minorities and old people from voting. That’s not true, and the U.S. Supreme Court made this clear when ruling on a similar Indiana law. The court declared that such requirements are reasonable because the state has a legitimate interest in making sure only registered voters cast ballots. It would be wrong, and it has been ruled unconstitutional, to charge people for these IDs necessary to vote, but it’s not wrong to require them.
The biggest farce last week was the spectacle of several Democratic House members taking the floor to assert that the voter ID measure is unnecessary because no one is alleging any instances of voter fraud in South Carolina even as the state Democratic Party has been consumed with allegations of voting fraud in the Alvin Greene/Vic Rawl senatorial primary.
Some Republicans are fighting the idea that voters should have an easy path to absentee and early voting, claiming early voting allows people to vote before they learn the information that is revealed in the last days of an election. In truth, the last days of an election generally feature fevered mudslinging rather than meaningful new information.
Chris Whitmire, public information officer with the S.C. Election Commission, said Friday that the commission supports enhanced absentee and early voting, adding: “The 2008 election showed us this was something voters very much wanted.”
The House passed a bill that created a voter ID requirement and allowed eight days of early voting, but the early voting would be allowed in only one location per county and absentee balloting would be more restricted than it is today.
The Senate passed a bill that allows more time and locations for early voting and continued easy access to absentee ballots.
When legislators return to Columbia on June 29, the House needs to pass the Senate version of the bill and make it law. It is a fair law that will make voting easier in many ways and enhance public confidence in the system.
If the House does not pass the Senate version, the legislation will die and must be reintroduced next year.
The General Assembly, beset by budget concerns and protective of its members’ re-election hopes, has achieved nearly nothing this year. This bill needs to pass now. There is no reason to put it off and no justification to vote it down.
“GoUpstate.com”
Published: Sunday, June 20, 2010 at 3:15 a.m.
New law changes criminal sentencing
June 3, 2010 by senatormcconnell
COLUMBIA — South Carolina has a new way of dealing with criminals that judges, victims’ advocates, crime and justice experts and Republicans and Democrats all have signed off on.
The comprehensive new law is intended to save money while diverting nonviolent offenders from prison to community-based programs so space is available in prison for violent criminals. Gov. Mark Sanford signed it into law Wednesday.
The new law was one year in the making. It is intended to:
–Make sure there is space for high-risk, violent offenders in prison while saving the state an estimated $350 million, the cost of building a new prison.
–Help inmates transition from prison life back to society and increase supervision of former inmates in the community.
–Provide incentives for probationers and parolees to stay drug- and crime-free in order to go from being tax burdens to taxpayers.
The lengthy new law also redefines 22 crimes as violent, providing longer sentences for some offenders. The new sentences would apply to people who commit crimes beginning on Wednesday.
It would not alter the sentences of people already serving time or those awaiting a trial, although it will allow for the early release of geriatric, terminally ill and physically disabled inmates.
Other parts of the new law will become effective over time. For example, the new standards for future probation and parole assessments will begin in January.
Lily Lenderman of Spartanburg said she has fought for some of the changes contained in the new law for seven years, after her 27-year-old grandsonwas killed in an accident involving a habitual offender.
The offender was sentenced to seven months, served four months and was arrested again for another crime 18 days after he was released from prison, Lenderman said.
“From a grandmother’s heart, I couldn’t understand that,” she said. “My cause was to get justice for my grandson and to bring something good from his death, and through this I feel like my journey has been worth it.”
The new law also increases maximum penalties for several crimes, such as harboring a fugitive.
It restructures sentences such as requiring a mandatory 30-year sentence for death caused by arson, creating a crime of attempted murder to help charge people appropriately, increasing the amount of victim restitution, and updating fines for theft for the first time in 20 years so values are more in line with present-day costs.
Other odds and ends in the bill include removing the disparity in sentencing between possession of crack cocaine and powder cocaine, establishing an oversight committee to follow the process of the bill’s implementation and measure progress, and allowing people on probation and parole to earn good-time credit.
Overtime savings in the Department of Corrections will be shifted to the probation and parole system, which is currently overwhelmed with large and increasing case loads.
Sanford said the law was “smart on crime,” a sentiment echoed by many Wednesday. The governor said it strikes the right balance and it’s good for the taxpayers. Experts from the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States helped the state develop the new law.
The prison population 25 years ago stood at about 9,000 inmates and is today at 24,000. As the population grew, so did the cost of running the Corrections Department.
In the mid-1980s the prisons ran on $63 million a year. Today it costs $394 million, Sanford said. In another five years the cost is projected to increase by another $141 million, as the prison population grows by another 3,200 inmates.
“For the taxpayers, there is something fundamentally wrong with that system,” Sanford said. “Unless we’re going to build a bunch more jails, you have got to look at alternatives. This bill does that. I think it strikes the right balance and in the process saves the taxpayers over 400 million bucks.”
South Carolina already spends less than $40 per day on each inmate, the second-lowest rate in the nation, Sanford said.
Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms, called the legislation a massive undertaking. He was part of the group that spent the last year coming up with solutions to South Carolina’s haphazard criminal justice system.
“We really made a difference with this bill,” Campsen said. “It is going to change people’s lives. It will help offenders get back on their feet and make sure victims get compensated.”
Video: Senators McConnell, Knotts, Bright and Rep Cobb Hunter on Abortion
March 30, 2010 by senatormcconnell
Video: Senators McConnell, Knotts, Bright and Rep Cobb Hunter discuss state funded abortions This Week in The Senate.
Spending Caps Bill Passes Senate
March 25, 2010 by senatormcconnell
Columbia, SC – March 26, 2010 – The State Senate gave key approval to legislation authored by Sen. Glenn McConnell that would institute spending caps and a “rainy day” fund. Several years of dwindling revenues and tough decisions on budget cuts have spurred this dramatic change to the state budgeting procedures.
While the federal government seems determined to spend our nation’s future away, South Carolina’s Republican Senators are limiting spending and securing our state’s budgetary process.
For any new revenue, 25 percent of it would be placed into a stabilization account. Funds from the stabilization account could be used to even out spending when the state hits harsh economic times like we are currently facing. Senator McConnell believes this will eliminate the feast or famine process state government has seen in recent years.
“The Senate has crafted a way to limit government growth and spending, so we don’t find ourselves in the same position in the future,” McConnell said. “By evening out our spending, there won’t be pressure to overspend when times are good or have to cut services to the bone when times are bad.”
Going into the session, Senate Republicans made fixing our state’s budgetary crisis a top priority. It’s part of a wholesale group of reforms to fundamentally change how state government works — making it work better for all South Carolinians.
“There’s a good reason why Sen. McConnell’s efforts on spending limits were the first two bills filed in the Senate,” Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler said. “No issue is more important than keeping government growth in check. This is an idea whose time has come, and conservatives in the Senate are enthusiastic about passing it.”
From here, the bill moves on to the House.
“We hope our colleagues in the House pass the statutory language and send the constitutional amendment through and we can put it on the ballot,” McConnell said. “We quite literally cannot afford to find ourselves in the same fiscal position again.
Video on Spending Caps
March 10, 2010 by senatormcconnell
While Washington liberals continue growing our nation’s debt with explosive spending, South Carolina’s Republican Senators are working hard to protect taxpayers, limit spending, and grow our economy. President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell developed a plan that creates a spending cap and a budget stabilization fund. The amount of money state legislators could spend each year would be limited to the average revenue growth of the previous ten years and any additional funds would be placed in a rainy day account for budget shortfalls like we are now facing.
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