BRACK: Legislature needs more strategic, long-term thinking

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher  |  Parents routinely tell their children to be smart about how they act.  The state needs to take the same advice.

Case in point: South Carolina’s energy policy. Since the early 1990s, the state of South Carolina has actually had a policy to set a comprehensive state energy plan.  But it’s been pretty toothless — a plan in name only, with all sorts of nice-sounding goals that don’t hold policymakers or anybody accountable.

For example, the purpose of the plan includes ensuring “long-term access to adequate, reliable energy supplies,” but it doesn’t say how.  It calls for “development and use of clean energy resources” including those from renewable sources like solar and wind, but doesn’t set any specific goals or measures.

But now that the State Energy Office has become a part of the Office of Regulatory Services, thanks to recent restructuring, the state and stakeholders are working fast and furious to come up with a real plan with some meat on the bones.

Why?  Well, first, it’s long been required by law.  But mainly, it’s needed to help the state plan for future needs and figure out ways for the state to maximize investments in energy so there’s enough over the long term.

It’s this kind of deeper thought — thinking that’s been stale for more than 20 years — that’s needed across the state in numerous areas.   And that’s why today we again call on state legislators to start thinking bigger, more long-term and more strategically.

We’ve long argued, in our annual plea for Palmetto Priorities, that businesses and nonprofits can’t exist without strategic plans and measurable goals.  State government should do the same thing, meaning that lawmakers need to have big-ticket agendas that they can work together to move the state forward in a strategic way.  Sure, there will be policy disagreements, but without a structured long-term plan, government will remain a mess embroiled in the purgatory of doing little or doing nothing to make real and meaningful differences in taxpayers’ lives.

So with little pomp or circumstance, we offer an updated Palmetto Priorities for legislators to consider as they prepare to start the 2016 session in January.  Two notes:  One item has been removed since 2009 — to raise the cigarette tax.  Also, many of the following  goals originally should have been completed by this year; we’ve updated them with new “due dates.”

POVERTY. Develop a broad-based anti-poverty agenda by 2020 that includes the jobs, education and health care components below to help lift the almost one in five South Carolinians in poverty into better conditions.

JOBS.  Approve a Cabinet-level post by 2020 to add and retain 10,000 small business jobs per year. Politicians talk about helping small businesses. This would force them to.

EDUCATION. Cut the state’s dropout rate in half by 2020.

HEALTH CARE. Ensure affordable and accessible health care that optimizes preventive care for every South Carolinian by 2020. Take the federal funding now through the Affordable Care Act to allow 200,000 of the state’s neediest to get health insurance.

ENVIRONMENT. Adopt a real state energy policy that requires energy producers to generate 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.

TAXES. Overhaul and stabilize the tax structure by 2018 through reforms that broaden the tax base and lower rates. This should include reimplementation of reasonable property taxes and removal of hundreds of millions of dollars of special-interest sales tax exemptions.

ELECTIONS. Increase voter registration to 75 percent by 2020 by reducing voting barriers and making it easier for all to vote.

CORRECTIONS. Cut the prison population by 25 percent by 2020 through creative alternative sentencing programs for non-violent offenders.

ROADS. Develop and implement a plan in 2016 that creatively taps several sources to generate an extra $1 billion every year for investment in the state’s crumbling system of roads and bridges.

POLITICS. Have a vigorous two- or multi-party political system of governance.

Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Charleston Currents and Statehouse Report. You can reach him at: editor@charlestoncurrents.com