Employment Security Commission mess raises reform stakes

The S.C. Employment Security Commission has become the latest poster child for the need to reform state government. But it's still not clear whether even the most egregious examples of unaccountable ineptitude will ever convince some lawmakers to give the governor power over the state agencies they still control.

That said, there are some encouraging signs. Just last week members of a Senate subcommittee kept alive a proposal that would put a Cabinet secretary in charge of the Department of Health and Environmental Control. But lest reformers get too excited, members reportedly cautioned they might change their minds when the bill comes up for full committee debate.

Back to the ESC debacle: What's now a $500 million deficit in the unemployment trust fund that's expected to grow to a billion finally spurred a call earlier this year for a Legislative Audit Council probe. But House members balked, albeit by a narrow vote, at passage of a reform bill.

Subsequent events do say it's unlikely the commission will continue to maintain its status quo. Legislators had to be called back to Columbia last week to fix an unemployment benefits mess that could have cost thousands of jobless South Carolinians millions of dollars in extended benefits.

But will lawmakers just tinker with commission reform? Or will they eliminate the three-member panel, which they appoint, and put the agency in the governor's Cabinet as proposed in the failed House proposal?

By the way, the salaries of the commissioners, all former legislators, exceed the governor's pay by several thousand dollars.

Unfortunately, the prospect of expanding the governor's Cabinet continues to give some lawmakers great pain, particularly on the Senate side. It took an all-out effort by the late Gov. Carroll Campbell to finally get a Cabinet system off the ground. The majority of state boards and commissions remain in the legislative domain.

Any mention of transferring more power to the governor is certain to raise some powerful legislative hackles. Opponents are quick to cite serious problems that have been discovered in agencies such as the Department of Social Services since they were transferred to the Cabinet and suggest there are prospects of more to come.

Beaufort Sen. Tom Davis, a former top gubernatorial aide, is the first to concede there is nothing automatically infallible about the Cabinet system. Instead, he contends, it's a system of accountability that holds someone -- the governor -- responsible for getting it fixed. Further, that fix doesn't have to wait for four years or whenever it comes time for legislators to appoint a new board or commission.

No question, accountability is the key, and that's not possible when the buck stops with 170 members of the Legislature. Look at the unemployment benefits mess that forced last week's legislative fix. The dizzying finger-pointing included the commission, its executive director and legislators. According to Lexington Rep. Kenny Bingham the recall session wouldn't have been necessary had lawmakers passed the reform legislation he sponsored that included the fix. It was in an amendment he added after an alert, not from the commission, but from the Appleseed Legal Justice Center. He blames the bill's defeat on lobbying aimed at saving the commissioners' jobs and plans to revive and expand his reform measure.

While Gov. Mark Sanford has made restructuring a centerpiece of his administration, Republican Davis contends it isn't a partisan issue, noting that he and Democratic Sen. Vincent Sheheen co-authored a law review article advocating reform. He also points to eloquent arguments on behalf of restructuring by former Democratic Gov. Dick Riley. It is, he argues, "a good government issue."

While some fume that Sanford's divisive tactics have actually hurt the reform effort, Davis says the governor deserves much credit for raising awareness and putting restructuring back on the agenda. But it's never mattered to a multitude of legislative enemies that Sanford could never benefit from his restructuring efforts while in office. It has only mattered that he might get some credit. One unknown is whether that view will be further accentuated or diminished if he weathers the impeachment storm generated by his mysterious absence from the state last summer and his admission of an extramarital affair.

Davis recognizes that the rules in the Senate in particular "make it hard to get things done, but easy to stop things" through the objections of only a few. So only a few state senators elected by a comparatively few voters can stop efforts to give a governor, answerable to all, more direct oversight on state agencies. That may be politics. But it's not good government.

Barbara S. Williams, editor emeritus of The Post and Courier, may be reached at bwilliams@postandcourier.com.