No time for grandstanding

Welcome back, state lawmakers.

The second half of the 118th General Assembly reconvened at noon Tuesday, Senate Standard Time (about 12:15 p.m. EST). It was a subtle affair, nothing like the usual festivities that accompany a new session at the state's biggest high school.

That's because House and Senate members have a particularly tough job ahead of them. You see, South Carolina is in pretty sad shape: Unemployment is hanging around north of 12 percent, the state budget has been cut nine times in the past 18 months, and some basic services are about to go broke as the state's revenues have declined by nearly $2 billion per year.

And now it's up to these folks to fix all that. They will be graded in November.

No doubt, several of those 170 souls are wondering exactly why in the world they fought so hard to win such a thankless, $10,000-a-year job.

But not everything is so bleak. Lawmakers are coming off a major win in the fall, when they convened for a couple of days, landed Boeing and extended unemployment benefits for thousands of folks. That was impressive.

So now it's time to see which General Assembly shows up this year: the decisive, bipartisan, get-things-done Legislature of a few months ago, or the Statehouse stereotypes.

For whom the bell tolls

If you visit the floor of the state House, you'll notice some similarities with Wall Street.

There is usually a lot going on: people huddled in whispered conferences, bells ringing, and no one seems to be paying attention. The difference is, on Wall Street, people are trying to make money.

In the Legislature, they are usually cooking up new and creative ways to spend it.

And that's where things have to change. All 170 members of the General Assembly might be better off to drop some of the standard operating procedure: introducing legislation to create new license plates, build new monuments or rename roads, even pursuing a meaningless and ridiculous censure of Gov. Mark Sanford. Sure, it's an election year, but the time to pander has passed. And we've got enough laws.

All those meaningless bills and grandstanding are the modus operandi for the Legislature of stereotype. And even though all that is not what put the state in such dire straits, it's certainly not helping.

To have and have not

If the Legislature is serious about changing the game, expect to see a hiatus for most lawmakers while the House Ways and Means Committee writes the state budget. Shouldn't take too long -- there's not much money to count, and the answer to all requests for new funds is "No."

Usually, the delivery of the House budget in mid-March marks the beginning of the real work. These first two months are when most mischief occurs. As it was on Tuesday, when the Senate debated -- at length -- a resolution to tell Congress they are hacked off about the health care legislation. Like Congress hasn't made it abundantly clear it doesn't care what anyone thinks.

Instead of grandstanding, lawmakers might be better off to focus on evaluating every agency independently. This across-the-board cutting has to stop. Who knows, a little effort in that department might help them reclaim their job in November.

Even if no one in their right mind should want the job.

Reach Brian Hicks at 937-5561 or bhicks@postandcourier.com. Read more columns by Brian Hicks here.