COLUMBIA — Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler said Thursday the state’s health and environmental agency is too large and should be split.
The call by the Gaffney Republican came during a pre-session annual media event in which members of both chambers participate in roundtable discussions on the issues facing the state and take questions from reporters.
During the conversation relating to the effects of October’s historic floods, Peeler said the failing of dams proved the Department of Health and Environmental Control has too much on its plate.
“For quite some time I’ve said that DHEC is too large,” Peeler said. “We need to split health portion of DHEC from the environmental. The way our dams gave up during the flood, I think in was large part a lack of inspection.”
Peeler called for placing the environmental side of DHEC under the wing of the Department of Agriculture, and the health side elsewhere.
“It doesn’t grow government,” Peeler said. “It doesn’t shrink government. It just makes it more accountable.”
Peeler isn’t the only senator who has called for the splitting of a state agency. Last session, Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington did the same with the Department of Social Services.
Her bill shifts the non-child protective services responsibilities — such as welfare and Medicaid — to the Department of Health and Human Services. And it would break off the protection of vulnerable children and adults to the new Department of Family Protective Services. The bill, however, failed to gain traction during the 2015 Legislative session.
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