Pro-Life, Pro-Mother & Father, Pro-Child Priorities:
While much has been made in the news this summer about the SC Senate bill banning abortion at conception with no exceptions that received a multi-day hearing, the SC House has a solid agenda for protecting life, protecting and assisting young mothers, restoring power back to parents where it belongs, and protecting our children. As you can see in the chart below, our focus will be on furthering the work that has already been accomplished with the Fetal Heartbeat Law, upheld by the SC Supreme Court, as well as extensive efforts to improve adoption procedures, defund Planned Parenthood, and many other key issues.

Government Efficiency & Legislative Oversight Healthcare Subcommittee:
In the last newsletter, I described our subcommittee's efforts to examine the Department of Insurance for the purpose of encouraging efficiency and transparency for the citizens of South Carolina. After my phone call to our Chairman, I was pleased to see that in the last meeting held on Tuesday, September 23rd, he made an announcement at the beginning of the meeting to encourage members to ask questions briefly, saving anything more in-depth for afterward. This resulted in us completing the task at hand, over 100 pages of material, which based on prior meetings, would likely have required at least one more meeting at taxpayers' expense. If my phone call saved one day's cost to our taxpayers for excessive meetings, I am glad to have helped reduce waste. But there is so much more that needs to be done. While the DOI did a great job of presenting all of their functions and processes, there are areas where they already agree there could be more streamlining and communication improvements. Next, we will be presenting our findings at a full meeting of the Committee on December 10th.

House Rules Committee Possible Bill:
Many of you may realize that our current system for presenting amendments to bills being introduced in the Chamber can result in an unlimited number of entries, often designed to make it impossible to ever get to a vote. This has been used numerous times, such as the various abortion ban bills, illegal DEI procedures being defunded in our state institutions, the "Help Not Harm" bill preventing gender affirming care, and others. The current tools in place to limit the number of amendments primarily focus on "cloture," where, once invoked, no more new amendments can be brought. This sometimes happens after there are already 1000+ amendments presented, which we then have to go through, one by one. Here, there are various tools, such as a whole series of ridiculous, repetitive amendments being deemed "dilatory," or in other cases, an amendment being determined to be "not germane." Unfortunately for our citizens (taxpayers), this part of the sausage-making often goes way beyond what any reasonable debate would include. In protecting First Amendment rights and the importance of true representation of each District, we end up wasting a tremendous amount of time on processes that do not improve the quality of the discussion nor the resulting bill. Some of you may recall that several years ago when I served on the Rules Committee, I stood alone in a vote to stop an effort to limit amendments to 12 chosen by the Majority Leader and 12 chosen by the Minority Leader. Not only did I believe this was much too limiting for fair debate and representation, I also could not understand why in a supermajority of Republicans, the Minority Leader would be able to present the same number of amendments. I was prepared that day in Committee to propose an amendment to the bill, but the Chair said that everyone else was satisfied and we should move to a vote. While the final vote was something like 9-1, with me being the only one voting against, for some reason, the bill was never taken up by the House. Recently, I shared with Speaker Smith what my amendment that day would have been, and he asked me to follow up with our Rules Chairman, Rep. Micah Caskey. I did that, and Rep. Caskey commented that while he would think it over, he theoretically liked the concept. I am sharing it with you now in order to see your thoughts, and if appropriate, will either sponsor or co-sponsor a bill to this effect. My idea was that each Representative of each District would have the ability to bring one amendment, 124 in all. If someone does not have an amendment, they can yield theirs to another member, or not. In this way, there could be up to 124 amendments, which is a tremendous amount, but likely would be somewhat less. Also, the balance of the amendments would favor the Majority Party, which is appropriate based on the electorate. Is this way we would be able to debate extensively, yet know that we will reach a vote before the day is out. Please share any feedback or thoughts you have, as the prefiling date for bills this year is December 16th and I want to be ready with anything we need.

What is the Real Problem with SCDOT?
On Good Friday, I spent 4 hours with an SCDOT supervisor visiting three of our historic settlement communities, East of the Cooper, including one in District 80.  The purpose was to evaluate the drainage ditches and get moving on long-overdue maintenance. Some of these areas had not had maintenance in 10 years or more. Some were terribly overgrown, some had pipes that were silted in and completely hidden, some had broken pipes, and some had trees overgrowing the ditch. All have been causing serious flooding problems, and in some areas it has caused major road erosion. My goal was to have SCDOT get caught up in these areas, and then begin a regular maintenance schedule from then on. Although I followed up with phone calls and texts for several months, I heard and saw no response. Finally this past week, I found out they have started work in the Hamlin Community and have contracted with a tree company for the Phillips Community to begin there in the next week. Six months after our initial review, they are finally able to get to these important areas! In speaking with the supervisor for six counties, he said they have over 8,000 outstanding work orders. He reminded me of something we have all heard, that SCDOT is responsible for the fourth highest amount of roads in the nation despite SC being a relatively small state. I asked him if we could reduce their responsibility to the major roads and highways, would that be a big help? He said, absolutely it would, and could solve the issue of our highways being so woefully behind in repair and expansion. This would require a lot of money being diverted to the local municipalities so they could expand their public works staff, but would make much more sense than keeping this completely unacceptable level of lack of maintenance in perpetuity. I am checking into whether this requires a bill, and my suspicion is that it will.

Mount Pleasant Municipal Election on Tuesday, November 4th:
The Town of Mount Pleasant will hold its bi-annual election this year, and early voting starts tomorrow at Seacoast Church on Long Point Road. I strongly encourage everyone to get out and vote. This email newsletter goes almost exclusively to conservative voters. If everyone reading this email would vote between tomorrow and November 4th, we have an excellent chance of taking back a seat that would allow for a majority of conservative Councilmembers. Why is this so important in a "non-partisan" election? We all know the answer by now, but I will clarify in case someone is being misled by certain publications and/or social media posts. With a Strong Council form of government, all 9 members are able to vote equally on all issues. Many of these issues involve control over our everyday lives. If you doubt this, think back to the pandemic with the first and subsequent required mask votes. I was on Council at the time, and was only one of two members who voted against requiring citizens to wear masks to enter a business. It took multiple future votes before enough members of Council came around and voted with me. Then the Mayor took matters into his own hands and unilaterally required masking using a 20+ year old "civil emergencies" ordinance that had never been used before. We finally struck that down when I brought an amendment to that ordinance to strip most of the emergency powers, which likely avoided having our Town Staff to have to vaccinate against their will. How about the plastics ban? Personally I like using my reusable bags, but I was the only person to vote against the plastics ban not because I like plastic, but because I did not believe mandates on local businesses were the right way to handle concerns about the environment. I even offered a very positive, community-building plan as an alternative. We were told repeatedly by both our MP Police Department and our staff that both of these ordinances were unenforceable, and there has never been a single citation written on either issue. But virtue signalling seems to be commonplace among elected officials who cannot be bothered to seriously research an issue and find common sense, workable solutions instead of passing a "feel good" ordinance. While I cannot endorse individual candidates for office due to my regular day job, I will share with you the list of candidates whom the Charleston County GOP activists in our area have vetted and believe will bring a stronger, conservative balance to Council. They are John Iacofano, Perry Rourk, Craig Russack and Brianna Harmon. Their websites are below. Three of these candidates live in the 41 corridor or north of it, and we have no representation at all in this half of Mount Pleasant ever since Sheriff Ritchie was elected and had to leave his seat on Council. We need Councilmembers from all ends of town, because the circumstances are very different for those of us who live in the "newer" areas versus neighborhoods like the Old Village. This is not about "us vs. them;" rather, it is just common sense. Also, in case you have heard disparaging comments about any of these candidates, keep in mind the source. Do you really think at this point that the Post & Courier chooses the most conservative candidates? The answer is no, and many of the social media posts are also trying to "trick" conservatives into being against candidates. I am not trying to tell anyone how to vote, just hoping to inform you if you have not had time to research this on your own. Feel free to email me by replying to this message if you have specific questions or concerns.
Here are the candidates' websites:

https://voteiacofano.com/
https://www.voteperryrourk.com/
https://www.craigrussack.com/
https://briannaharmonfortowncouncil.com/

Around the District and the Lowcountry:
Two years ago in front of the Gold Star Families monument at Patriots Point, twin brothers Samuel & Andrew Rowe who live in the District that I represent received a tremendous honor, the Gen. Carl A. Spaatz Award of the Civil Air Patrol. As if we were having a moment of déjà vu, their younger brother Cadet Colonel Jackson Rowe received this same incredibly high honor right here at Mount Pleasant Regional Airport on a hot Saturday afternoon recently. From this story, you might think this award was somewhat commonplace, but that is not the case. In the 61 years since it was first created, this award for extremely high achievement as a volunteer in the Civil Air Patrol has only been awarded to 5 out of every 1000 Cadets. How amazing is it that 3 of the Cadets who have received this honor live right here in Mount Pleasant! I was thrilled to be asked to say a few words to recognize and honor Col Cadet Rowe's achievements. I presented Jackson with a SC flag flown over the SC State House. Sen. Bryan Adams also presented Jackson with a US flag flown over the SC State House. The Civil Air Patrol is an essential arm of the US Air Force, and is often called upon for search and rescue missions as well as many other critical duties. Congratulations to Col. Cadet Jackson Rowe for achieving this outstanding award!