This past week the House was on furlough, but many committees still met anyway. As I mentioned last week, the Government Efficiency and House Oversight Committee held a meeting this week, which I will summarize below. The SCGOP hosted a reception in downtown Charleston at the home of Janine and George Nagrodsky to highlight law and order in the Lowcountry. On a local level, early voting for Mount Pleasant Town Council to fill the seat vacated by our new Sheriff Carl Ritchie ended this past Friday, and Election Day is this coming Tuesday.

Government Efficiency and House Oversight Committee:

As a new member of the newly named committee (formerly just House Oversight), I was excited to be able to participate in this effort to review seven of our SC State Agencies, with the expectation that this would be the first major step in South Carolina's effort to bring Elon Musk style efficiency and cost cutting here at the state level. I shared the stated purpose of the meeting from the agenda in last week's newsletter. The presentations from each of the agency heads including Superintendent Ellen Weaver, SLED Chief Mark Keel, and all the others were excellent, where they shared updates on what they have been doing to fulfill their primary purposes. A survey had been made available online, with many positive comments but also some concerns for each department. Most of the department leaders addressed the negative feedback head on, in some cases disagreeing with the conclusions while in other cases sharing steps that are already being taken to correct the problems. 

While there will be ongoing efforts to delve into the budgets and processes to try to help find cost cutting measures and workflow efficiencies, I came away from the meeting with a strong sense that it cannot be properly accomplished by our committee as a whole. First of all, the meeting itself lasted 4 1/2 hours. The seven agency heads each took about 10 - 15 minutes to summarize their presentation including PowerPoint slides for illustration. This equaled about 1 1/2 hours total. Public input was also pretty brief, with excellent comments from students at Claflin University, parents of students who benefitted from the first year of the Education Scholarship Trust Fund (School Choice), and workers who had utilized the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation's facilities to get and keep meaningful employment. Because they were each limited to 3 minutes, this moved along smartly and was very informative. The breakdown came due to questions from my fellow Representatives on the Committee. While it was encouraged that we ask questions, it became very apparent within just a few of the speakers that a specific agenda was at work. I do not think it is an exaggeration that the comments and questions from House Members added at least 1 1/2 to 2 hours to the length of the meeting. Most of the questions were redundant on the topic of diversity, equity and inclusion in that Democrat House Members repeatedly wanted reassurance from the Department Heads that they had an appropriate amount of diversity in their staff. At one point, a fellow House Member asked Commissioner Felicia Johnson of the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, who happens to be an African American woman, "Does your staff have ethics? I mean, does your staff have different ethnicities?" Stunned, Director Johnson replied, "Does our staff have different ethnicities? Our staff very much reflects the people we serve." Quite frankly, after over 4 hours of this, I was embarrassed for our committee because the constant repetitive questioning that did not focus on efficiency in cost-cutting nor processes seemed to reveal that we were not really there for that purpose. 

My conclusion is that this effort cannot be handled by committee at all. Just imagine if instead of appointing Elon Musk, who brought his own staff of experts to dig into the budgets and processes of the federal government agencies, President Trump had directed a House Committee comprised of a substantial number of Democrats to do the work? Do you think for a moment that all the fraud, waste and inefficiency that is being uncovered would have been revealed? Of course not, because it is the Democrats who are fighting back hard against cutting anything! I will be meeting with Chairman Jeff Johnson and Speaker Smith to see if we can initiate a more focused effort to accomplish the desired outcome, which is to save our taxpayers' money and time with enhanced efficiencies and cutting out any wasteful spending. I also believe a lot of this should have happened through the Ways and Means Committee in their many, many months of hard work preparing the budget. The fact that we have to come back now and do this may indicate that streamlining the entire budgeting process is in order. 

Around the District and the Lowcountry:

Election Day is Tuesday, March 25th in Mount Pleasant

This coming Tuesday, March 25th is Election Day in Mount Pleasant to fill the Town Council seat previously held by Sheriff Carl Ritchie. Mount Pleasant has nearly 100,000 residents, and almost half of them live north of the IOP Connector. Currently, there is not a single Council Member representing that entire population, even though with the Mayor there are nine seats on Council. While I have been saying this for months ever since Carl was elected (and we are extremely grateful for this), many others are emphasizing the same message. We must have representation from this side of town because the issues facing our area often differ from the older, more mature neighborhoods in and around the Old Village, Johnnie Dodds, Coleman Boulevard, etc.... We already have witnessed many, many problems with the handling of Highway 41, Faison Road development, and a lack of sensitivity to the need for services and businesses on this end of town. I believe strongly that our Council should have foreseen this problem and encouraged residents throughout Mount Pleasant to elect one of the candidates from the Highway 41 corridor and beyond. One candidate has the most signs out all over town, but lives in the Old Village. There is no way this person can fairly represent the 45,000 to 50,000 of us living north of the Connector. We have several candidates who seem earnest about representing us, but it appears that the north end of Mount Pleasant is coalescing around one person. This is absolutely necessary in order to have our voice heard on Council. GOP Precinct 33 former President and current Executive Committeeman Clay Simmonds has let everyone know he is voting for Bob Swain. Bob is a Mount Pleasant native who lives in Dunes West, is a retired US Air Force Colonel and decorated Desert Storm Combat Veteran who graduated from the US Air Force Academy and has a Doctorate in Engineering from George Washington University, is a strong conservative, says no to new taxes, and has attended numerous Town Council meetings to become familiar with the issues. Former Council Member Kevin Cunnane clearly stated on his "One Mount Pleasant" site that Bob Swain is the best choice for both representing our area and coalescing around a candidate who can win this election. Just yesterday, Candidate Gary Davis dropped out of the race and gave his endorsement to Bob Swain for Council. While I truly appreciate all the conservative candidates who have come out to run for this seat, I will let you know that I believe Bob is the best candidate to serve our community overall, and especially to be a voice for all of us on the north end of Mount Pleasant. Several of the other candidates who are conservatives really should run again for a seat in the fall when there will be 5 seats available, including Mayor. If Bob does not prevail, I certainly hope that he will run again as well. 

Our family likes to vote together, and due to my leaving early Tuesday morning for Session in Columbia, we voted on Friday at Charleston County Elections Headquarters. It was a little disturbing to hear that in 2 weeks of early voting where we were on the last day in the afternoon, we brought the total number up to 102 voters so far. Because of this, please realize that your vote really, really matters on this one! The outcome could be determined by 10 or 15 votes, or even by one. Please go out and vote, and if you are so inclined help us get a candidate who can truly represent this end of town as a conservative voice on Council. If you don't think Council matters that much, please remember what happened during the pandemic with the outrageous government overreach by many members at that time. I had to stand up multiple times and took a lot of abuse just because of using common sense and some medical knowledge. We have to have someone who knows what common sense is, and will fight for us!

Many of you have been asking me what is going on with the Hwy 41 widening efforts, which have been seemingly stalled for quite some time. Last June, the Department of Health and Environmental Services, now just the Department of Environmental Services held a meeting at Wando High School, which many of us attended. Since then, there has been no information made public at all other than a comment in the Post & Courier last week about the Army Corps of Engineers working with the Charleston County Engineers to acquire some of the right of way needed for the actual widening. I called the project manager at DES last fall for an update, and they were waiting for answers to questions posed to the Charleston County Engineers. Recently, I contacted the Interim Director for Environmental Services to see if she could bring me up to date on where things stand now. We met in my office in Columbia along with some of her staff familiar with this project. As you probably know, the County had applied for the permit that is required from DHEC (now DES) for any project that involves coastal water and wetlands. As of two weeks ago, they still did not have everything they need from Charleston County to proceed. Meanwhile, we had a chance to speak about the traffic assumptions for the longer term that could supposedly benefit from the Laurel Hill Parkway such as Carolina Park, Darrell Creek, Liberty Hill, Planters Pointe, and Rivertowne. With the aid of a simple area map, I was able to point out to them how absurd it is to think that anyone from these neighborhoods would take the new Laurel Hill Parkway in order to get to Highway 17 southbound. I asked the team whether they believe the construction of the Laurel Hill Parkway has delayed the process of getting the whole project approved. They said between the coastal wetlands issues and other considerations, plus the thousands of comments of outcry against building a highway or major road through the Park, there was no doubt this has greatly elongated the time table. Greater delays mean a much higher price tag, and continued suffering for all of the neighborhoods surrounding the 41 corridor, especially the residents of the Phillips Community who really need the center turn lane just to be able to get in and out of their driveways and side streets. Contrary to what all the political mayhem has suggested of this being a racially insensitive issue, it is exactly the opposite. Once most of the housing around our area was already in place, the biggest follow up mistake has been the assumption that if we don't have a bypass of the Phillips Community, they will be forced to have 4 lanes of highway in front of their homes. But the reason everyone keeps saying this is due to the "regional traffic models" assuming that all the above mentioned neighborhoods as well as at least half the new homes being built off Clements Ferry Road will come down Highway 41 South everyday. Common sense and more focused traffic studies would clearly show that the only commuters who would ever use the Laurel Hill Parkway would be those that currently use Bessemer Road, residents of Dunes West and Park West. We don't need a bypass of Bessemer Road, we need 41 to be widened to 4-3-4 with better intersections such as roundabouts at the two major choke points, Dunes West Boulevard and Joe Rouse/Bessemer. The team from DES will continue their efforts, hopefully armed with more detailed information about the unique circumstances of our area, including why tearing down 22 acres of trees, filling in over 11 acres of wetlands, and paving a major road through a Conservation Trust just makes absolutely no sense and will waste a tremendous amount of taxpayer dollars.

One final point on this is that during the Government Efficiency and House Oversight Committee meeting, I was able to ask one question, which was posed to Director Raleigh West of the SC Conservation Bank. Since their major role is helping to preserve land as well as wetlands and marsh areas throughout South Carolina, I thought he might be able to address this question. Why would it be considered acceptable when filling in 11+ acres of wetlands in a very wet, marshy, coastal area surrounded by homes, to mitigate the risk of this process by purchasing mitigation credits for areas up near Lake Marion especially while breaking an established Conservation Trust? How in the world could this possibly help offset the risk of coastal flooding here? He went through some of the methods used for mitigating wetlands, and was open to me following up with the specifics of our situation here.

So as you can see, although it was considered Furlough Week, I did not sit back and rest!

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