The deadline for early filing is November 16th. I will be filing one bill now, and one likely in January. The first one regards requiring all critical infrastructure in the State of South Carolina to be protected from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), and that utility companies will offer a payment plan for installment of EMP hardware protection on homeowner’s houses and vehicles. A lightning strike that might cause a power surge and damage your house or electrical system is measured in picoseconds, where an EMP is measured in nanoseconds, 1000X faster than a lightning strike. The difference is, if an EMP were to hit your area or our state, without protection it could quite literally send us all back into the Dark Ages by “frying” all the electrical wires, silicon chips, and everything related to these. We have had EMP strikes in the past, but it was before we were so dependent on our electrical grid and silicon chips throughout our houses and communities. It can be caused by a nuclear explosion in the upper atmosphere (think Chinese Weather Balloons), or a solar flare due to increased activity from the sun. It would be devastating, and would not be a temporary power outage. The estimates of the death toll in our country are staggering. When I asked General McCarty of the SC National Guard about this, his eyes became very wide, and he said he was shocked to hear an elected official even talking about it. I read about it a couple of years ago in Wired magazine, and have researched ever since on what to do about it. It turns out there is a very reasonable solution, but it does no good if your house is protected but all the critical infrastructure around you fails. We all have to be protected from this very serious threat. To familiarize yourself with this further, you may consider watching the new documentary, “Grid Down, Power Up,” with Dennis Quaid. You can also look up “the Carrington Effect,” which was a solar flare that happened in 1859 and effectively wiped out all telegraph wires across the globe. Today, not only is the risk much greater due to our dependence on technology, but we have to add the nuclear blast in the atmosphere as a possible cause.

 

The other bill I am working on now will be a joint effort with Rep. Mark Smith. Imagine having the best healthcare you’ve ever experienced, for less money, and saving taxpayers millions of dollars. Sound too good to be true? Well, there is a long-term working model for this, and Mark and I will be drafting a bill to consider this for our state. If every teacher and every other state employee across South Carolina could benefit from this, the impact would be huge, and very positive. More later on that.

 

There is a specific body for the General Assembly legislators who represent Charleston County. We meet periodically to handle local issues that may or may not need to be passed by the General Assembly in Columbia. Many decisions can be made, such as local requests for funding of smaller projects, because the delegation receives funding annually from the GA to handle these needs as appropriate. Recently, the Charleston Delegation made headlines because the Chairman of the House Delegation, Representative Leon Stavrinakis (D), District 119 called a meeting of all House Delegation members to hear concerns from the public about the Charleston County School District Board of Trustees. Senate members were also invited to attend. The meeting lasted 3 1/2 hours, and was a non-stop complaint session from members of the public who may have thought that by attending, they would receive some satisfaction. Sadly, there was no effort made to explain to the public that the School Board was simply waiting on the results of an investigation regarding an employee complaint, and that investigation would lead to the next necessary steps. The Charleston Delegation had no jurisdiction in this matter, and in my opinion, this was a political stunt designed to play into the current emotion surrounding this issue. I believe that everyone’s time, and especially the time and effort of all of those attendees to the meeting are too valuable to waste it in this way. The only good part for taxpayers is that we are not paid for this time. We as legislators, including the Chairs of various committees and delegations, should always put forth a good-faith effort to solve problems, not stir up controversy. There is enough controversy about the Board of Trustees without us adding to it.

 

In August, several of our neighbors in the District who are also teachers asked me to write to the CCSD Board to request that they reopen their search for a new superintendent because they were about to consider offering a contract to "the last man standing" after someone had leaked the names of the 3 candidates online. Two of them had dropped out. As the only Charleston Delegation member who is both Republican and serves on the Education & Public Works Committee as well as the K-12 Subcommittee, I believed it made sense to look into it. A little research online revealed that Dr. Gallien had been the Superintendent for 5 years in Racine, Wisconsin, a school district a third of the size of Charleston County whose outside ratings were mediocre at best. They were ranked “C” in Academics and Administration, two of the areas most impacted by a Superintendent. Meanwhile, Charleston County had an overall “A-“ with a “B+” in the two areas mentioned. In my email, I urged them to consider opening the search back up in order to have more candidates. Although they all received my email before the meeting, and even discussed it, they moved forward with offering him a contract. After having received other verbal complaints from staff members for weeks, the Board received a formal complaint in writing, which was referenced above. We have all heard about the 9-0 vote to investigate this complaint. We have also heard that the investigation revealed that there was not a "hostile work environment” created by Dr. Gallien, but that he did violate a directive that was in place before he was hired and had refused to remedy that situation despite numerous requests by the Board for him to do so. The media is being disingenuous about this because the second part where a specific directive was repeatedly ignored is being left out of the discussion. This was the basis for Dr. Gallien resigning rather than fighting this further. Unfortunately, we as taxpayers will be paying for this costly mistake. I participated in a press conference the other day to set the record straight about the circumstances of how the CCSD Board came to be single-member districts, why this Board is not acting on the wishes of any particular group but rather representing their own districts who voted them into office, and why everyone including elected officials needed to just wait until the investigation results were in. For more information, you can listen to Kelly Golden’s podcast interview of me on this subject here.

Tuesday, November 7th is our municipal election, and the turnout is normally notoriously low. I would love for us to set a new record this year. If you think it’s not that important, you are definitely mistaken. The decisions made locally often impact our lives more than the ones out of Washington! Think about the pandemic and the decisions that were made at the local level. Think about all the problems we need to solve that somehow seem to keep getting kicked “down the road,” such as traffic congestion, flooding (although we’ve dealt with a lot of that already in Mount Pleasant), not enough recreational facilities for our children, too much residential expansion without the infrastructure and services to support it, and so on. It is hard to know who to vote for, despite the signs by the side of the road. You have 4 votes for Council, and I am recommending 2 people. Perry Rourk and Shari Sebuck. Technically, I cannot endorse as a financial advisor and have not put out any official endorsements. My reasons for naming Perry and Shari are as follows. Both are business people who have lived in Mount Pleasant a long time (Perry is a native and Shari and her husband moved her many years ago and opened Blackbeard’s Cove on 17). Both have children in our public schools here. Both have strong conservative values and if you think local elections are non-partisan, let me tell you from experience, nothing is non-partisan anymore. Both have stood up to the Mayor and Council when they believed things weren’t right, and would continue to do so as our voices on Council. Both live in District 80 on the north end of town, one in Rivertowne and the other in Planters Point. We have some unique problems on our end of town and really need people to speak out on our behalf. I will not tell you not to use your 4 votes, but do not vote for someone you know nothing about. The way the process works, your 2 votes that are less certain could actually cause your 2 votes that you really want to win to lose. Some differences in the ranking of 8 candidates may be as little as 10 or 20 votes. Also, Clay Duffie is head and shoulders the most qualified, knowledgeable candidate for Waterworks Commissioner, and is also a conservative.

Remember to vote on Tuesday, November 7th. And if possible, please text 5 of your friends. We want to demonstrate that the north end of town, especially the residents of District 80 really understand why it’s so important for our voices to be heard!

 

Have a wonderful November!

 

Warmest Regards,

Kathy

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Representative Kathy Landing

South Carolina State House District 80