Week 22 Update
Sunday, June 18, 2023
Overview:
Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there! Hope everyone has a chance to rest and celebrate with loved ones today and thank the fathers in your life. This past week in the State House, we voted for and passed a budget for the State of SC. We also passed several critical bills which will go to the Governor to be signed into law. It is the Speaker's belief that we will not have to return to Columbia again this coming week. We passed a conference provision that if the Governor vetoes anything in the budget, they may either be sustained if determined to be acceptable by the conference members, or held over to be voted on next January.
General Assembly Passes 2023-2024 SC Budget:
As you probably already heard, the budget was passed and it received a 92-14 vote. You can see the details of the budget here, H.4300. While this budget accomplished several important measures such as raising the pay for state employees including teachers and first responders, as well as lowering the state income tax, it did not go far enough in many respects. As a 38-year veteran investment advisor and financial planner with a Master of Science in Financial Planning, budgeting is my strongest credential. I have been honored to serve on the Education & Public Works Committee and will continue to do so in the remaining year of my first term. But the criteria for appointing representatives to various committees is not based entirely on your resume or credentials, it is heavily based on seniority. The Ways & Means Committee is the one that debates and prepares the state's budget, and their meetings often conflict with other committee and sub-committee meetings, including many on which I sit and must attend. Having reviewed the budget prior to voting, I see many areas where we can do a much better job of focusing on the core functions of government and encourage the private sector to do more to fund other costs. I pledge that in my second term, I will make arrangements to be sure that either I attend as many of the Ways & Means meetings as humanly possible, or work with someone as fiscally conservative as myself to do so. Some members voted against this budget outright as a protest of what they believe is not the best use of our taxpayers' resources. Not having a budget is simply not an option, and I asked several of these members if they had attended Ways & Means Sub-Committee or Committee meetings to try to enact change when the budget was being written. The answer was virtually always no. I refuse to have our state be forced to enact a "Continuing Resolution" similar to what our disastrous Federal government policy has been for many years. We must have a budget, and thanks to the SC Constitution it must be a balanced budget. We will not get to a leaner, more core government-focused budget just by protesting at the last minute. It will take hard work all during the Session, and proper planning to be sure that we make the changes necessary. Many of the changes my fellow fiscal conservatives and I strongly want to see will also require legislation already introduced to be brought up in committees and passed.
Strengthening First Steps for Our Children:
We voted to concur with the Conference Committee's findings to amend the First Steps bill, H.4023. Sitting on the K-12 Subcommittee, I was able to hear the First Steps leadership discuss the many aspects of this bill that will simplify and streamline their efforts to reach as many underprivileged children in South Carolina as possible. This pre-K program prepares children to enter elementary school with a much better foundation to succeed. The vote for passage was bipartisan and unanimous and represents the best of what we are able to accomplish when we focus on addressing problems and fixing them.
SC First Responder Line of Duty Death Benefit Fund:
We passed S.108 with a 103-0 vote, another bipartisan, unanimous decision, which will provide better death benefits to the families of first responders killed in the line of duty. We intentionally backdated the effective date two weeks to ensure that the family of James Michael Muller, the firefighter who was killed on May 26, 2023, in Irmo will receive life insurance benefits. No amount of money will ever be enough to take away the pain and suffering of the family of a first responder who lost his or her life while serving the public. It is hoped that this additional financial benefit will at least provide for some of the family's needs during this terrible time of tragedy.
Urgently Needed Bond Reform to Keep Repeat Offenders in Jail:
When I was running for office and knocking on doors, I asked our Mount Pleasant Chief of Police Mark Arnold, who happens to live in District 80, what the most important thing we could do in Columbia was. He said nothing was more urgent than bond reform to keep violent, repeat criminals off the streets and behind bars. After undergoing debate and changes in the Senate, the bill came back to the House this week and was passed 89-16 mostly along party lines. Here are the details of H.3532. Some House Members seem to think that it is far more important to protect the liberty of someone who has been arrested multiple times than to protect the safety and security of law-abiding citizens. There is no doubt that mistakes do happen, but police need to know that the law makes sense and will back them up rather than risking their lives to bring someone into custody only to see them released again and again, often repeating the same criminal, violent behavior each time.
Protecting our Venues to Include Utilities, Telephone & Telegraph Systems:
S.330 passed unanimously 106-0 and provides for tiered levels of punishment for any willful destruction of our utilities, grid system, telephone & telegraph, etc....
And That's a Wrap:
Based on a vote we took to allow the Speaker to declare "Sine Die" until noon on January 9, 2024 after having conferred with majority and minority leaders on any matters arising from the Governor, we officially completed the work for this first year of Session 125. While there are a number of bills I truly would have like to see passed, we did pass a lot of strong legislation this year. We will be able to "hit the ground running" in January since any bills that were not considered or completed this year remain in committee and can be taken up immediately.
Around the District and Mount Pleasant:
One of the top subjects I continually am asked about is the progress of the Highway 41 widening. Behind the scenes for the last year even before being elected, I had numerous phone calls and meetings with members of the Charleston County Council, Charleston County Engineers, and our Dunes West and Park West POA Presidents. After the Council voted on the "Road to Compromise" to include a new highway through Laurel Hill Park, the next step was to send the application when ready to the US Army Corps of Engineers. Many neighbors had expressed great concern about this road through the park, which is currently in a conservation trust. The estimated cost of this road alone is at least $30,000,000, and would require plowing down approximately 20 acres of trees, paving with asphalt through natural wetlands, and building a bridge over the marsh. My thought all along has been that this is not actually a bypass of the Phillips Community, which was the major justification for building it; rather, it is a bypass of Bessemer Road. This statement was affirmed by one of the Charleston County Engineers in a subsequent discussion. Having asked newly elected Chairman of Charleston County Council Herb Sass for a meeting last December, I met with about seven engineers along with the Chairman. My request was to see the data that justifies building this whole new road, and it took at least a month to receive this. What it showed was that in addition to Dunes West and Park West, neighborhoods such as Carolina Park, Planters Pointe and Rivertowne were all included in the traffic patterns to justify the road through Laurel Hill Park. Yet none of the latter three neighborhoods are likely to use this new road on a daily basis, or even very often at all. After another meeting just six weeks ago which included our new Councilman Larry Kobrovsky as well as both the Dunes West and Park West POA leadership, we expressed strong concerns that this brand new, very expensive, and very destructive road would not likely change driving patterns on Highway 41, and would have numerous negative impacts on the forest itself and the homes that will back up to this new road. Despite our meeting, we just received word that the County went forward and the Army Corps of Engineers not only has the application but has already put out the 30-day public notice as of June 9th. Whether you live adjacent to this proposed road or not, if you see that this is a huge waste of both natural resources, taxpayer money, and disruption to the surrounding area, please consider providing input by writing to: Jeremy.M.Kinney@usace.army.mil, identifying the project of interest by public notice/file number (SAC-2018-00205), or use the following address:
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
ATTN: Regulatory Division
69A Hagood Avenue
Charleston, South Carolina 29403-5107
With enough public outcry, the Corps would have to hold a public hearing, which would allow the serious concerns about this road to be aired. None of this would change the plans through the Phillips Community, which is that the residents desire a middle turn lane, as well as improvements to the current intersections so that traffic can flow more freely rather than backing up at the light in front of their homes on Highway 41. The Laurel Hill Parkway, if built, will bypass Bessemer Road, which already bypasses the Phillips Community. I urge everyone to take a few minutes to write down your thoughts on this critical matter. For more information, please visit this link for the Highway 41 Project.
During the summer and fall, I will be updating you from time to time when there is something meaningful to share. Please feel free to reach out to me regarding any issues where I can be of service in our District or Mount Pleasant. I am currently pursuing several such matters, and often it takes a while to find the right person or solution, but I do not give up. I hope everyone has a wonderful, safe, and restful summer!
Warmest Regards,
Kathy
Representative Kathy Landing
South Carolina State House District 80