Loftis, Byrnes, Tillman, Thurmond... Flair?

In some respects, Lake City has come a long way.

In 1898, Lake City's African-American postmaster and his infant daughter were murdered after a terrible lynching incident. Thankfully, we don't have incidents of this sort anymore.

Rather, Lake City is known today as the birthplace of astronaut Ron McNair and university benefactor Darla Moore, as well as a trio of professional athletes, Derrick

Read More

Free Times details state's pension reform dilemma

The cover story in this week's edition of the Free Times of Columbia digs deep into the mess that's been stirred up around our state retirement system and the punitive measures being considered by lawmakers to right the ship.

The entire matter can be boiled down to a simple fact which leads to a simple solution.

Simple fact: During the past 12 or so years, thanks to deep and damaging budget

Read More

Loftis op-ed on vouchers, tuition tax credits doesn't mention cost

Curtis Loftis has been a pretty good treasurer so far, questioning the expense of giving so much of the state retirement system to strange investments by contract investors, pushing Governor Nikki Haley to honor her campaign commitments on transparency, and generally blocking Haley's attempts to steamroll her policy preferences through the Budget and Control Board.

Last year, I recall that

Read More

Haley to educators: No raises. Now get back to work.

I don't know how Governor Nikki Haley does it all.

She must be working 20-hour days on our behalf, traveling here and there -- even several days last week to New Hampshire, probably trying to bring some of its jobs down here -- and having to escort former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney everywhere he goes (he's so needy), all the while managing to raise her children, and keep up with sending

Read More

Educators opposed Haley Public Employment Tax

After writing last night about the Haley Public Employment Tax -- the 4.5 percent tax levied by the Budget and Control Board last week against all public employees in the form of an unnecessary health insurance premium increase -- I learned this morning that representatives of one educator organization -- but only one -- was present and "opposed the increase in the strongest terms."

The South

Read More

Haley flew to New York fundraiser after issuing school funding vetoes

Intrepid reporters at The State newspaper have uncovered part of Governor Nikki Haley's itinerary in New York City, no thanks to Haley's office help. "Haley left Columbia the evening of June 29, according to her spokesman, on a flight paid for by the Republican Governors Association," the newspaper announced this week.

To get to this scrap of information, reporters discovered donations totaling

Read More

Oconee's Lucas illustrates transparency with weblog

Governor Nikki Haley made "transparency" a buzzword in last year's gubernatorial campaign. She hasn't found it imperative to exercise a lot of it since ascending to the first floor of the Capitol -- yes, it is a literal descent from her former perch on the second floor, but I suggest she and her acolytes would call it an ascent to the governor's throne in her first-floor warren -- and that hasn't

Read More

Paris, Munich, New York, and New Delhi is next

In the past month, Governor Nikki Haley has indulged her professed love of travel by visiting Munich, Paris and New York City. This fall, she's headed to India.

The trip to New York took some by surprise, as Her Excellency demanded -- by way of an executive order -- that the General Assembly ignore the sine die joint resolution it adopted in early June and return to Columbia until its work -- as

Read More

Loftis promotes financial literacy to Easley 4th graders

If there's one place in South Carolina where lawmakers often seem afraid to go, it's a public school classroom. And who can blame them? After all, our lawmakers alone have the power to make public education a high priority in our state budget, which they don't; and they alone have the power to raise the money necessary to adequately fund the needs of public schools, which they don't.

And it's

Read More

Will Haley's book feature a chapter on veto overrides?

Really, a book?

Her Excellency, Governor Nikki Haley, has been in office slightly more than five months.

In that time, she has booted the state university's largest benefactor in history from the board of trustees and replaced her with a campaign contributor. See Moore, Darla.
She fired the state's popular and effective retirement system director and quickly named a replacement without

Read More

House sustains Haley's veto of treasurer's funding

Effectively taking sides in the brouhaha between Governor Nikki Haley and Treasurer Curtis Loftis, the House just voted to sustain Haley's veto of funding for the State Treasurer's office to conduct follow-ups to audits. The vote was 18 to 93.

Loftis told media last night, "She chose to take a swipe at me and harm taxpayers. There’s nobody in state government whose job it is to follow up on

Read More

Feds threaten to cut funds; Zais scrambles to keep them

Says The State newspaper:Trying to head off the 11th hour loss of more than $100 million in federal money because it has not spent enough on special education in the past few years, the state could send a whopping $75 million to school districts by June 30.

The state’s failure to spend enough on special education in the past, according to federal formulas, also means the U.S. Department of

Read More

Haley excludes retirees from meeting with bond agency

Back in March 2010, Rep. Nikki Haley delivered a speech to the Spring Valley Rotary Club in Columbia titled "Transparency in State Government." One presumes, as she was taking on several more-experienced opponents in her party's gubernatorial primary, that Haley was "for" transparency. But no record exists of the speech, so we're left to wonder.

It's a fact that Haley ran in that primary, and

Read More