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 LEGISLATIVE - ISSUES STREAMLINE OUR GOVERNMENT'S STRUCTURE “Failure to restructure government, failure to bring horse-and-buggy government into the space age, will perpetuate a system that answers to nobody, listens to nobody and serves nobody other than its own special interests.” Governor Carroll Campbell, Second Inaugural Address, 1/9/91
In the past 85 years, South Carolina has conducted at least 15 major reorganization studies, all of which reached a similar conclusion - that state government in South Carolina has far too many government agencies, making it fragmented, unwieldy, and unaccountable. The resulting overlap of functions and the duplication of efforts make our government both expensive and inefficient. Our agencies are aligned based upon antiquated funding streams rather than being citizen-centric and organized by the needs of the clients. The recent turnaround in services provided by the Department of Motor Vehicles provides an example of how quickly and dramatically an agency can transform itself through a change in structure. The agency is largely staffed with the same employees but the change in accountability led to significant improvements in service – with a budget that is a fraction of what it used to be. We should expect no less from the rest of government and must move beyond our antiquated bureaucratic structure to create an atmosphere that will provide for excellence. To do so, the S.C. Club for Growth supports the following four restructuring initiatives. Make agencies accountable to the governor Much of South Carolina’s state government is run by part-time governing boards and commissions that are largely unknown to the general public. Although the governor is often held accountable for the actions of agencies, the reality is that it can take a new governor years to replace a board and even then he or she still has no actual control over agency operations. This diffused executive authority leaves no one responsible for the overall direction of government. The old maxim that “when everyone is in charge no one is in charge” is largely true in this case. As the Legislative Audit Council reported in 2003, in our current system “there is no central point of accountability for the performance of these agencies. Because non-cabinet agency directors are not directly appointed or terminated by the Governor, the Governor is not directly responsible for the performance of these agencies….Governors in neighboring states have greater authority to appoint department heads than South Carolina’s Governor.” This diffused authority and inadequate oversight is part of the reason for our high cost of government in South Carolina. Reduce the amount of constitutional officers The average state in our country has 4 popularly elected constitutional officers. In South Carolina, we have over double that amount with 9. Not only are we are the only state in the country that elects the Adjutant General, our Adjutant General is the only popularly elected position in the entire US military. This is a vestige of our 1895 constitution, ratified at a time when all women and most African-Americans did not have the right to vote, which structured a weak governor’s office sharing power with eight other constitutional officers and the general assembly. Having such a large number of elected officials in the executive branch frequently results in our government working at cross-purposes and producing inconsistent public policy. We urge the legislature to allow the public to vote on amending the constitution so that the following constitutional offices could be converted from statewide-elected offices to agencies run by appointees of the Governor: the Secretary of State, the Adjutant General, Superintendent of Education and the Commissioner of Agriculture. Unfortunately, many legislators have allowed petty politics to keep voters from re-examining our state’s management structure. An editorial in The Island Packet summarized these actions in 2004 by saying, “what the senators did had nothing to do with increasing efficiency and accountability in state government or eliminating waste and saving money. It had everything to do with protecting the positions of several well-connected constitutional officers who benefit from not having to answer to the head of this state's executive branch — namely, the governor.” Streamline health care agencies We believe that no area is in greater need of help than the state’s eight health and human service agencies. A 2003 Legislative Audit Council report states that if our state’s health care programs “with similar services were consolidated into fewer agencies, under the authority of a single cabinet secretary, obtaining help from state government would be made less complex…administrative costs would be lower.” A full three years later our legislature has failed to act on their own report’s recommendation and our state’s health care agencies continue to employ twice as many secretaries as nurses. The result is that many of our state’s neediest clients continue to get poor service and our taxpayers continue to foot the bill for an inefficient system Bring accountability to our government’s support functions We support the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Administration to provide the following support services to all state agencies. We are the only state in the country that empowers a quasi- legislative/executive board to oversee the support functions of our state. This unseen “4th branch of government,” the 1100+ employee Budget and Control Board - provides services and support to every state agency and drives up the cost of government services, which is 130% of the national average in South Carolina. While they may be named different things, it is important to note that all of the other 49 states in the country have the entity that provides their support service under the sole authority of the governor. A Chief Executive of any well-run company or well-run state must have that direct line of authority in order to have the accountability needed to be successful. Therefore, we urge the legislature to quickly create a Department of Administration responsible for the human resources, information technology, property services, and procurement functions of state government. Back to Issues |
  
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