Recent editorials from South Carolina newspapers:
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May 20
The Aiken Standard on the closing of the Lower Savannah Pre-Release Center:
The closing of the Lower Savannah Pre-Release Center in Aiken couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time for local governments. The closure could be costly for the CSRA, according to officials with the County, City of Aiken and City of North Augusta.
The South Carolina Department of Corrections announced in April plans to close the Wire Road facility in early June.
Aiken County Administrator Clay Killian, Aiken Assistant City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh and North Augusta City Manager Todd Glover said they were all hand-delivered a memo regarding its closing at the time of the announcement. The three said it was the first time they learned the facility would close.
The institutional staff, made up of 29 officers and 10 non-uniformed employees, will relocate primarily to Trenton Correctional Institution to “provide more resources in critical areas and create a more desirable officer to inmate ratio, ensuring institutional safety,” the release stated.
Where it hurts the area municipalities is the loss of inmates as a work resource, as there are no plans to replace the prison facility. The bad timing leaves the City, County and North Augusta scrambling to cover the sudden workforce loss in the middle of budget season.
Killian said the County budgets around $75,000 a year to pay 15 to 20 inmates $15 a day to work, performing janitorial services of animal control, litter pickup for solid waste and maintenance for county vehicles.
Aiken County Council learned recently it could cost more than $1 million to replace the labor lost due to the closing of the Lower Savannah Pre-Release Center.
Bedenbaugh said the City of Aiken utilizes around 32 inmates a day to assist with solid waste collection and to help with maintenance of the parkways and grounds. He estimates it could have an impact of a couple hundred thousand dollars a year for the City.
The City of North Augusta relies heavily on the labor for its materials recovery facility, which is used for recycling, Glover said. North Augusta can have upward of 15 inmates performing a variety of work, typically in solid waste, he said. It would cost about $180,000 to replace the inmate labor.
All inmates are paid $15 a day for the services, making it difficult to hire the same amount of bodies at the current minimum wage to replace the ones they’re losing.
Killian said one of the closest 1A facilities to Aiken is in Columbia and transportation would not balance the cost of using those inmates and noted having inmates in Aiken is beneficial.
“The state is saving a lot of money, but it’s going to cost the locals not having them. It’s a big benefit to have them in the community,” Killian said. “Everybody wants less government until it hurts them.”
The inmates will be moved by May 27.
Whatever savings the State realizes with this closure has been passed on to local municipalities left scrambling that do not have an inmate facility in close proximity.
But as for the lack of advance notice, there is no excuse for that.
Online: https://www.aikenstandard.com/
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May 22
The Herald-Journal on the public’s access to information:
You have a right to know what your governments are doing. It matters to you how they make decisions that affect your life. It matters how they spend your money.
State law is meant to protect your ability to monitor your local governments and school boards, but that law is weak and unenforceable.
Lawmakers are working on addressing that problem, revising the law to make sure that you can access the information to which you are entitled and to limit the ability of governments to keep their activities and spending secret.
City and county governments and school districts are required by law to give you public information when you ask for it and to conduct business in public meetings. The state Freedom of Information Act requires this.
But local governments have been violating the spirit and even the letter of the law for years. Local governments have charged members of the public outrageous fees for copies of documents and other information, far more than it costs to look up and reproduce the information. Public bodies have met in secret to discuss matters that the law requires them to discuss in public.
They have done so because there is no reasonable method to enforce the law. If you ask the county for a copy of an email, and the county demands hundreds of dollars for the copy, your only recourse is to undergo the expense and time of suing the county.
If your town council goes behind closed doors to discuss how it will spend your tax money, the only way you can force those discussions to be held in public is to sue the town.
Few people or organizations have the resources to bring litigation against local governments that violate the law, and these governments know that. So they feel secure in violating the law, meeting behind closed doors, withholding public information.
A bill working its way through the General Assembly would address this problem. It would create an administrator who could hear disputes about public information. If a local government denies you information, you could appeal to this administrator and he or she could force the local government to give you the information. On the other hand, if you were pestering a school board with frivolous, time-consuming requests, the administrator could rule for the school board.
The bill would create an enforcement mechanism for the Freedom of Information Act that wouldn’t force citizens to take on the costs of litigation to defend their rights.
The bill would also require local governments to respond more quickly to requests and would limit their ability to delay delivering information. And it would limit their ability to charge unreasonable fees for information.
The bill had been blocked in the Senate by a single senator, Margie Bright Matthews, D-Walterboro, but House members have restored hope for the bill through a procedural maneuver that may allow senators to bypass her objection.
South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act is meant to ensure that you can watch over your city and county councils and your school district to make sure they are making the correct decisions. It needs some teeth so that South Carolinians can enforce their rights without the burden of bringing a lawsuit. The bill needs to pass.
Online: https://www.goupstate.com/
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May 23
The Times and Democrat on the request of a female student to wear a hijab at The Citadel:
David Lauderdale writes a column for The Island Packet of Hilton Head-Bluffton. Lauderdale has won many awards over many years for his words about the people, culture, traditions and issues of the South Carolina Lowcountry. His columns are good, the type of stuff that makes the newspaper reader clip and save.
Many columns are humorous. Some are provocative. All are insightful.
Recently, Lauderdale ventured beyond the boundaries of southern Beaufort County to address controversy surrounding a Lowcountry institution that has seen its share, dating to the Civil War and before.
Many people who criticize The Citadel do not understand the South Carolina Military College. Without detailing its history, Lauderdale fosters understanding in the context of addressing why the institution was right not to grant the request of a prospective female student to wear the hijab, traditional Muslim headdress.
In the process, he hits the larger issue of a nation that has lost sight of what individual rights mean. As he states, the student is not facing discrimination, but The Citadel IS being treated unfairly.
We’ll summarize no further. Lauderdale says it best.
Here is an abridged version of his column:
“The Citadel is not for everyone.
“South Carolina’s military college in Charleston cannot be all things to all people.
“In fact, its essence is that it is one thing to a few people.
“The bigger problem is that we have become a nation with individual rights on steroids. .
“Citadel cadets learn that life inside those walls is not about ’I.’ Or ’me.’ Or ’my.’ It is about a corps.
“This is why The Citadel was right to tell an admitted student that an exception would not be made for her to wear a hijab, or headcover different from the corps. She requested the exception in keeping with her faith.
“But this is not about faith. It is about a corps. It is not about freedom of expression or constitutional rights. It’s about a corps. It is not about ’an outdated tradition,’ as defenders of the student claim. It is about a corps.
“In a corps, people give up themselves for something larger.
“People now claim rights that never existed. .
“Like the so-called right to wear whatever you want to wear at a military college.
“That’s foolishness. .
“So now The Citadel is portrayed as insensitive, at best, for sticking to its mission of building a corps.
” ’’The student involved said it was not fair. She always wanted to go to The Citadel and now she must give up one thing if she wants to get another.
“And why is this The Citadel’s problem? It shouldn’t be. It is The Citadel that is being treated unfairly.
“Perhaps the courts will be called on to sort this out. So be it.
“But the bigger problem is that we have become a nation with individual rights on steroids. And our greatest moments as a nation, and as individuals, have always been when we give up ourselves for the person on our left and the person on our right.
“It’s the kind of thing military schools teach very well.”
Online: https://thetandd.com/
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