by Vincent Sheheen and Anton Gunn
published in The State
February 22, 2009
In the past three years alone, South Carolina has seen financial misconduct at the Department of Social Services, allegations of lax oversight at the Department of Insurance, questions about the activities of the Employment Security Commission, suggestions of wrongdoing at the Department of Corrections and allegedly inappropriate political interference with the Department of Heath and Environmental Control. Some of these agencies are directly controlled by the governor, while others are headed by appointed or legislatively elected boards.
The most troubling aspects of these recurring dysfunctionalities is the Legislature’s inability to discover or diagnose the problems within an agency or even understand if problems truly exist. We are failing on the front end, and on the back end. We lack the ability to root out waste, fraud and incompetence. And when we finally do discover problems, we lack the ability to adequately investigate and understand the causes to prevent them from ever happening again.
These underlying deficiencies in our government management require fundamental changes to the entire structure of the government. These structural changes are long overdue, but have yet to gain the support necessary to have a meaningful impact on how we meet the needs of our citizens and provide transparent accountability. If we are to move forward as a state, we must have these changes.
Until that occurs, we can immediately take three steps to improve our government’s accountability and investigatory power:
First we should create an office of inspector general as detailed in Senate bill 139 and House bill 3434. This position should be appointed for a specific term of office. The inspector’s sole functions should be to review agencies’ operations to uncover waste, abuse and incompetence. The inspector will have the ability to bring civil actions to stop legal violations and refer criminal wrongdoing to the attorney general and the State Law Enforcement Division. The inspector’s office also will be a place for state employees and other citizens to report wrongdoing.
Second, we should give our Legislature the ability and structure for conducting meaningful and regular oversight of state agencies, as laid out in S.136. Right now, the Legislature conducts no meaningful investigation into whether agencies and programs are meeting their specified goals. Programs float on toward infinity with no meaningful evaluation of their effectiveness by any politically accountable representatives. Agencies too often operate in isolation with no regular review except that of their own management.
Third, we should give the governor’s office more authority over state agency operations, such as provided in S.128 and H.3147. As we are currently seeing, agencies controlled by the governor are still subject to fraud, waste and incompetence. However, at least we know whom to blame for the problems. And a governor is able to take action to change an agency when problems come to light, if he so desires.
None of these proposals in isolation will solve our government’s ineffectiveness. In fact, all three taken together will not move our state as far as we truly need to go. However, these changes can be accomplished quickly - if we are willing to act on them. They will bring vastly increased accountability to our government, and they will help to restore confidence in our institutions. Why shouldn’t we enact them now?
Mr. Sheheen represents Kershaw, Lancaster and Chesterfield counties in the state Senate. Mr. Gunn represents Richland and Kershaw counties in the House.
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