On only one day of the year will you find so many military commanders together in one room in South Carolina. Once a year the governor calls the various base commanders together for a briefing, so they can brief HIM on important issues. That meeting was held Tuesday. [Read more...]
Payday lending veto overriden
June 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment
State lawmakers have overridden the governor’s veto of stricter regulations for payday lenders. The vote was 105-4 in the House, 39-3 in the Senate, after the General Assembly returned to the statehouse to deal with vetoes.
Before a vote on the bill was taken on the Senate floor a month ago, Darlington Democrat Gerald Malloy held out his support of the compromise until the last minute, saying that the bill didn’t do enough. Tuesday, he went a step further, and said that supporting the legislation would put the smallest payday lenders out of business, and favor large companies which would benefit from the new regulations.
He read from a letter sent to him by a small lender who operates only one office. ” ‘ They want this bill because us small guys will dwindle away and they’ll have a monopoly.’ So I put that before you. And is that what we’re doing? Is that what it will be, when we look at this like Monday morning football, after it’s done?” [Read more...]
TRAC (Tax Realignment Commission) on track to begin
June 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment
A plan to scrutinize the state’s tax structure has made it through a House-Senate conference committee and passed the Senate.
Lexington Senator Nikki Setzler announced the progress in the Senate Tuesday:
“We bring you a unanimous conference committee report signed by all six members, which is a combination of a House bill and a Senate bill that we think gets us in a posture to do a comprehensive study of the tax system in South Carolina, which is badly needed.”
The South Carolina TRAC commission is designed to include 11 members, with no members from the General Assembly.
Setzler says a major hurdle was a compromise on hiring of staff. In that case, the House pushed for no staff:
“They didn’t want to lock the General Assembly into long-term costs and positions. We came to a very reasonable compromise that says the commission can hire a consultant or consultants who will direct the commission, but those persons have to be approved and the funds for their hiring have to be approved by the Senate Operations and Management Committee and by the Speaker of the House,” Setzler explained to Senate colleagues.
The compromise passed the Senate by a bipartisan vote of 41-3.
State Ports Authority to be restructured
June 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment
The South Carolina Senate has overridden Governor Mark Sanford’s veto of a bill to restructure the State Ports Authority. The most contentious feature of the new statute is that the governor is now prevented from firing state Ports Authority Members–at will. It also mandates that members of the ports board have certain business or industry-based qualifications, experience or expertise.
Berkeley Senator Larry Grooms doggedly pushed the measure through, saying that it gives the state access to high-quality jobs.
“We have to grow our jobs and the the way we can is to play to our strengths and the greatest strength that we once had was our ports authority and I want to restore that strength. I want it to be the job creator that it once was,” says Grooms. [Read more...]
Challenge in Arkansas awaits Passailaigue
June 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment
The South Carolina Education Lottery Board of Commissioners is gearing up to find a new leader. Earlier this month Lottery Executive Director Ernie Passailaigue was tabbed to be the point man to start up a new state lottery in Arkansas. For his move, Passailaigue will be receiving a hefty bump in salary. Arkansas lawmakers last week approved paying Passailiague $324,000. His current salary in South Carolina is $227,000.
Passailaigue says he is eligible for his 28 year retirement next June and he had planned on announcing at his annual evaluation in July that he would be retiring next year. Passailaigue says it tough to leave his native South Carolina, but the challenge facing him in Arkansas has rejuvenated him.”This just came along and a combination of events made it something that was hard to turn down. Not just in terms of the obvious compensation, which is always an issue, but the other parts of this is really dealing with a challenge that may be we can do something special in Arkansas, too.”
Passailaigue says he is proud of the success of the Education Lottery and it could not have been done without a dedicated team of professionals.
Passailaigue says recalling the days of building the lottery from scratch beginning in 2001, he knows that in his new job he will again have to muster up the tremendous energy and focus to build a successful lottery in Arkansas.
“You’re basically looking at a commitment of at least six to nine months of your life you can just peel off the calendar and just understand that you don’t have a personal life. You have to take nine months of your life span and says this is going to be devoted 24-7 to this enterprise.”
Passailaigue says his new enterprise will be called the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery because all the net proceeds by state constitution must go toward college scholarships.
Passailaigue says his team in South Carolina has built a world class lottery. Passailaigue points out that the first estimates by the Board of Economic Advisors was that in its best year the lottery would gross a half billion dollars a year. Passailaigue says this year the lottery will gross over a billion dollars. Also before the start up of the North Carolina Lottery, in 2006 the South Carolina Education Lottery grossed well over a billion.
“We grossed $1.145 billion. Net obviously is important because that’s what the educational programs are all about. If you look at the educational programs we’ve funded, it is over $2.25 billion dollars since start up in January 2002. We have succeeded expectations.”
Passailaigue adds that the South Carolina Edcuation lottery ranks seventh in the world by La Fleur’s magazine for per capita instant ticket sales.
