Reflecting back on the last year, the staff of South Carolina Radio Network has selected the top news stories of 2013.
These were stories that changed the state, changed communities or changed lives. Some of them received a lot of attention and some of them were perhaps overlooked.
The stories are not ranked in any particular order.
Some of the most popular hiking trails in South Carolina’s mountain parks remain closed for repairs after record summer rains.
The rains damaged hiking trails in Jones Gap State Park, Caesars Head State Park, and the Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area. All three parks are located in northern Greenville County. Some damage was also reported at Table Rock State Park in Pickens County.
“We’ve spent the last couple of months assessing those trails and have come up with a plan to redesign some of the trails, relocate some of the trails,” State Parks director Phil Gaines said. “And probably more common is to… put some labor towards the trails and address some spots that were eroded away.”
He said the worst damage was along older trails such as Hospital Rock in Jones Gap, where a rockslide destroyed the hillside in June after six inches of rain fell in less than two hours. Gaines said the agency will wait before rebuilding that particular trail, in order to see how it handles the spring weather.
“We literally lost that trail due to pieces of the rockslide,” he said. “We want to assess that through the winter months and see if the area is stable during the spring and we’ll probably either reroute that trail completely or have to abandon it completely.”
The Dismal Loop trail in Mountain Bridge is also still closed, according to the park’s website.
Gaines explained that newer trails fared better because they are designed to meander gradually across a hillside as they ascend, rather than going straight up. The design helps to prevent severe erosion, he said.
The state parks service expects to spend about $1,000 on tools, Gaines said. But he expected to save thousands in labor costs by handling repairs in-house.
“The majority of the work will be done with labor from our folks,” he said. “We’re utilizing this time of year. When it’s slow at other places, we can bring in other folks.”
This image of Oakley was posted by a friend to the Orangeburg County Fire District Facebook page
Three women have been arrested and charged in the killing of an Orangeburg County fire chief.
The State Law Enforcement Division said Branchville fire chief Alan Oakley, 48, was fatally stabbed in the neck Saturday. On Tuesday, the agency has charged Oakley’s wife Melody Oakley, 40, Ann Anderson, 47, and Carrie Brown, 25, each with murder and conspiracy. Both of the Oakleys were from Branchville, while Anderson and Brown lived in Orangeburg.
SLED agents released few details about the killing, but warrants stated that all three women planned the murder in advance. SLED became involved in the investigation at the request of the Branchville Police Department.
No motive was given for the killing.
Along with his job as fire chief, Oakley was also president of the Orangeburg County Firefighters’ Association and was employed by the Orangeburg County fire district as an vehicle maintenance specialist II. Oakley was retired from the Army National Guard.
According to Ott Funeral Home, services will be conducted at the Branchville High School gymnasium 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 4 in the Branchville High School Gymnasium. His burial will be in Ott Cemetery in Branchville. Firefighters say he will be buried with full military honors.
Boeing South Carolina Vice President Jack Jones addressed reporters earlier this month.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the 2,000 job openings at Boeing South Carolina and were wondering what it takes to work there.
Boeing South Carolina announced it would expand its workforce this coming year, and it has tripled its footprint in the state and announced plans to open a second site in Ladson.
In four short years, Boeing South Carolina has taken a vacant section of land in North Charleston and a workforce with zero commercial plane building experience to a productive, expanding plant that employs more than 6,000 people and produces about 10 wide-bodied airplane per month.
Just mention you work at Boeing in the state, and you might earn some instant respect among your peers — or, at least, that’s how Boeing South Carolina’s Vice President and General Manager Jack Jones sees it.
“It’s a prestige job,” he told a group of reporters earlier this month during a tour of the plant. “And you say you’re from Boeing or you work at Boeing, and there’s a prestige within the community.”
Perhaps you’ve heard the rumors circulating. There’s not enough experience or job training in the state to support hiring a lot of in-state employees. The site has a high turnover rate. The workforce is missing the mark in production due to lack of experience.
These are untrue, according to Jones. In fact, he said, the turnover in South Carolina is less than the turnover in Puget Sound, Wash., where Boeing has another facility with a unionized workforce. Jones quantified the numbers as a 6-to-8 percent turnover rate in South Carolina versus a 10-percent turnover rate in Washington state. Jones attributed the different rates to South Carolina’s lack of competing aerospace manufacturing.
“We are a unique facility and there aren’t a lot of other manufacturing facilities like Boeing here. They are in Seattle, so they have much more opportunity for choice if they don’t want to
do the job they’re doing, they can change. And you don’t have that same choice here,” Jones said.
And as far as lacking experience and being unable to hire South Carolina workers? Jones said 85 percent of Boeing South Carolina employees are from a 100-mile radius from the site.
“It was certain organizations in Washington (state) saying you won’t get the experience you need that is capable to building a commercial airplane,” Jones said. “We’ve obviously now put that to rest. We have, we are delivering airplanes.”
And, sure, they lacked experience, but they are building that experience one commercial plane at a time, Jones said.
“We wouldn’t have committed to a new IT center, a design center … if we thought we had to bring everybody from Seattle,” Jones said. He added that South Carolina workers are seen at all levels within the site — not just the high school grads working as mechanics, but also in management and engineering. “We get great support from the state, Ready SC, Trident Tech, training people before we ever put them on the floor.”
The state training and university training helps the company find the right workers.
“We have no problem with the technical skill of the local people that we’re hiring,” Jones said, adding that his team occupies spots on university boards throughout the state.
But if you just have a basic high school education, Boeing is looking at you to apply, too, Jones said.
Jones said high school graduates must have a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — called STEM — background for them to make through initial screening, however. And that’s a tougher find in the state, Jones said.
“We have to push STEM harder in the state. They need to step up their game,” Jones said. He added that he’s talked with legislators and with Gov. Nikki Haley to push more STEM in high schools.
From job posting to filling a job, it takes about 8-10 weeks, according to Jones. Once an applicant is accepted, it can take up to eight weeks to train that employee. Once training is completed, the employee will then do on-the-job training before he or she is expected to work on the planes, Jones said. He called the process “definitive and elaborate.”
With one day remaining in 2013, South Carolina is on pace to see the lowest number of highway fatalities in over 30 years.
The Highway Patrol reports 734 people died on Palmetto State roads trough Dec. 30. That is down from 830 over the same point last year, according to the agency records. South Carolina has not had this few deaths since 1982, according to state records researched by The State newspaper. However, U.S. Census data shows roughly 1.5 million more people living in the state since the early 1980s.
Trooper David Jones is crediting that to better enforcement and more public awareness of safe driving. “In South Carolina, our three deadliest killers are speed violations, DUI, and unrestrained drivers and passengers. That’s what we’ve focused on heavily over the past year,” he told South Carolina Radio Network. “As a result of that, we’ve seen our numbers drop.”
He said an increased PR campaign on the dangers of the road known as “Target Zero” has reached a larger audience. Jones said he believes tougher restrictions on DUIs have also contributed to a decline in alcohol-related deaths.
Jones said Department of Public Safety officials want to drop that number even further. For example, he pointed out that 269 motor vehicle passengers who died this year were not wearing seatbelts. That accounted for over 55 percent of fatalities in that category.
“If you’re seven times more likely to survive a collision by having your seatbelt on, that’s over 100 more lives we could’ve saved,” he said.
To this point, 89 pedestrians and 113 motorcyclists have died on state roads. While the number of pedestrian deaths is down slightly from 115 last year, motorcycle fatalities inched up from 109 in 2012.
Industrial hemp can be made into rope, according to advocates.
Marijuana’s less intoxicating but still federally illegal relative, hemp, could be grown in former tobacco fields around the state, if a pre-filed bill in the S.C. Senate moves forward.
Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, pre-filed S. 839 Dec. 10. The legislation would legalize industrial hemp, which would be defined as different from the more potent marijuana.
Bryant said legalizing industrial hemp could benefit S.C. farmers, especially as one of the state’s cash crops declines.
“As we see the tobacco production go down which is a good thing maybe farmers could possibly start up a production of hemp,” Bryant said. “We’ll study it very carefully when the legislative season starts and see if we can figure out a way to allow this crop that could be a little bit of a boost to the agriculture community in the state.”
Bryant said soil conditions necessary to grow tobacco crops are similar to hemp’s needs.
Industrial hemp is used for paper, rope, textiles and more. Proponents of the fiber say the possibilities are endless — even using the plant as fodder for livestock, a biofuel and in making plastics.
Bryant said he is unaware of any previous attempts to pass legislation seeking to allow industrial hemp in the state. If the legislation passes, South Carolina would become the ninth state to allow industrial hemp to be grown.
Efforts to legalize hemp nationwide was rejected earlier this year. One of those states allowing hemp is Colorado, which also has legalized recreational marijuana, flouting federal law.
But, Bryant said, the ultimate goal of the proposed legislation would not be to create a “gateway” for the “gateway drug” — as marijuana is called by anti-drug advocates — to be legalized in the state.
“The types of hemp plants that would be permissible in this bill are ones that do not have any significant amount of the chemicals that are so attractive about marijuana,” Bryant said.
Bryant’s bill defines hemp as different from the illegal drug: “Hemp and marijuana are genetically different cultivars of the same plant species and are scientifically distinguishable from each other.”
Bryant said he’s merely proposing a potentially lucrative crop for the state and that he expects the legislative process to iron out further details when senators return for the January session. The bill will begin in the Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources.
The last day of 2013 will be mostly sunny to partly cloudy with highs in the middle 50s in the Upstate and upper 50s in the Midlands and Lowcountry.
Tonight, New Year’s Eve, will be mostly clear with lows in lower 30s in the Upstate, middle 30s in the Midlands and lower 40s in the Lowcountry.
There’s not quite an app for it just yet, but the South Carolina’s high school equivalency test is going digital.
And it will cost almost twice as much to take.
Starting in January adults who are trying to get the equivalent of a high school diploma, or General Educational Development (GED), will be required to take a computerized exam. The price will also increase from $80 to $150.
S.C. Department of Education spokesman Dino Teppara said it’s part of a nationwide effort designed to ensure adult students are ready for the modern business world. “It’s just a recognition of the fact that is the direction our society is going. You look at “smart” phones, iPads, and tablets and how we do business, it’s being transformed by technology.”
The newer exam is more rigorous and will be streamlined into four sections: math, science, social studies, and English. 150 points will be required to pass each section for an overall 600 score. A new section will also be added that would indicate a test takers’ preparedness for higher education, including college and career training programs. It’s the first update since 2002 and is designed to align with new U.S. Education Department standards.
Teppara brushed off concerns that those low-income test-takers unaccustomed to computers would struggle. “We’re talking about being on a plant floor. You’re going to (need) the ability to operate computers to do robotics,” he told South Carolina Radio Network. “There’s many opportunities out there. The GED is going to open the door to either higher education… or right away at a business.”
He added that Education Department staffers are always available to help test-takers prepare.
Teppara said up to 12,000 South Carolinians take the test each year. South Carolina has averaged a 75 percent pass rate for the past three years, he added.
State Rep. J. Roland Smith (FILE)
One of the longest-serving members of the South Carolina House of Representatives announced he will not seek re-election next year.
The Aiken Standard reports that Rep. J. Roland Smith (R-Warrenville) told the newspaper Monday he will retire. The 80-year-old Smith had hinted his plans when he previously said he would announce his future plans during the Jan. 13 meeting of Aiken County’s legislative delegation.
Smith told the paper that he wanted to make the announcement now because people were already talking about it.
The retired minister and rural mail carrier was first elected in 1989. Smith focused on child safety issues during his first few years in the chamber. He sponsored legislation that became law in 1992 which required child protection agencies to notify law enforcement within 24 hours of any criminal acts it discovered. He also sponsored legislation that set a 45 mph speed limit for school buses driving on city and county roads.
He eventually secured an appointment to the powerful House Ways & Means Committee, which is responsible for crafting a state budget each year. He also sponsored several successful bills that dealt with manufacturing and economic development tax credits during the 2000s.
But it was his time leading the House Ethics Committee that will likely cement him in South Carolina political history. Smith chaired the committee when it investigated and cleared Gov. Nikki Haley in 2012 for possible ethics violations during her time in the House. It was the first time a sitting governor had ever been investigated by the committee.
He is the father of Republican Rep. Garry Smith (R-Greenville).
Holding a SC flag, Chris Cox mows the Lincoln Memorial lawn in Washington, DC., earlier this year.
After he pushed a mower across the lawns of some Washington, D.C. monuments during the 2013 federal government shutdown, many nationwide dubbed South Carolina’s Chris Cox a hero.
Now, just like his mission to keep the lawns mowed for visiting veterans, the Mount Pleasant man is looking to provide additional help to disabled veterans.
Cox is establishing a foundation to help disabled veterans and their families with household needs. Cox’s foundation would do everything from cleaning to repairs on a vet’s home.
Cox said this veterans foundation is in the planning stages. But he said he has a vision: one where veterans would help disabled veterans.
“I’d like to see a memorial militia in each state,” Cox said. “All we need is a couple of guys. The fundraising is going to be used to pay some salaries for veterans to work on behalf of disabled veterans.”
Cox said helping veterans will be his mission for the rest of his life.
“It doesn’t take a lot to make them feel good,” Cox said.
Chris Cox said he plans to be in Washington, D.C., by the first of the year to continue drumming up support for this effort.
Sheree Bernardi contributed to this report.