Harvey Peeler

The South Carolina Senate Republican leader says he’s ready to do away with the Transportation Commission that makes decisions on which roads are built or repaired in the state.

Gaffney Sen. Harvey Peeler told The Greenville News he’s ready for the next governor to take full control of the transportation department.

Lawmakers revamped the agency’s governing board in 2007, but some are not happy with the results.

Peeler is especially upset that Interstate 85 across the Upstate needs repairs but the commission approved more than $100 million to begin a $2.5 billion project for I-73 to run from I-95 to Myrtle Beach.

Not everyone agrees with Peeler. Fountain Inn Sen. David Thomas says while there are concerns, he sees no reason to change the 2007 law restructuring the agency.

Courtesy of the Associated Press

For more information on this story, visit The Greenville News.

Texas governor and GOP presidential contender Rick Perry added an endorsement from one of the Upstate’s most powerful elected officials in a brief stop to the area late Saturday morning.

Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, R-Gaffney, threw his support behind the candidate who has shot to the forefront of the Republican presidential race just one week after announcing his candidacy in Charleston.

Peeler cited Perry’s job creation record in explaining the endorsement.

“His record as governor of Texas is what we need,” Peeler said in an interview with the Herald-Journal. “We desperately need a leader in the White House, and he’s the person.”

Columbia GOP consultant Wesley Donehue, who works for Peeler, tweeted later Saturday that Peeler had called Perry months ago to ask him to seek the Republican nomination.

Perry did not make a statement or speak to the media during his impromptu stop in Gaffney, set in a restaurant parking lot adjacent to the town’s giant peach water tower. A crowd of about 50 people attended the gathering.

After the stop, Peeler rode on Perry’s campaign bus to an official event in Rock Hill, the final campaign event of Perry’s two-day swing through the state.

Ed Morrell of Boiling Springs stopped to watch Perry in Gaffney and said he’s strongly considering voting for the Texas governor in South Carolina’s first-in-the-South Republican presidential primary tentatively slated for February.

Morrell, a 72-year-old Republican, said he’s “still shopping around,” but likes Perry’s jobs and low unemployment record in Texas.

“That’s going to be a great advantage,” he said.

According to data released on Friday, Texas’ unemployment rate was 8.4 percent in July, the highest level there in nearly a quarter century.

But that rate is still much lower than the latest figures from the Palmetto State. South Carolina’s unemployment rate was 10.9 percent in July.

At a stop in Greenville earlier Saturday morning, Perry garnered the endorsement of former U.S. ambassador to Canada David Wilkins.

Wilkins, a Republican, served 25 years in the South Carolina Legislature, including as House speaker for 11 of those years.

According to the Associated Press, Wilkins was a top fundraiser for George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns and served as his South Carolina campaign chairman in 2004.

Courtesy of The Spartanburg Herald-Journal

Mark Harmon Will Help Caucus Continue Passing Needed Conservative Reforms

COLUMBIA, SC – August 17, 2011 – Mark Harmon will take over as Executive Director of the South Carolina Senate Republican Caucus. Prior to this position, he served as the Caucus Research Director for the past six years.  He is replacing Lisa Manini-Sox who served in this position for the past 10 years.

During his time as Research Director, Mark worked on several important pieces of legislation, the most recent of which include Tort Reform, Voter ID, Card Check, and Reform of the Unemployment System. He has worked hard at advancing many important conservative issues and will continue to do so as the Executive Director.

“I want to thank Majority Leader Peeler for bringing me onto his staff nearly six years ago, and also for allowing me the opportunity to take on this new challenge. The past six legislative sessions I spent working in the South Carolina Senate as Majority Research Director have been nothing short of rewarding. My goal was simply to do everything within my abilities to help the members help the people of our state by enacting the most commonsense and conservative laws. In my new role as Executive Director, I intend to continue pursuing an agenda to make South Carolina prosper, while also working to build upon the Republican majority in the Senate,” said Mark Harmon.

The goal of the Executive Director is to help expand the Republican majority in the Senate. Mark will help the caucus raise funds for reelection and work with all the Republican Senators to have a unified direction for each legislative session.

“Mark has done an excellent job serving the caucus as the Research Director. I am happy to see him take over this position and look forward to the the future successes his leadership will bring about,” said Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler.

Mark is a native of Gaffney and graduated from Clemson University with a bachelor of science degree in Ceramic and Materials Engineering.

Gov. Nikki Haley signed the point of sale bill, alleviating part of the tax burden on businesses and individuals that led to slowed real estate growth. The bill was passed after a long effort on the part of the General Assembly to find a compromise, a process that Sen. Harvey Peeler was an instrumental part in.

Today Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler received a perfect score from the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce in their 2011 Legislative Scorecard. The Chamber tracks key bills in this report to determine what votes would support or hinder businesses in the state. On the eight key votes the Chamber followed this session, Peeler voted in a way that will help businesses thrive.

“As a businessman himself, it is no surprise to us that Senator Harvey Peeler has not only stood with South Carolina’s business community, he has led the fight. Senator Peeler was the Senate’s loudest voice against union intimidation in our state and he was the primary sponsor on the tort reform bill. Senator Peeler is willing to tackle the critical issues in order to transform South Carolina’s economy and create jobs in this state,” said Otis Rawl, President and CEO of the SC Chamber of Commerce.

South Carolina’s Chamber of Commerce has been leading the fight for the businesses of the state for over 30 years. In the state legislature, they have consistently pushed for measures that help boost South Carolina’s economy, particularly in the midst of this current recession. Some of the issues covered on this year’s scorecard included tort reform, anti-card check legislation, tax breaks and government spending.

Senator Peeler said, “There is nothing more important than putting South Carolina families back to work. While the federal government does everything it can to kill economic growth in our nation, conservatives are fighting back at the state level with commonsense legislation like tort reform. We will also continue working hard to strengthen our right-to-work laws so that unions don’t run companies like Boeing out of South Carolina as they have in other states.”

Several area lawmakers said last week a consensus has been reached among most lawmakers to reconfigure the 4th Congressional District in a way that retains Spartanburg County’s electoral clout.

The new district would draw about 60 percent of its population from Greenville County and the remaining population from Spartanburg County.

Under the largely agreed-upon scenario, another portion of each county would be placed in other congressional districts. Some of northern Spartanburg County would move to the 5th Congressional District and part of southern Greenville County would go into the 3rd Congressional District.

“I think it’s a consensus of both delegations,” said Sen. Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, R-Gaffney. “I think the Upstate is pretty much set.”

Us­ing 2010 census fig­ures, 58 per­cent of the popu­lation in the current 4th Dis­trict comes from Greenville County, while 37 per­cent of the popu­lation is from Spartanburg County.

The plan favored by most lawmakers is contingent on the state House and Senate reaching a compromise between competing plans.

Officials return to Columbia on Tuesday to resume redistricting work.

The final stages of the debate don’t appear to hold as much drama for the Upstate as earlier this summer, when a Senate committee passed a plan splitting Spartanburg County between two districts and leaving Greenville County in one district.

That move took Spartanburg lawmakers by surprise and set off a scramble to preserve more of the county in the 4th District.

The remaining fight to play out this week centers on the location of the state’s new 7th Congressional District. South Carolina gained another seat because of population growth in the last decade.

The upper and lower chambers of the Legislature, both controlled by Republicans, have been at odds over where the new seat should be.

The House-passed plan placed the new seat in the Pee Dee area, but a bipartisan coalition of senators passed a plan that located the new district in the Lowcountry.

Several lawmakers said Rep. James Harrison, R-Richland, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, has been working with Senate leaders on a new redistricting plan they hope will lead to a compromise.

The plan would keep a roughly 60 percent to 40 percent population split between Greenville and Spartanburg counties, move the new seat back to the Pee Dee area and keep more of the counties around Charleston in the 1st Congressional District.

Harrison did not return repeated calls to his legislative and business offices last week.

Federal panel a possibility
If the House and Senate can’t reach an agreement, a three-judge federal panel would take over the process of creating the state’s new congressional map.

That development would delight Democrats, who would have a chance to pick up a second majority-minority district.

Sen. Shane Martin, R-Spartanburg, said he’s focused on making sure the process doesn’t go in that direction.

“My intention is to get this done legislatively and not send this to the courts,” he said.

Martin said that his top priority is ensuring the new congressional map includes the 60 percent to 40 percent population split between Spartanburg and Greenville.

“Keeping the percentages is what I’m most concerned about because I think if you try to split it any other way, you set Spartanburg up to be split up multiple times in the future,” he said.

Failing to lock in the ratio would be a “disaster” for Spartanburg, Martin said, because lawmakers in the decades to come would feel no obligation to keep the Spartanburg and Greenville metropolitan areas together as communities of shared interest.

“As legislators, I feel it’s our duty to get a plan passed and let somebody challenge it in court rather than have a stalemate and let the courts take over from day one,” he said.

Hurdles remain
Even if lawmakers can agree on a plan, it would have to clear several remaining hurdles.

Because of South Carolina’s history of infringement on the voting rights of African-Americans, the state’s congressional and legislative redistricting proposals must comply with the guidelines set up by the federal Voting Rights Act.

The courts or the U.S. Department of Justice can determine compliance with the act.

Also, the state’s new congressional map is expected to face lawsuits from groups opposing the layout of the districts.

Federal law requires redrawing electoral lines every 10 years to reflect population changes captured by the census.

Courtesy of GoUpstate

South Carolina hospitals breathed a collective sigh of relief when the General Assembly overrode Gov. Nikki Haley’s veto of funding for the certificate-of-need program last week, but they’re still nervous about its future and are gearing up for a fight to save it.

They’re likely to get that fight from state Sen. Harvey Peeler, who told Greenvilleonline.com that he’ll introduce a bill next session to end the program or at least give it a “major overhaul.”

The Department of Health and Environmental Control’s certificate-of-need review program is designed to prevent unnecessary duplication of high-ticket items, like multi-million-dollar imaging systems and new hospitals where none are needed.

Haley vetoed funding for the program, saying it represents “politics at its worst.”

“Health care decisions should be decided by real community needs, not by Columbia politics,” she wrote in her veto letter to House Speaker Bobby Harrell.

That sent the health care community into action, with the South Carolina Hospital Association alerting its members to push legislators for the override.

“Some of the comments made in the Senate highlight what I would consider to be a misunderstanding of how health care works in this country,” said that association’s executive vice president, Allan Stalvey. “It’s so much different than other businesses.”

But Peeler, who is chairman of the Senate Medical Affairs Committee, said the CON process needs to be “totally overhauled from bumper to bumper.”

The Cherokee County Republican said he watched with disgust as factions in his district fought over the right to open a multi-million dollar radiation treatment center for cancer patients. The battle took years, he said, and in the end, they both set up the service.

“They get tired of fighting or run out of money,” he said. “But the loser is the patient who needed treatment. While they’re arguing in the courts, there are constituents out here who are suffering.”

And sources say Haley’s view is colored by a decade-long CON fight in Columbia involving three hospitals, one of which she worked for, that battled over lucrative open-heart services. In the end, the entities reached an agreement themselves.

Peeler says the health care landscape should be left up to competition.

“The state is now in the position of picking winners and losers and it takes forever to get these things resolved,” he said. “Competition drives quality up and price down.”

But while more competition resulting in lower charges is a “wonderful economic theory,” it doesn’t work in health care, said Columbia health care consultant Lynn Bailey. Eliminating CON would mean chaos in the provider community, which will increase costs, she said.

Federal law requires hospital emergency rooms to see everyone, whether they’re insured or not. Many of those patients are admitted for costly care they can’t pay for, Bailey said. Hospitals use paying patients and lucrative services to offset those costs.

Without a CON process, companies could set up specialty centers for profitable services, such as orthopedic surgery, and cherry-pick the better-paying and least sick patients, she said. General hospitals would then be left without enough resources, forcing them to close or end low-revenue services.

“Imagine what happens to the balance sheets,” said Stalvey, who says protracted CON fights and political involvements are rare. “Eventually, I’m not sure they can maintain financial viability.”

Malcolm Isley, vice president of strategic services for Greenville Hospital System, said the CON process is important to efficient health services planning. It allows facilities to make their business case and demonstrate the need to make sure health care dollars are being used wisely.

“The ideas behind CON are valid,” he said. “Without it, we won’t have that level of oversight.”

That’s even more important as health reform, with its emphasis on containing costs, is rolled out, he said.

Bon Secours St. Francis Health System also issued a statement supporting the CON program, which averages about 65 applications a year on its $411,317 budget, said DHEC spokesman Adam Myrick. It also decides about 200 other related cases, he said.

Courtesy of The Greenville News

South Carolina’s labor department is changing the way it inspects the state’s amusement rides in the aftermath of a children’s train ride accident that killed a 6-year-old boy, the agency announced Wednesday.

Starting Sept. 1, the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation will use specially licensed outside contractors to review dozens of amusement rides and thousands of elevators around the state.

That work has been done by state employees. Now, LLR auditors will randomly review the contractors’ work, director Catherine Templeton said.

“Under the current system, only one set of eyes passes over each elevator or amusement ride,” Templeton said. “We rely on our inspectors to be perfect every time out. … We think this measure of accountability will eliminate complacency and errors by inspectors, and thereby improve the overall safety of elevators and amusement rides.”

Benji Easler was killed and 28 others injured when a train ride derailed at a Spartanburg park March 19. In May, The Associated Press reported that the inspector who was fired after he falsified a report about the train that cleared it to run had issued only one violation in more than three years of examining rides.

State labor officials fired inspector Donnie Carrigan after he admitted falsifying his inspection of the miniature train ride at Spartanburg’s Cleveland Park. Carrigan green-lighted the train for operation days before the derailment.

Two days after the crash, state officials said Carrigan admitted that even though he had never done a test run of the train because its battery was dead when he arrived, he approved the ride. It opened the following weekend, a week earlier than initially planned, and crashed on its first day this season.

County officials blamed the crash on excessive speed, saying the train was going nearly three times faster than recommended when it rolled off its tracks and into a ditch. Their investigation has been turned over to county prosecutors, who will determine if anyone will be criminally charged.

An attorney for train operator Matt Conrad has said investigators never interviewed his client beyond his statement during an ambulance ride to the hospital in which he said, “I was going too (expletive) fast.” Grant Varner has said his client was in shock when he made that statement. Conrad has said he is distraught over the crash, but did not think he was to blame.

South Carolina lawmakers are considering a bill setting new standards for miniature train rides, requiring a speedometer and device that regulates the train’s speed. One family injured in the crash has sued, accusing county officials of not adequately supervising the train operator or inspecting the park’s tracks and alleging that state officials failed in their train inspection.

Courtesy of The Sun News

The state Senate gave final approval Wednesday to a plan anchoring South Carolina’s new 7th congressional district in Beaufort County.

The boundaries of the new district, to be created as a result of population growth, still must be considered by the House of Representatives.

The House, however, wants the new district in the northeastern corner of the state surrounding the Myrtle Beach area.

Republican leaders in the Senate cautioned members against putting the new district in the Lowcountry — far from where the House wants it — but senators approved the Beaufort-centric district by a 25-15 vote.
Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort and a strong supporter of the Lowcountry district, said the region “has been split and the forgotten tail-end” of other congressional districts for too long.

Davis repeated that he does not favor the Lowcountry district because it would give him an entrèe to run for Congress.

“I will not run for it,” he said. “Instead, I will run for re-election as Beaufort County’s state senator in 2012. I am just starting to get some traction at the State House on things I care about — government restructuring, equitable school funding, tax reform, spending cap, the Jasper port, et cetera.”

The chairman of Beaufort County’s legislative delegation, Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R- Bluffton, said he would support the Lowcountry district when the House considers it.

“I absolutely support the Senate version,” Herbkersman said. “It’s a good plan for our part of the Lowcountry, because it gives us more focused representation than the (House) plan.”

Under the Senate’s plan, the district would include Beaufort, Jasper, Hampton, Allendale, Barnwell, Bamberg, Colleton, Dorchester, Berkeley, Williamsburg and part of Georgetown counties.

House and Senate negotiators will try to compromise on the location and configuration of the new district before the legislature reconvenes July 26. Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell has said he doubts the House will accept a district in the Lowcountry.

If the two chambers can’t agree, the issue would be turned over to a panel of three federal judges to resolve.

Courtesy of the Island Packet

S.C. Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler today expressed his full support for the passage of a federal balanced budget amendment, and gave his encouragement to the sponsors of a bill that would send an amendment for approval to the states. U.S. Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee are leading an effort by congressional Republicans to implement a permanent law requiring the federal government to pass a balanced budget. In a letter to the senators, Peeler said he would work tirelessly for ratification of the amendment if it was sent to the states.

“It is vital that Congress pass a balanced budget amendment. Quite simply a balanced budget amendment is the only mechanism that will ensure that Congress gets federal spending under control,” Peeler wrote. “Without it, America will spend itself into insolvency and will mortgage our children’s future. To prevent the grave harm that will come to our nation from a debt crisis and to ensure that Congress spends no more than it takes in, Congress and the state legislatures must act to amend the United States Constitution to require a balanced federal budget.”

If passed, the amendment would require Congress balance every budget, cap spending at 18 percent of Gross Domestic Product and require a two-thirds majority vote to raise taxes or raise the debt ceiling. The bill has the support of every Republican in the U.S. Senate, and benefited from the hard work of South Carolina’s U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint.

The amendment passing both houses of Congress by a two-thirds vote is only the first part of the process. At least 38 state legislatures have to ratify the amendment, which means that support at the state level is key to its adoption.