For the past six years, Jimmy Bales has chaired the Chamber of Deputies and Memorial Resolutions Committee, where he has acted as a guardian of legislation that proposed renaming state properties in honor of people the legislature deems worthy of such honors.
During the 2019-20 session, he facilitated the renaming of 30 roads, bridges, intersections and exchanges for living and dead South Carolinians. Among the honorees were three former legislators: Peden McLeod, who served in the Senate in the 1980s; George Bailey, who served in the Chamber from 1985 to 2006; and the late Rep. Ronnie Young, who had just died. (To his credit, he also played a role in preventing a couple of petty efforts to name an interstate exchange in Greenville County after Donald Trump or Barack and Michelle Obama – efforts that had less to do with honoring homonyms than keeping people who didn’t like them.)
Then, after Bales lost his candidacy for re-election in the June Democratic primaries, his former colleagues determined that “as a tribute to his many years of service, it would be appropriate and appropriate to name a stretch of highway in the Lower Richland community in his honor. “The only reason the signs have not yet been raised is that the House and the Senate are each holding the other body’s resolution, rather than taking the risk of not getting credit.
But it is not suitable. It is frankly disturbing, because it suggests that instead of phasing out the practice of naming roads for living people – and especially living politicians – the Legislature is doubling, or at least retreating.
It makes you wonder: what part of “John Hardee” or “John Courson” or “Earl Morris” or “BJ Gordon” or “Gene Carmichael” or “just stop” the legislators don’t understand? All of these are ex-public servants who looked like perfectly good, decent and honest people at the time when the Legislature decided to name public infrastructure after them – or at least it didn’t seem likely that they would be convicted of anything. And yet, they were all convicted of crimes, after roads and intersections were named after them and their names were affixed to signs – which in Mr. Gordon and Mr. Carmichael’s case are still standing.
Yes, we know: Mr. Bales was a friendly and good-natured representative, a fixture in the back row of the Chamber of Deputies, who became loved in part because his colleagues were witnesses of so much trouble, as his health degenerated and he collapsed several times on the floor of the Chamber and had to be carried on a stretcher. And no, we have no reason to believe that he will be convicted of any crimes.
But, like everyone else at the time they were honored, he is still alive and breathing, which means we can’t know for sure if he won’t be. Just as we cannot know for sure that Mr. Bailey and Mr. McLeod will not be.
It used to be common for the legislature to name infrastructure based on newly deceased legislators and even current members; for a few years there, it seemed that Charleston County lawmakers had made a pact so that something would be named after them all. It was an improper practice that fuels the public perception that our lawmakers believe that they are somehow better than the rest of us, that they deserve great honors that will last well beyond their lives.
Over time, at least in part because of public criticism and the growing number of former lawmakers convicted of crimes, the Legislature began to use naming rights primarily to honor people who died in the line of duty – soldiers serving in Iraq, police and state soldiers killed on our roads. He still called public property for living people, even for living public officials. But when he honored former legislators, he tended to be people who had been out of the legislature for many years.
What makes Bales’ case particularly disturbing is that he has been absent from office for less than three months – which is a lot like the way lawmakers used to do this sort of thing. Which was never a good way of doing things.
Lawmakers should simply let competing Bales’ resolutions die. And instead of finding more ex – or, God forbid, current – colleagues to honor, lawmakers need to ban naming anything for anyone who is still alive. Or at least stop naming people who served in the legislature.
Even if the honorees don’t end up on the wrong side of the prison walls, the practice still gives the public more reason to believe that lawmakers are more interested in what is best for them than for the public.
