This is not a column about all the bills that paranoid SC legislators couldn’t wait to file to overturn all federal laws that they imagine could ever exist. And there are a lot of them.
These are not Republican lawmakers who want to tell companies who they can’t fire and who they can’t keep out of their business and, in the case of banks, who they can’t refuse to lend money to. It is not the Democratic senator who presented a bill to abolish the death penalty and another to add hate crimes as an aggravation of the death penalty.
This is not the disturbingly large number of lawmakers who came up with bills that seem harmless at first, but actually allow retired police officers to take their hidden weapons to companies that have a sign saying guns are not allowed, or to their home without inform you, like everyone else has to do.
It is tempting to spend today distorting these and other outrageous projects that await attention when the 2021 General Assembly meets on Tuesday.
Cindi Ross Scoppe
But most projects are not even heard, much less become law. And this is often fine for sponsors, who submit bills not because they want to change the law, but because they want to tell constituents how much they tried to change the law. So, unless there is a reason to think that there will be rare exceptions, writing about bad accounts only serves to encourage sponsors to present more bad accounts.
I had to remember this more than usual this year, because the 982 bills that legislators were quick to file before the legislative session started are by far the most pre-filed bills I’ve ever seen, and may include the largest collection I have. I’ve seen ridiculous and malicious accounts. But if we want to improve our status, we need to focus on the accounts that need to be approved instead of the ones that don’t need to be approved.
In today’s editorial, we write about the types of laws that the legislature needs to pass this year. Here is a look at some of the smart designs that need more attention than they’re getting, with less emphasis on the big issues discussed in the editorial and more on creative approaches to our problems:
H.3103 by deputy Chris Wooten would demand what is essentially a boat driver’s license, the need of which seems obvious each summer, as more and more inexperienced sailors go to our increasingly crowded canals, putting everyone else in the water in Danger.
H.3199 by deputy Seth Rose would eliminate the option of direct voting. To vote for all candidates in a party, voters would have to … vote for all candidates in a party.
H.3200 by Mr Rose would close a gap in the South Carolina lobbying law by applying it to people who lobby city and district councils, rather than just those who lobby the legislature.
H.3227 Mr Wendell Gilliard would demand that nursing homes allow residents to have private video calls with their families, providing equipment if necessary. At first glance, it seems a little nosy, but it’s based on an existing law that says nursing home residents should be allowed to have private visits with family members – so you can think of it as giving homes a way to comply with a law that some have violated during the pandemic.
H.3276 Congressman Doug Gilliam would let the governor replace an interim sheriff who loses an election. It is pathetic that we live in a state where the governor has to appoint interim sheriffs often enough that someone doesn’t even dream of the need for such a law, but we do, so it’s probably a good idea.
H.3289 by House Speaker Pro Tem, Tommy Pope would ban judges from setting bail for someone who was arrested while on bail on another prison. I don’t like to limit the discretion of the judges, but that is obvious. Can combine well with S.212 by Senator Thomas McElveen, who increases the sentence for crimes committed by people on parole.
S.69 by Senator Gerald Malloy, he would give criminal suspects two days of credit against any possible prison sentences for each day they were held in prison pending trial. The downside is that it can reduce sentences for people who need to spend a lot of time in prison. But it should serve as a lever to prevent prosecutors from letting people rot in prison without being convicted.
H.3520 by deputy Bruce Bryant and S.188 Senator Greg Hembree would prevent people from running for office if they had ethics fines pending, which seems like a reasonable way to get all those ethics swindlers to pay their fines or get them out of office.
S.138 Republican Senate leader Shane Massey would inject reasonable responsibility into the dispute by repealing the law that says that if you sue someone for injuring you in an accident, the defendant cannot inform the jury that you were not wearing a seat belt .
S.146 by Senator Massey would increase the exemption from the jury duty from 65 to 75, which is the new 65.
S.345 by Rep. Mia McLeod would require the state Department of Labor to create applicable rules for companies to protect their employees from COVID-19 and allow them to use compliance as evidence of good faith in a lawsuit. The bill does not protect employers from lawsuits, but it is the missing element that would make it entirely reasonable to provide temporary liability protection for companies.
Cindi Ross Scoppe is a writer for The Post and Courier. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Facebook or Twitter @cindiscoppe.