by Phil Noble

Phil Noble

We hear a lot about lobbyists and special interest money in South Carolina politics but no one ever seems to talk about the hard numbers. So, here are a few numbers gleaned from 2011 lobbyist reports that are publicly available online at the SC Ethics Commission web site.

Read ‘em and weep.

SC has 542 registered lobbyists, and 545 lobbyist principals (the people who pay the lobbyist)

• there are 822 different lobbying contracts, often with one principal hiring multiple lobbyists
• 12 state agencies have lobbyists, mostly colleges and universities
• 36 separate contracts is the largest number of contracts for one lobbyist
• $11,118 is the average size of a lobbyist contract
• $142,000 is the biggest single lobbying contract from a single principal
• 22 lobbyists make over $100,000 a year in direct lobbying contracts alone
• $525,802 is the largest amount paid in various contracts to a single lobbyist
• $11,385,031 is the total paid to lobbyists in 2011 for lobbying contracts
• $12,113,965 is the total of lobbyist payments, including contracts and expenses
• $71,258 per legislator is the total lobbying cost per legislator, for 124 Representatives and 46 Senators

Who are these lobbyists? Many are former legislators, current and former political office holders and their families, former staff, and lots and lots of lawyers. And not all these ‘good ole boys’ are boys, of course ; there are many highly paid women lobbyists as well. Read the rest of this entry »

By Phil Noble

Phil Noble

The state Legislature convened in Columbia this week and quickly went to work. Given the results so far, we would have been better off if they had stayed at home – and there in lies a solution to the problem that has worked in many of other states.

So what critical problem or big issue did they tackle this week? Was it fixing our broken state budget? Or improving education? Or creating jobs?

Nope. None of the above.

Instead, the Senate passed a bill honoring two dead people – Pres. Ronald Reagan and Eartha Kitt, the famed African American singer and actress from the town of North – and then immediately got in a fight about it. As one Senator said, “I fully support recognizing President Reagan without having to diminish his great accomplishments by equating them to the actions of a liberal gay rights activist.”

How many jobs did this create?

Next, they took up debate on a bill to require unemployed people to pass a drug test before they could receive unemployment benefits. You would have thought we settled this issue back in September, when Gov. Haley made a big deal out of claiming that 50% of the applicants at the Savannah River plant failed a drug test. In fact it is less than 1 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

JACKSON — Call former Gov. Haley Barbour’s pardons of over 200 convicted felons what you want – egregious, nonsensical or — if you’re so inclined — justified. More worrisome, though, may be the volume of instances where pardons were issued but public notice requirements about them were not fulfilled.

It’s a bizarre turn of events that has led to a court order to halt the release of some prisoners, the potential rounding up of others and wiping the slate clean for scores of people long out of jail.

The pardoning power of governors and presidents is a well-known and important part of executive privileges. It’s there for deserving individuals who have simply exhausted all other avenues of possible reprieve.

More obscure to many – apparently even to some officials and their throngs of legal advisers – is Article 5, Section 124 of the Mississippi Constitution that succinctly requires proper advance public notice be made before a pardon request is granted by the governor.

In the case of scads of pardons issued Jan. 10, that didn’t happen. Many public notices pertaining to cases in counties all over the state weren’t published in the proper local newspaper far enough in advance of the issuance of the pardons. Many more evidently didn’t run at all.
Read the rest of this entry »