|
|
|
|
| B- | South Carolina |
• Population (rank): 4,321,249 (24)
• Average per capita income (rank): $21,875 (39)
• Total state spending (rank): $23,430,743,000 (23)
• Spending per capita (rank): $5,422 (21)
• Governor: Mark Sanford (R)
• First elected: 11/2002
• Senate: 46 members: 19 D, 27 R
• Term limits: None
• House: 124 members: 51 D, 73 R
• Term limits: None
The first thing to know about South Carolina government is that the governor can't do much without the legislature's cooperation; he doesn't even have direct control over many of the executive agencies. The second thing to know is that, especially in recent years, the governor, House and Senate have disagreed about virtually everything. The Budget & Control Board — the state government's administrative policy-setting body — has been mired in a morass of disputes involving its five leading players: the governor, the treasurer, the comptroller, and the chairs of the House and Senate money committees. Oft-changing alliances and misalliances inevitably determine state policy.
Take the Department of Transportation. A battle among the House, Senate and governor for control of the woefully underfunded DOT forced the 2007 legislature to hold a special session. All sides wanted reform — an audit of the department had revealed poor contract and financial management. But no decision was ever made. In fact, the result of the session was a hapless arrangement that created a new position, appointed by the governor, to reform the department, but left the legislatively appointed commission to select projects. The combination, as one DOT employee puts it, hangs a sword of Damocles over the department. Much-needed maintenance money for dilapidated highways will have to wait until some future date when the state stops treating the DOT like a political football.
Where politics isn't in the way, South Carolina does many things right. The Office of Human Resources provides sound human-capital planning, girded by technological tools such as e-recruitment and e-learning; director Sam Wilkins' weekly podcasts serve human resources staff at the various agencies an easily digestible bite of state and national issues affecting HR policies.
Even though the state is cash-strapped, it offers incentives to high-performing employees. For example, the Department of Natural Resources rewards groups that complete difficult tasks with exhilerating temporary missions, such as alligator-capture trips. Unfortunately, even such smart assistance cannot compensate for the problems in more challenged agencies — between voluntary departures and terminations, the Department of Corrections retains only 20 percent of its new hires after the first year.
On the information-technology front, South Carolina implemented the first wave of a new enterprise resource planning system successfully. A challenge for any state, the ERP was doubly difficult for South Carolina because the state made the tough decision to switch consultant-contractors midway through the $62 million project. The chief information officer and comptroller risked failure in order to get the job done right, but close oversight by a committee of 19 different agency stakeholders and a dedicated team of state employees has seen the adjustment through without a stumble.
South Carolina government is generally quite good at producing information; it's not always so good at using it. Each year, a Capital Budgeting Unit reviews every capital-improvement request from state agencies, evaluates them according to 15 criteria ranging from safety concerns to funding availability — and then places the evaluations in a file cabinet. Ostensibly they are to be employed later to prioritize the state's building plans, but most of the time they aren't employed at all. Neither the budget office nor the legislature asks for the scores, and so they are an exercise in wasted time, effort and data.
This is unfortunate in a state that produces a great deal of worthwhile cost and performance information, including accountability reports that review agency objectives and results, and forward-looking activity inventories that link agency goals to the budget. Some of these numbers aid in decision making, but too many are forgotten once they run into the twin meat-grinders of bureaucracy and politics as usual.
For additional data and analysis, go to pewcenteronthestates.org/gpp.