Chad Walldorf of ReformSC has promised the movement to stack the Legislature with Sanford drones will be "transparent." After getting shut out of a ReformSC soiree featuring not one, but two, governors, a reporter at the Spartanburg paper estimates that it’s no better than "translucent:"
With rampant speculation that ReformSC is a tool to target legislators on a rumored "hit list," this did nothing to help the group’s image. Despite their talk of transparency, ReformSC seems to be translucent at best.
It’s not that I don’t trust these people — though most reporters maintain a healthy dose of skepticism — it’s that so much of the information was second-hand.
As Jason Spencer notes, "chances are, when someone or something political isn’t comfortable with scrutiny by the press, there’s a reason why."
Anyway, that’s Jason Spencer’s complaint. Here’s mine…
Related Posts
You let the governor and HHS get away with overseeing a $250,000,000 contract (Medicaid Transportation)in complete darkness…and you have the nerve to talk about transparency?
ReformSC is a toy for Sanford…something he builds his reputation on.It is of no importance to the people of SC, as like all Sanford ploys it is self-serving and affects no one but him, and his image.
Medicaid Transportation deals with the poorest of the poor, and the sickest of the sick…and you and your paper care not one bit.
Shame on you. You are interested in politics, not people. Shame on you.
GreenvilleGuy is absolutely correct. The State newspaper is interested above anything else in it’s own image. When the last restructuring legislation turned into disaster the State simply ignored the problems. They continued to praise the legislation even though the real world results were very different from what was reported.
That’s the problem when you have an entity, in this case the State newspaper, push for a piece of legislation and then that same entity is responsible for reporting the results. It becomes a defacto conflict of interest.
bud continues to labor under two misconceptions.
— that we actually restructured government. Here is what I wrote at the time about the rather sad excuse for "restructuring" the Legislature was willing to pass in 1993.
— that there is any practical connection between what I do and say and what those folks down on the second floor do in covering news. I hereby invite bud to come spend a day with us, and see just how profoundly separate church and state can be. No masks or cowls, though — he’ll have to give his real name at the front desk.
GreenvilleGuy — another who dares to criticize oh-so-boldly from behind the skirts of anonymity — labors under another sort of misunderstanding, and this one is more general. He assumes first, that there is something inherently wrong in the Medicaid changes he mentions, something so egregious that no decent, honest person could possibly disagree with him, and then he leaps from there to the newspaper being derelict because it doesn’t — here’s the particularly perverse twist — ACT upon that editorial opinion in the way it covers news.
Coincidentally, I had a meeting this morning with the new head of HHS. It was just a get-acquainted thing, but I hope to post something brief on the meeting before the day is out. By the way, Emma Forkner was so bold as to meet with me and express her views using her real name. Imagine that.
Brad, I’m merely reporting the end-product. That is the printed version of the State newspaper. The re-structuring was a catastrophe. I know, I lived with the nightmare. But the State never reported on any of the problems other than to repeat a few incidents that other newspapers had already reported. Show me some concrete evidence that the State newspaper ever pointed out the calamity that was the South Carolina Department of Public Safety in the mid-1990s. Some of the stuff that went on there would make your skin crawl. The place was just a basket case of cronyism and inefficiency. It was much, much, much, much worse than anything that has occured at the SCDOT. I was simply appalled at the lack of journalistic oversight of the State’s pet restructuring project. So please Brad, don’t give me that separation of responsibilities nonsense. I saw the results and I know how badly the State failed it’s readers in those dark days.
No, what you’re doing is reporting the extremely poorly informed (and if you wish to refute that point, you’ll have to start by doing SOMETHING to establish your bona fides), highly subjective impressions of a person who hasn’t even bothered to find out what this newspaper advocated, which bore no resemblance to the bizarre reporting relationship between the head of public safety and the governor in the mid-90s — something that, by the way, I recall reading about a good deal in this newspaper, all of which made me shake my head that Safety wasn’t made a part of the Cabinet.
As for the other — if you think there’s anybody in our newsroom today who has any sense of ownership of our editorial position regarding the Power Failure issues, you have GOT to come spend some time here, so that you will have a sense of perspective.
Brad…I wrote you under this name as I would rather not lose my job. Sorry about being selfish that way.
Health and Human services has the right to contract…just not in private.
Several government offices and others have tried to find out about this contract and they have not been able to do so. The General Assembly passed a law providing for oversite and they have not been given the information needed to do that. HHS has refused any attempt to force transparency.
Poor and sick people are being treated badly. Rich out of state companies are making lots of money. Many of us watch every day as people we know are treated without digintiy.
But I suppose now you have had a power meeting with the new person in power…so end of story and all is good.
And once again, if you could be more specific about what you’ve seen, and establish your bona fides (and please pronounce that properly in your head as you read, although the way Holly Hunter said it in "O Brother Where Art Thou?" was a hoot), we might gain an important new perspective on the situation. As it is…
… well, as it is, I’m not sure what it is we’re not finding out about. And if "several government offices" have tried to get the info and failed, I’m not at all sure what you think a newspaper — which has no powers of subpoena or anything along those lines — will find out. Of course, I realize that such protests sound a bit like Solozzo assuring Michael Corleone: "You think too much of me, kid — I’m not that clever." But we’re not.
Let’s see; that’s two — how many more movie allusions do I get?
State government restructuring is one of those issues where idealism runs head-on into the real world. The 1993 restructuring clearly did not do what Caroll Campbell and company said it did. We still have the DOT commission. We have the weird arraingement at DPS where the governor can appoint the director but can only fire him/her for cause. DMV, the third component of the old highway department is a cabinet agency (I think) and does appear to be in the best shape of the 3.
Things have settled down at all 3 agencies, at least for now, but what a wild ride we went through to get there. If someone could actually sit down and run the numbers my guess is the costs involved in the earlier restructuring fiasco he would find that the cost to the state was in the 10s of millions of dollars in waste and inefficiency. Simply having 3 sets of support functions (accounting, payroll, procurement, IT) where 1 existed before has to involve a staggering sum of money.
As an example, I know that we had a severe reduction in trooper strength that undoubtedly contributed to the high crash rate on our highways. That was necessitated by the costs of the aforementioned 3 for 1 (in support functions). Was there ever any mention of this in the State?
None of these claims requires any great inside information to uncover. Simply looking at a chart of how the agencies were structured after the legislation plus a few visits to Broad River Road to see the trailer park would have been enough to trigger a journalistic investigation. But to my knowledge none ever occurred.
The State was not alone in it’s failure to discuss this matter. Most South Carolina residents were unaware of just how wasteful state government had become in those days. And that waste was the result of a very poorly thought our restructuring plan.
So I would say to my fellow South Carolina citizens whenever the State editorial page begins to write about government restructuring you better hang onto to your wallets. Because another restructuring effort could very well lead to the same mess we had in in the early 90s.
Wow…Mr. Brad, I am shocked.
Your apparent lack of zeal in any effort to discover what is hidden from the public at HHS is incredible.
It has been said many times before, that what SC needs more than anything else is an active 4th estate. You statment suggests that is true.
I respect you, and know that you would not be in your position if you were not talented, and able. But maybe 2 weeks at newspaper bootcamp might do you some good…
"You have what, a six to eight week training program? Which is PERFECT
for me, I’m going to come out of here a lean, mean fighting machine."