We got a column this week from a member of the S.C. Freedom Caucus explaining why he was determined to kill the bill merging six of South Carolina’s uncoordinated, overlapping health agencies. I was excited about being able to publish an opposing opinion, since we had written so many pieces urging support for this most important government restructuring effort in three decades.

Then I read the column.

There were problems from the start — problems that made it impossible for us to publish even a heavily edited version. I decided to write this unconventional column to illustrate what’s wrong with the attacks on S.915, as well as what’s wrong with the Freedom Caucus itself. I’ve appended the lightly annotated text of Rep. Jordan Pace’s column to the end of my column online, so you can read the whole thing.

S.915 passed the House 98-15, passed the Senate 44-1 and was one perfunctory vote away from a House-Senate conference committee on the last day of the regular legislative session when another caucus member raised a procedural point that killed it. Senate and House leaders are working to revive it when lawmakers return to Columbia for wrap-up sessions next month. That’s why opponents are still fighting it.

At first, I was optimistic I could tweak a word here and there in Mr. Pace’s column to eliminate any incorrect and misleading information and then publish it:

• Delete “unchecked” before power, for example, since the governor would be able to hire and fire the director of the new Executive Office of Health and Policy; that person would be far more checked than the directors of the largest of the current agencies, who report to unaccountable, part-time boards. 

• Clarify the claim that the bill would “put in the hands of one person … the authority to compel Sheriffs to enforce mandates and quarantines”: The DHEC director already has that power, and under current law the governor can’t fire him; additionally, the Senate already removed that preexisting authority in its final version of the bill.

But the “compel sheriffs” criticism doesn’t make any sense once you know the DHEC director has had that authority since 1962. So should we eliminate that whole paragraph, which Mr. Pace listed as one of the “four major concerns” with the bill?

Other problems were existential — and in that way mirror the problem with how the caucus makes its arguments both in the House and on social media.

The column started by asserting that S.915 was not an extension of the vital work then-Gov. Carroll Campbell did in 1993 to drag our government into the 20th century, as Oran Smith wrote in a guest column a week ago. That to the contrary, it was “a radical departure from Campbell’s balanced approach.”

Dr. Smith, senior fellow at Jim DeMint’s Palmetto Promise Institute, worked in Gov. Campbell’s administration. Unlike Dr. Smith or me, who as a legislative reporter covered the entire two-year debate and spent several months focusing exclusively on the governor’s efforts to restructure state government, Mr. Pace was 4 years old at the time. You can learn a lot by reading, but he obviously didn’t: His claims about the goals and the results of the 1993 restructuring are not even distant relatives to reality.

Yes, Mr. Campbell favored efficiency, and he hoped that would be a byproduct of restructuring, as Mr. Pace suggests. But that was not his goal. Mr. Campbell was responding to a convergence of high-profile legislative and government scandals, and his primary goal was to put one person — the governor — in charge of the executive branch of government. That is, to consolidate power, which Mr. Pace insists Gov. Campbell did not seek to do.

A secondary goal was to consolidate the massive number of state agencies. He actually wanted to fold more than just those six agencies into a single health department. A disappointment I shared with Mr. Campbell was that we still ended up with eight.

All of this is to say the entire premise of Mr. Pace’s self-styled “polemic” is demonstrably and irrefutably wrong.

And what would we do about his claim that S.915 creates a “health czar” reminiscent of Dr. Anthony Fauci? (That name isn’t in the column, but it’s on the hit pieces being mailed out in Republican primary races, and all over social media.) That’s even easier to debunk than the Carroll Campbell claim: The bill gives the governor the power to fire the so-called health czar for any reason — like, say, if he doesn’t like the color of shoes the guy’s wearing. But it’s the rhetorical center of the piece.

A central complaint is about a study, authorized a year ago by the Legislature, of the need to consolidate health agencies, and specifically about the Boston Consulting Group, which Gov. Henry McMaster’s administration selected to conduct the study. Mr. Pace argues that the company has a liberal bias, which skewed its findings.

I don’t know whether that’s true, although the company does seem to be biased toward making sure the services S.C. taxpayers provide for poor people actually help them. But I know what drove legislative action was this undisputed factual finding from the report: Our system of delivering health and human services is “the most fragmented of any state in the United States.”

I know this as well: The study Mr. Pace objected to is just the latest of more than a dozen studies since 1920 that urged the Legislature to consolidate the burgeoning number of health agencies, and other executive branch agencies, and put the governor in direct control of them all.

The reason the Legislature didn’t start acting on those studies for 70 years and never finished wasn’t that it was more conservative back when the Democrats ran the Statehouse. It’s because the Legislature’s historic goal has been to keep all power to itself, and out of the hands of the governor. Apparently, the so-called conservatives in the Freedom Caucus think that’s still a great idea.

Cindi Ross Scoppe is an editorial writer for The Post and Courier. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Facebook or Twitter @cindiscoppe.

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Here’s the unedited text Rep. Jordan Pace submitted to us, along with my notes on just a few of the most misleading points:

**The Dangers of Centralizing Power: A Polemic Against the Proposed Health Czar in South Carolina**

A recent article glorifies the legacy of former Governor Carroll Campbell, crediting him with the successful restructuring of South Carolina’s government in 1993. This nostalgic look at Campbell’s tenure is then used to justify a new proposal: creating the Executive Office of Health and Policy, a position ominously akin to a Health Czar. However, this proposal, encapsulated in bills H4927 and S915, poses serious risks to our state’s governance structure and the principles of limited government and individual freedom that Campbell himself upheld.

The comparison to Campbell’s reforms is fundamentally flawed. Campbell’s restructuring aimed to enhance the efficiency of a fragmented executive branch, not to centralize unchecked power in a single office. The current proposal to consolidate the health functions of six state agencies under one bureaucrat, with the power to appoint and oversee department directors, is a radical departure from Campbell’s balanced approach. (NOTE: See column above explaining that Gov. Campbell’s primary goal was to consolidate power, and that his proposal combined more than six health agencies under one director.)

A key concern is the involvement of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), chosen to advise on this restructuring. How and why was BCG selected? This consulting giant, known for its partnerships with global entities like the World Economic Forum and its advocacy for progressive agendas, is hardly a neutral party. Their website proudly lists initiatives such as “10 Actions for Climate Change” and “Improving Health Equity,” suggesting a bias that could influence their recommendations. Moreover, BCG was paid more than $3 million in taxpayer dollars for this report. Do we really want such a group advising South Carolina on restructuring one of its most powerful agencies? This is especially problematic since there were equally qualified consultancy firms that were much less expensive. One of those other expert firms, HMA, was tasked with a similar study in 2021 by the Governor of Indiana. HMA’s recommendation to Indiana was to further decentralize most services and focus on county-level outposts. (NOTE: This argument suggests that HMA would have made the same recommendations for South Carolina that it made for Indiana, which has an entirely different government structure and entirely different problems that needed correcting.)

The fiscal impact study for S915 remains unknown, adding another layer of uncertainty. Implementing such a significant change without a clear understanding of its financial implications is irresponsible. The plan consolidates virtually all power and control of five departments under a single Secretary, creating a potential for abuse that cannot be overlooked. Despite assurances that the governor can remove this executive at any time and that the General Assembly can intervene with a two-thirds vote, the reality is that this centralization of power introduces a bottleneck in governance. The Secretary would have the authority to review and approve all regulations before they reach the General Assembly, effectively controlling the flow of health policy in the state. (NOTE: Regulations must survive a legislative process to become effective, so if a secretary blocks them, it’s as if they were never proposed; they cannot take effect.)

For several hours on the floor of the House I voiced strong opposition to S.915, citing four major concerns:

1. **Length and Lack of Fiscal Transparency**: The bill is unwieldy, spanning over 200 pages, and includes no projection of the cost to taxpayers. (NOTE: Nearly all of the text involves changing the name of the various agencies where they appear in current law, and the bill is marked to make those changes obvious at a glance; this is a daunting read if you’re not familiar with reading S.C. bills, but a legislator could read the entire thing in an hour or two.)

2. **Excessive Authority**: It would put in the hands of one person—either the Governor or an unelected bureaucrat—the authority to compel Sheriffs to enforce mandates and quarantines. There are no checks and balances proposed or qualifications listed for this new position. (NOTE: As noted above, this is already in state law, and the bill would let the governor fire the director, which he cannot currently do.)

3. **Centralization of Power**: The consolidation proposed would not shrink government and would not decentralize government power. Instead, it robs local control, potentially hurting public access to resolve issues that often arise with state bureaucracy.

4. **Medical Freedom Ignored**: The bill ignores issues raised by conservatives regarding DHEC and public health, lacking provisions to protect and promote medical freedom. (NOTE: This is not a complaint about what the bill does; it’s a complaint about changes to agency missions that the Republican Legislature has refused to make.)

To address these concerns, I propose the following solutions:

1. **Dividing the Bill**: Split the single bill into multiple smaller bills to ensure legislators can see an accurate fiscal projection for each agency transition.

2. **Protecting Constitutional Rights**: Include clear language stating that no government employee or elected official can compel Sheriffs to violate the Constitution via government-imposed lockdowns, mandates, or quarantines. Officials who do so could be removed by a simple majority vote of the legislature.

3. **Forensic Audit and Local Empowerment**: Conduct a forensic audit to determine where cuts can be made within the new department to ensure consolidation shrinks the size and scope of government and include language to empower local control over centralized power in the hands of a sole state employee.

4. **Legislative Safeguards for Medical Freedom**: Incorporate legislation like S.975, H.4246, H.4546, and H.4907 to limit state emergency powers and protect individuals’ right to medical freedom.

This issue is too important to rush through in the next month with a special session. S.915 is massively unpopular. Passing it now with such broad opposition would be an insult to the people of South Carolina. We look forward to seeing everyone at the table next year and coming together to pass a bill that truly streamlines our state agencies and provides better access to help for those who need it. (NOTE: I have no idea how popular this is with the public; only 16 of the 170 legislators voted against it.)

The establishment of the Executive Office of Health and Policy, as proposed in H4927 and S915, represents a dangerous centralization of power that threatens the principles of limited government and personal freedom. We must remember the lessons of history and the values that have long guided our state. Carroll Campbell’s legacy was one of balanced reform and efficient governance, not unchecked bureaucratic control. We should reject this misguided proposal and seek solutions that enhance our public health system without compromising our constitutional values and individual liberties.

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