Senate 17 candidates call for fresh ideas in Columbia

Both candidates seeking election to S.C. Senate District 17 agree a new approach is needed in the General Assembly. But they have different ideas on what that approach should be.

Democrat Mike Fanning, 49, a former educator and now executive director of the Old English Consortium, unseated 16-year incumbent Sen. Creighton Coleman in the June Democratic primary runoff.

In the Nov. 8 general election, Fanning is vying for the seat against Republican Mark Palmer, 57, an Iraq war veteran who works as a system administrator for United Refrigeration Inc. in Rock Hill.

Senate District 17 includes part of York County, including southern Rock Hill and the area surrounding York, as well as all of Chester and Fairfield counties. Fanning lives near Great Falls, in Chester County, and Palmer lives in York.

The State Law Enforcement Division confirmed earlier this month it is investigating claims that Fanning is accused of inappropriately touching a 16-year-old girl during his years as a teacher at Estill High School in Hampton County.

Fanning declined to respond to the accusations. “I don’t even want to dignify that with a response,” he said.

The Herald talked with both candidates about some of the issues.

Roads, bridges and infrastructure

Palmer said the state needs to quit throwing money “into the giant well” and reorganize the state Department of Transportation. He said projects seem to be prioritized based on cronyism.

Palmer said he’s generally opposed to a tax increase when the state hasn’t taken the steps to examine where it could save money and considered how projects are prioritized.

He called for an assessment to determine where money is being wasted “before we look at any kind of tax increase.” He also called for making the state transportation department a Cabinet position.

Fanning said the gas tax hasn’t been increased since 1987 and a third of people who use the state’s roads don’t live here. He said South Carolina has the fourth worst roads in the country and its gas tax is the third lowest.

However, Fanning said the road problem won’t be solved by simply raising the gas tax without a comprehensive look at the state’s tax structure, including taxes on businesses.

“I believe in comprehensive tax reform,” he said. “We got into this mess by decreasing taxes in a vacuum. I don’t believe the gas tax should be the answer. I do think we need to look at our tax system.”

Education

Palmer said the state needs to fund education equitably for all school districts, but “throwing more money at education is doing nothing to solve the problem. We need to get parents involved.”

Palmer said he stands against Common Core. He also said the state needs to look at Act 388, South Carolina’s property reform measure that replaced owner-occupied property taxes with a penny on the sales tax.

“To repeal it would be a horrible tax increase on the homeowners and to not do something with it is a travesty for the education system, so it does need to be looked at and tinkered with in some way,” he said.

Fanning said South Carolina wrote the funding formula for schools in 1976, but it has only fully funded schools eight times in 40 years. Under Act 388, he said, school districts don’t have the revenue sources to make up for state revenue shortfalls.

He said the state needs to back off on excessive required testing and “let teachers teach and kids learn, and let assessments play a natural part, but we don’t need tests driving teachers.”

He also called for tax reform as a part of his approach to education and other issues, saying that by removing a third of some 400 tax exemptions, the state could collect around $5.5 billion in revenue.

“Our state has a tax code that was written in the industrial age, and every other state in the country has revised their tax code in the last 90 years except for South Carolina,” Fanning said.

Ethics reform

Palmer said politicians need to be required to report all their sources of income, which he said isn’t really being done. He said state budgets are worked on behind closed doors, but “it needs to be an open process; it needs to be transparent to the public.”

He said South Carolina has a weak executive branch and legislators are too powerful, and that needs to be reformed.

Palmer said he has made trips to Columbia since 1993 to sit in on committee hearings. “So often, what the people wanted was not what was accomplished,” he said. “I decided that rather than sitting on the sidelines and whining and moaning, I would put my name in there and join the fight.”

Fanning said he doesn’t believe true ethics reform will happen “until we change the people in Columbia.” But he said about one-fifth of the Senate is turning over this year.

“Columbia has taken no action on roads, no action on education, they’ve taken no action on comprehensive tax reform,” Fanning said. “They protected the gool ol’ boy special-interest status at the expense of making any real change.

“At some point, we need to quit blaming the folks in Columbia,” he said. “We’re the same ones who keep sending the same people to Columbia year after year.”

This story was originally published October 31, 2016 at 8:23 AM with the headline "Senate 17 candidates call for fresh ideas in Columbia."