Now Everybody Cares About The Ports

In case you’re unfamiliar with the way things operate in South Carolina, nothing is ever done proactively.

Public policy is almost always a knee-jerk reaction geared exclusively toward mitigating short-term PR problems, as opposed to creating the conditions for sustained success.

As a result, our state continues to be consistently unsuccessful at pretty much everything it does.

The latest example of this short-sighted approach to governing is Sen. Glenn McConnell’s proposal to “restructure” the S.C. State Ports Authority.

Introduced yesterday, McConnell’s “restructuring” bill represents a colossal failure to correctly diagnose the true problem with this arrogant, pseudo-socialist state agency.

In fact, if passed it would only make matters worse than they are today.

Of course, McConnell’s bill is only up for discussion because S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford has failed miserably in exercising his authority over the Ports Authority’s board.

You read that right, people … failed miserably.

But McConnell has been around long enough to know better.

After sitting back for more than two decades and watching the Ports Authority’s socialist management model run our state’s most important competitive asset into the ground, McConnell finally recognized last summer that things needed to change.

Or at least we thought he did.

Like a typical South Carolina politician, though, it wasn’t until the highly-publicized departure of the Ports’ Authority’s biggest client last month that he decided to do something … or at least make it look like he was going to do something.

“The port is too important to the economic vitality of our state to be used as a political tool,” McConnell said in unveiling his bill. “We’ve got to take the politics out of the port’s operations and demand that it be run like a business. Job creation comes with long term planning, not political trade winds.”

Unfortunately, despite the obligatory “run it like a business” reference, McConnell’s port bill absolutely fails to even address the single most “non-business” aspect of the Ports Authority – i.e. its  “total state control” approach to managing infrastructure.

Which makes this bill nothing more than a literal rearranging of the containers on a cargo ship that’s pulling up stakes for more competitive waters.

Seriously, our state has said “no thanks” to billions of dollars worth of private investment over the last decade, all because turf warriors at the SPA wanted to cling to total operational control of all facilities.

Apparently, that arrangement is just fine with McConnell.

On top of that failure, this bill would strip future governors of their ability to exercise control over the Ports Authority board and would dramatically expand legislative influence over the agency’s operations – which let’s face it, is a recipe for disaster.

You think the Ports Authority is mismanaged now? Wait till the General Assembly gets a hold of it.

“If we want more accountability in the Ports Authority, we need to start stripping away the layers between the governor and the president, not adding them,” Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer told us when asked for comment on McConnell’s bill.

He’s right, even if his boss has been an unmitigated disaster when it comes to using the executive authority he already has.

Sawyer did say that the governor would be inclined to support Rep. Jimmy Merrill’s bill, which would eliminate most of the political problems by removing the board entirely and allowing future governors to directly appoint the SPA President.

You know, kind of like an “executive branch” of government is supposed to work.

But even Merrill’s bill fails to address the antiquated, Soviet-style management model, one which state leaders were warned years ago would hurt our competitiveness … and now has.

Without addressing that fatal flaw, our ports will never be economically competitive no matter what leadership structure is in place.

Sanford, McConnell, Merrill and the entire General Assembly share the blame for our port system’s failure, which was already well underway prior to the global economic downturn.

Now if only they could share in a free-market solution instead of peddling more of the same reactionary half-measures, we might be able to turn this ship around.

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