Rex Wants To Revive Competitive Grants

By FITSNews || Three years ago – in one of the first displays of our website’s power to influence the South Carolina political process – we exposed a $46 million legislative slush fund that was oxymoronically dubbed the “competitive grants” program by our free-spending state lawmakers.

Basically, this was a pot of money used by legislative leaders like Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman and House Ways and Means Chairman Danny Cooper to bribe their colleagues on key votes – at least that’s what we were told by lawmakers at the time (and since).

Anyway, what did these “competitive grants” actually fund?

A bunch of absolute nonsense, which is one reason lawmakers (led by then-S.C. Rep. Mick Mulvaney) did away with the slush fund the following year.

Shortly after exposing the original competitive grants scandal, though, FITS discovered that State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex was running his own “competitive grants” scam within the State Department of Education, a fund which he was using to reward Democratic lawmakers and funnel money to one of Sen. Leatherman’s favorite boondoggles, the infamous “Green Bean museum.”

Thanks to our efforts, Rex’s slush fund was subsequently stripped from the state budget.

Also, a recent attempt to give S.C. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer his own competitive grants program went nowhere after we exposed the scam.

What can we say … it’s just how we roll around here, people.

(boo-yah)

Well, despite the worst (and longest) recession in eight decades and a state budget that is supposed to be running on fumes, S.C. Superintendent of Education Jim Rex (in yet another example of his political tone-deafness) wants to re-institute a “competitive grants” slush fund.

And believe it or not, South Carolina’s Republican budget writers are letting him!

Specifically, a GOP-controlled budget committee has awarded Rex a new “competitive grants” program within a recently-released list of education budget provisos – which are basically instructions from lawmakers to state agencies regarding how they are to spend the money they are appropriated.

Ostensibly, the program would provide grants for “family and community involvement,” but in addition to having ACORN written all over it, this strikes us as money that could be better used … oh … we don’t know … in the friggin classroom (where less than half of every education dollar spent in S.C. winds up)!

Needless to say, based on his disastrous record as Superintendent, giving Jim Rex more money for anything is pure insanity.

He’s been given record amounts of funding over the last three years and produced absolutely nothing, but in addition to that, his office has a history of questionable management of precisely these sorts of competitive grants.

Seriously, are South Carolina’s Republican budget writers this stupid?

Wait … don’t answer that …

WEB EXTRA
Public Education Budget Provisos