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by ROM REDDY
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Most South Carolinians believe that laws are written by legislators, debated in public, voted on and signed into law. That is how the system is supposed to work. It is how a constitutional republic functions.
But what if that is no longer what is actually happening?
Over the past year, DOGE SC set out to answer a basic question that no one in state government seemed able or willing to answer honestly: are state agencies enforcing rules that the Legislature actually passed into law?
To answer that question, we did something government itself has failed to do. We built proprietary artificial intelligence tools to analyze agency regulations. We mapped every regulation back to the statute that supposedly authorizes it. Line by line. Provision by provision.
The South Carolina Department of Social Services (SCDSS) and South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) were the first agencies we analyzed. What we found should concern every citizen (starting with SCDSS and looking at SCDOT in the next post).
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DSS currently enforces 136 regulations containing 2,620 individual provisions. Our analysis sorted each provision into three categories: rules the Legislature explicitly required (mandatory), rules the Legislature loosely authorized (optional), and rules that lack clear legal authority altogether (unlawful).
Only 31% of DSS rules were clearly mandated by lawmakers.
Another 58% were what I would call “government by permission slip.” Legislators passed vague statutes and allowed unelected bureaucrats to vastly expand their meaning and application
Finally, nearly 11% of the rules were not clearly authorized by law at all – or just unlawful.
Let that sink in.
Nearly 70% of the rules governing one of the most powerful agencies in this state were never directly passed by the people’s representatives. That is not a rounding error. That is a system.
Most people will focus on the 11% – and they should. Those rules should alarm anyone who believes in the rule of law. But the optional 58% is also a problem.
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RELATED | THE WAR FOR JUSTICE IN SOUTH CAROLINA
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These are rules that carry the full force of law. They determine eligibility. They govern enforcement actions. They dictate hearings, records, penalties, and appeals. Yet no legislator ever explicitly authorized them. Instead, an unelected bureaucracy decided on their behalf.
This is how separation of powers quietly collapses.
Over time, the Legislature stopped legislating. It delegated. Agencies filled the gaps. Then agencies stopped worrying about where their authority ended. That is how an unelected agency state replaces representative government without anyone ever voting for it.
And this is not theoretical.
Most people do not deal with DSS because they want to. They deal with it because they have to. When the rules governing those interactions are not clearly rooted in law, citizens do not experience an abstract constitutional issue. They experience confusion, inconsistency and powerlessness. And they have no elected official who can fix it.
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RELATED | ROM REDDY: SOUTH CAROLINA’S LEADERSHIP CRISIS
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This is not about accusing agency employees of bad intent. This is about a structure that allows enormous power to be exercised by people the voter cannot hold accountable. That is exactly what our Founders warned against.
What this report ultimately exposes is not a rogue agency. It exposes a system that has abandoned constitutional principles The South Carolina Constitution vests lawmaking authority in the General Assembly. When legislators outsource that responsibility, they do not eliminate power. They transfer it. And once power leaves the hands of elected officials, it does not return on its own.
DSS is just the first of two agencies we analyzed. Is it an anomaly? Unfortunately, not. As you will see from a future SCDOT report, almost 37% of SCDOT regulations are in the third category – meaning they are unlawful.
Now that we finally have the data to see how government actually operates beneath the surface, the question is no longer whether there is a problem. The question is whether legislators are willing to reclaim the authority they were elected to exercise. Personally, I doubt it. The system is entrenched and has to be dismantled and reconstructed like we do in turnarounds in the private sector.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Rom Reddy is a businessman from Isle of Palms, S.C., and the founder of the DOGE SC movement.
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9 comments
“We built proprietary artificial intelligence tools…”
Haha…how can anyone take this jabroni seriously?
And then didn’t provide the actual analysis, but just a “trust me bro” article.
When the legislature directs an agency to promulgate regulations to implement the legislation, those regulations have to go through a public notice and legislative review prior to going into effect. There is ample opportunity for public input and legislative oversight/denial of regulations that do not follow the intent of the law. Our legislature would never get anything done if they were that far down in the grass determining the processes and details of implementing policy/law.
Putting notices on media websites or in printed editions is not effective.
Notices should be mailed to every address’s across the state. Otherwise, note many are alerted. They are unlawfully having their rights violated by secret government activities
Regulations and Provisos are the vehicles where agencies and public and private sector lobbyists make their living. Through language of a proviso, public funds can be directed to one entity who is the only entity capable of providing the service required. Public notice is what exactly? Is it posting an agenda on a message board outside the Committee office? That definitely makes the public from the mountains to the sea aware. After a Rule or Regulation is introduced, what is the time period for the General Assembly to act or does it simply become law after a period of inaction? The media will report when they are spoon fed stories, so citizens have to lead. The state budget is in the billions and it should be scrutinized. Higher Education and their Boards and Presidents run their own fiefdoms with no real outside supervision. Has any legislator looked at the Lottery Commission and its revenues and expenditures? One of the biggest state agencies, but where is the oversight? I have never met Mr. Reddy, but I applaud his efforts to address the efficiency and accountability of our state government.
The regulatory state is a big issue on the federal level, too. And, at some level, it is a power struggle between the legislative branch and the executive branch since agencies are part of the latter and agency heads are typically appointed by the chief executive.
And that power struggle is arbitrated by the judicial branch which magically determines if the regulation is permissible “regulatory gloss” on a statute; and sometimes the judicial branch even adds its “judicial gloss” on a statute with the judiciary itself determining whether its “judicial gloss” were permissible.
So, any reform effort always ends in the lap of a tyrannical and self-serving judiciary which, a la rigueur, jettisons its pretenses of being the “non-political/a-political branch of government” and engages in brazen demagoguery in published opinions and hidden racketeering in unpublished opinions or even in concealing/falsifying case dockets.
Also, remember recent scandalous act of SC’s supreme court sending its unnamed “sources” to give FITSNews a false victimhood story of being threatened by state senators?
What is the answer then? Science. Legislating science. Enacting laws requiring every regulation, every statute eve, to have a set goal AND a set of sound experiments to determine if the statutes/regs in reality accomplish what they aim/purport to accomplish with a “sunset” date for all statutes/regs at the end of the experiment period. That means new post-experiment statutes/regs for the one that passed the experiment and repeal of the statutes/regs which failed the experiment.
Did the founders of this Republic have science in mind as a pillar of government?
Yes!
First, several founders were scientists. Benjamin Franklin and his kites and printing improvements. Thomas Jefferson with his innovative architecture. Even the farmers among them were heirs to lessons of crop failure and of Mendelian inheritance in improving animal husbandry and plant seeds.
Second, “learned counsel” is never limited in any founding document or contemporary documents to learned in the law. It must have meant learned in all the sciences of the day.
Let’s see if Messieurs Reddy and Folks hate doctors more than they claim to love government efficiency.
And again, both should be striving for government effectiveness first, with efficiency only as a tool for effectiveness, or go coercive-control themselves.
All things are related one way or another.
And Mr. Reddy was already attacked for being a naturalized, as opposed to natural-born, citizen.
Even in the Shaheen-Haley gubernatorial matches, Vincent Shaheen, himself a third-generation Lebanese immigrant attacked Nikki Haley for being only a second-generation East Indian immigrant.
As is something in South Carolina’s air were purifying to the soul, or a South Carolina birth (which Pamela Evette lacks) confers magical governing power and prowess.
And of course, to answer any criticism, or even take the offensive, all politicians are demagoguing the immigration issue.
So, to separate true respect of the law from cynical ploys, I ask this:
What does Nancy Mace propose to do about U.S. “citizens” who FALSELY accuse perfectly lawful immigrants of being “illegals” for those “citizens” to gain unfair advantages over the perfectly-lawful immigrants in civil litigation?
Heck! What does Nancy Mace propose to do about “citizens” who literally steal the property of perfectly-lawful immigrants then threaten those immigrants against reporting the thefts to police?
As usual, I have audio and video recordings. If Nancy Mace were sincere, she should contact me. She knows who I am.
That “citizen” who falsely accused me of being “an illegal” is one Larry Wayne Mason, who once had 101 indictments for embezzling from the U.S. Army plus one indictment of impersonating a chief warrant officer.
And in case Nancy Mace is really interested in domestic violence, that same Larry Wayne Mason’s second wife, Ella Faye Kizer Mason, was shot in the head with Larry Mason’s gun, in Larry Mason’s home and in his sole presence in 1993; but Larry was never prosecuted for it.
And BTW, that same Larry Wayne Mason’s first-born son by Larry’s first wife, Richard Wayne Mason, also died in April 2016 from a gunshot wound to the head from Larry Mason’s gun in Larry Mason’s home and in his sole presence.
Both times Larry Mason pretended the victim shot him/herself despite forensic analysis showing the fatal shot fired from over six feet.
Every time I tried to have law enforcement look into those domestic deaths, Larry Wayne Mason FALSELY accused me of being an illegal alien.
Again, I have the letter he wrote to politicians. What does Nancy Mace propose to do about protecting lawfully-admitted immigrant talent and treasure from cynical citizens?
This is the dumbest looney tune since phillip branton
I shake my head at dishonest attorneys. One failed in private practice. DSS has hired Deserves to have action taken against their license.