Senators approve unqualified candidate for Haley's Cabinet

Let me ask some questions.

If someone with no experience in health care or public relations wanted a job in public relations for a regional hospital, could they get one? In South Carolina, sure; Nikki Haley did it.

If someone who had no background in education whatsoever wanted a job teaching children in public schools, could they get one? In South Carolina, sure. Happens all the time. It's part of the campaign to undermine and discredit public schools.

If someone who had no experience in surgery wanted to get a job operating on patients, could they get one? No, because that's serious business.

See, some thing qualify as serious business, and other things don't.

This must be the standard applied by senators this week to Governor Nikki Haley's appointee for the Department of Health and Environmental Control, Catherine Templeton. I mentioned Haley's appointment of Templeton when it was made, and this week, senators on a Senate panel got to examine Templeton's qualifications to run DHEC for themselves. It was light work, at the end of which the committee voted 13 to nothing, with several senators inexplicably abstaining rather than voting against her.

Haley, of course, popped a cork via Facebook in praise of her BFF.

Gov. Nikki Haley praised the selection. The Republican governor picked Templeton, a 41-year-old lawyer who lives in Mount Pleasant, as director of the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation about a year ago. Since taking office, she has helped Haley fight unions.

“We would like to congratulate one of our rock-star Cabinet directors, Catherine Templeton, for getting screened out of committee to be the next director of the Department of Health and Environmental Control,” Haley said on her Facebook page.

I wonder what Pitchfork Ben Tillman would have thought of communicating with South Carolinians through Facebook. Or Jimmy Byrnes. Would Wade Hampton have called his Cabinet members "rock stars"?

Probably not. It's not gubernatorial. But we've got Haley instead of Hampton, haven't we?

Seeing the wing-nut juggernaut powering Templeton's appointment, only a few senators paused to raise questions. History will want to record their names and their questions, surely.

They questioned Templeton’s decision to lay off dozens of employees at the labor department, why she has discussed eliminating numerous LLR divisions such as the Real Estate Commission, why she requested a salary that is about $30,000 higher than DHEC’s last commissioner – and why she won’t move to Columbia to run the agency.

“A whole lot of us would be real comfortable if we knew that you were there – or at least set three or four days, that you will be in Columbia,” Sen. Ralph Anderson, D-Greenville, said.

Sen. Anderson was referring to the fact that Templeton, the rock star member of Haley's Cabinet, has seen no need to spend her term living and working in Columbia, the state's capital since 1786. She has been just as effective undermining working families from her home in Mount Pleasant, and one can see why when comparing the demographics and economics of Columbia and Mount Pleasant.

Columbia:

The median income for a household in the city was $31,141, and the median income for a family was $39,589. Males had a median income of $30,925 versus $24,679 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,853. About 17.0% of families and 22.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.7% of those under the age of 18 and 16.9% ages 65 or older.

And Mount Pleasant:

The median income for a household in the town was $61,054, and the median income for a family was $71,165. Males had a median income of $50,673 versus $31,640 for females. The per capita income for the town was $30,823. About 3.2% of families and 5.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 5.3% of those under age 18 and 6.6% of those age 65 or over.

Clearly, Mount Pleasant is, well, pleasanter. Fewer poor people. More money. And don't forget the view...

So Templeton batted that silly old question away with a non-response.

Templeton said she will be on the road a lot and will be available, whether or not she runs DHEC from Columbia.

Foolish senator, asking such a foolish question.

And money? How gauche to speak of money.

Although she has requested a salary of about $180,000, Templeton said she’s not interested in the job for the money.

And she'll get it, too, the job and the money. 'Cause she's a rock star from Mount Pleasant sitting in Haley's Cabinet and overlooking the pretty sea.

Who are you to question it?

Next?

Perhaps the biggest concern voiced Thursday is whether DHEC will become too accommodating to businesses needing pollution permits from the agency, which Haley has said needs to be more business friendly.
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“I’ve gotten calls from constituents …. who said ‘Senator, how can you support someone who does not come with the background for the job, especially when there are so many more eminently qualified people – and people every day are let go from their jobs who have tremendous backgrounds?’” Pinckney asked.

You can imagine her thoughts when listening to the question: How disrespectful to question a lady of such bearing about qualifications. In the old days this never would have happened.

Hutto asked Templeton a series of questions about her knowledge of specific environment and health issues, such as South Carolina’s infant mortality rate, the leading cause of death in South Carolina, and DHEC’s role in bioterror matters. She said she did not know the answers.

Stupid little questions. What a body must endure to get a high-paying Cabinet job these days. Who the hell cares about infant mortality rates and bioterrorism? Count the votes. Pay me.

Hutto also questioned why the DHEC board publicly advertised for a director with a degree in health, environmental management, business administration or a related field, but picked someone without those qualifications. Democrats said it appeared Templeton was targeted for the job from the start. “They posted a job description you don’t fit,” Hutto said.

You forgot one little thing, Senator: I'm a rock star on Nikki Haley's Cabinet. I see what I want, and I take it, and you will give it to me and do so happily.

Templeton, who spoke calmly and confidently during Thursday’s packed confirmation hearing, said she doesn’t need extensive experience in environment or health.

For that matter, I don't need extensive experience in anything having to do with public service. You are but a rural senator in a legislative minority, and I have been your governor's right hand for the past year. This DHEC thing is a little ol' management job. If you have any questions, you can ask the people I haven't yet fired about my management skills.

“I don’t think it’s too trivial to point out that there are people from LLR sitting behind me that can talk to you about whether or not I can manage people,” she said.

And that represented the organized opposition to Templeton's appointment. After those fearful of her heaped praise, the vote was called and taken.

Templeton’s limited experience in the environment and health arena, as well as questions about DHEC’s future direction, prompted Democratic Sens. Joel Lourie, Brad Hutto and Clementa Pinckney to abstain from approving her nomination.

So she won it by a vote of 13 to nothing.

Auspicious beginning.

Word to wise DHEC managers: Begin now to lighten your office walls and desk. It'll make your last day that much less stressful.

Wanted: DHEC head, skilled in health, environment issues

Failing that, a demonstrated bias against South Carolina's working class will do.

File this one in the folder labeled "Questionable appointments by Governor Nikki Haley," right behind her replacement of the University of South Carolina's largest single benefactor, Darla Moore, with a campaign contributor on the university's board of trustees. Stamp it "Service to Haley and ideology trumps service to state and people."

The state's health and environmental permitting agency is poised to get a pro-business Lowcountry lawyer as its new leader.

Catherine Templeton was selected Wednesday as the head of S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control by the agency's board.

Templeton, 41, of Mount Pleasant, is an attorney who has specialized in "union avoidance" in private practice and represented businesses in employee lawsuits. She is the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation director, appointed last year by Gov. Nikki Haley, who has pushed for easing regulations on businesses.
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She takes over as commissioner of an agency that may be the state's most unwieldy -- deciding permits for everything from hospital beds to industrial air emissions and waste disposal. Its lengthy, complex permitting system is criticized even by environmental and health advocates who push for tighter regulations.

DHEC sounds like a huge and important state system, with a lot of important responsibilities in serving our people. Sounds like it requires someone with a long history in agency management, probably a deep knowledge of health and environmental issues.

Let's check what Templeton brings:

Current position: S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation director, 1 year.

Background: A private practice attorney, who has specialized in union avoidance.

Education: Wofford College, University of South Carolina School of Law graduate.

Hm. Okay, well, she has one year of experience managing a state agency -- a small one -- and she has a law degree. But she must bring some sort of background in health and environment issues that isn't obvious. Otherwise, why would a governor appoint her to such an important position, overseeing such a large and important agency?

Templeton listed no background in health or environmental science on her application.

Hm. There went that theory.

Did we not have anyone else in the state who brought experience in agency management, or awareness of health and environmental issues? Did no one else apply?

She was voted as director over Pam Dukes, a DHEC deputy commissioner, and Ingo Angermeier, a Spartanburg hospital system chief executive.

This makes no sense. A DHEC deputy commissioner and a hospital chief executive applied, and their qualifications were inferior to the thin case that Templeton makes for the position?

Does this not sound bizarre to anyone else?

John Crangle of Common Cause of South Carolina, a public interest watchdog, called her hiring bizarre, given her background and worrisome for DHEC's regulatory authority.

So now it can be said, I have common cause with Common Cause.

He pointed out that the DHEC board earlier this month reversed a staff decision and approved the controversial Savannah River dredging project, after Haley asked her appointees to meet with Georgia officials.

"With a person like Catherine Templeton as director, there will be more of the same. She'll probably do what she's told to do and not what's good for the people of South Carolina," Crangle said.

Is that it? A yes-man or, in this case, a yes-woman in a position of vital importance?

After she interviewed Templeton for the LLR position last year, Haley said it felt like she was interviewing herself.

O, crikey. The ultimate narcissist found her mirror-image in another young woman with no applicable experience and no concern for the needs of working people. How can we tell them apart?

But, come on, DHEC is a large and complex agency. The director has real responsibilities. What does Haley expect Templeton to do there?

Templeton doesn't pull her punches. She has drawn controversy over LLR decisions from laying off workers to not moving to Columbia when she took the job. She said this week about her management, "When you go in and clean house, and you have to terminate 50 or 100 people, people don't like that. But we got better and got cheaper at the same time."

Ah -- it's about firing people. The appointment of Templeton means that Haley is a lot like the presidential candidate she endorsed and escorted across the state for two weeks: Like Mitt Romney, Haley likes to fire people, and Templeton is a skilled sacker.

Which means the poor at-will employees at DHEC should steel themselves: Heads are about to roll.

She calls the DHEC job a process geek's dream. Because the agency is so large, she said, she can look at bringing in economies of scale, eliminating redundancies, deciding whether some programs should be split off to the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, and taking a new look at the bigger picture of just what DHEC should or shouldn't be doing.

Well, we know how consistent Haley is in her hatred of redundancies.

Maybe, now that she has much greater responsibilities to South Carolina's people, as head of a much larger agency, she's take her public service seriously enough to move to Columbia, where she can be readily accessible to the people she manages and the people she serves.

A mother of three, Templeton makes no bones about not having moved to Columbia. She won't do it for this job either.

"We're at 2012. People can do their job from anywhere. I have never been accused of a poor work ethic. I couldn't do any more sitting in an office in Columbia. When I'm needed, I'm there," she said.

This is what we have, instead of a serious government: A governor, and her mirror-image agency head, who do nothing useful and call it everything we've ever needed.

It's ours; we elected it.

Duplicitous Gov. Haley, who hates duplication, duplicates.

A parable.

South Carolina has two things in abundance: A history of treating poorly those who earn their living by the sweat of their brow, and governors who look for more ways to treat poorly those who earn their living by the sweat of their brow.

We might as well post signs at the borders: "Abandon hope and your rights, all ye who enter to work here."

First, the record.

Governor Nikki Haley has made it part of her standard fare to rail against duplication of services. If a program provides a service over here, no other program is necessary to provide a service over there. Any secondary or tertiary programs which exist to provide the same or similar services must be annihilated. So let it be written, so let it be done.

The wealthy in Haley's world, it appears, deserve choices (school choice, anyone?), but the poor or the working class deserve only one option, NO duplication of services.

Why is duplication of services to be abhorred? It is wasteful. It is redundant. And it is wasteful, especially of taxpayer dollars. And, it is redundant, which is unnecessary and repetitive. Duplication is unnecessary. Therefore, Haley is opposed to it. For its wastefulness.

On April 1, 2009, when she was just dreaming of a Haley-like state (or hailing a dream-like state?), then-Representative Haley decreed on her website,

In the process, we will consider the economic, fiscal and outside impacts of each agency or program, including management process and structure as well as the extent to which these programs duplicate services, functions and programs administered by another federal or state agency. And in the end, we will eliminate areas of duplication, update missions and goals that need updating, and yes, we will phase out dated and inefficient programs that don’t address the 21st century priorities and needs of the people of our state.

Yes, under a Haley regime, no program or service will exist if another program or service exists. Two programs or services are redundant, which means one of them is wasteful and unnecessary, and the time and resources devoted to it are wasted. So let it be written, so let it be done.

Last June, testing out her veto pen, she trotted out the "duplication of services" trope in her instruction to Speaker Bobby Harrell to undo what he'd allowed to be done, for it was unnecessary and she didn't approve of its necessity, making it unnecessary.

In a polite letter to Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell, Governor Haley exercised her line item veto 35 times. Duplication of services, actions not in keeping with the core function of government and a preference for private funding were the top three reasons the governor listed for vetoing a host of different budget items.

So let it be written, so let it be done.Except that the legislature was apparently more appreciative of duplication of services, and wastefulness, and redundancy generally, for it found fit to override, in some cases, what Pharoah -- that is, Governor Haley -- had decreed and instructed.

Department of Education’s “High Schools That Work” Program ($1.4 million): Intended to help improve students’ transition from high school to college. Haley argued it duplicated programs already used in high schools and colleges. Legislature disagreed. Action: OVERRIDDEN

But Haley is nothing if not repetitive, and redundant, and sometimes exceptionally consistent. This month, she posted on her Facebook page the following bit of imperial gratitude:

Thanks to the members of the House of Reps who voted 76-47 to uphold my veto that stopped the creation of a 19 member council for the 1-95 corridor that would have unneccarily increased state govt, spent money we don't have, and duplicated what commerce already does. No new programs!

You will not speak of the governor's lack of spell-check; no error was made, no lack of awareness revealed. It is, that it is.

Now, what once was spelled "unnecessarily" will be respelled "unneccarily" and the new spelling will take the place of the old spelling in all government documents, though none of these will be duplicated. Or have copies made of them. Old copies will suffice: No new copies! So let it be written, so let it be done.

Haley won an acolyte in Rep. Bill Taylor, who accepted the governor's language and wrote on his own blog on January 20,

On the first day of the new session, the SC House killed legislation that would have expanded government. The House upheld Gov. Nikki Haley's veto of a bill creating a regional council that was intended to improve economic and education opportunities along rural I-95. I was one of a handful of Representatives who originally voted against the bill last spring because it created another needless bureaucracy. However, it passed the House and Senate and Haley vetoed the bill arguing it unnecessarily increases state government and duplicates what the state commerce and education departments already do. The Senate voted to override her veto. This week the House sustained the veto and the legislation failed.

What duplicates is duplicative, and duplication is a vexation. It will not be tolerated.

This is the record of our governor's hatred of duplication and redundancy. So let it be written, so let it be done.

In light of the record, we must assume that the governor is exceptionally weary. Squiring a former presidential hopeful around her state and helping him to peddle his threadbare wares unneccarily to the people has tired her.

And, upon sending her guest bowed and bent into Florida, we must assume that she had no time to rest; finding her right flank uncovered unneccarily, she searched the nooks and crannies of the Governor's Mansion for a doily with which to cover her right flank.

And, in her weariness, this is the doily she found:

Gov. Nikki Haley and House Republicans are joining forces to close loopholes that, they say, unions could use to set up shop and expand in South Carolina.

“Unions are not needed, wanted or welcome in South Carolina,” Haley said during a Tuesday press conference where she and state Rep. Bill Sandifer, R-Oconee, announced a new bill filed in the House that would:

• Require S.C. employers to display a poster in the workplace, alerting workers that they do not have to be union members in order to work.

This is a splendid doily, indeed, with which to cover her right flank in her weariness, except that it is a duplication of services.

State law already gives workers the right to turn down union membership.

No matter. The doily accomplishes very much of a little more:

• Increase civil penalties for those who violate the state’s right-to-work laws

• Allow workers to resign their union membership and stop paying dues at any time. Currently, union members have to wait a year.

• Require unions to file financial information with the state. Unions already must file some of that information with the federal government.

It is a powerful doily, in truth, and entirely suitable for covering an exposed right flank. Except that it is unneccarily a duplication of services already:

Democrats say the bill changes very little. They note less than 5 percent of the state’s workers are unionized, the country’s seventh-lowest rate of unionization.

“We already have some of the toughest anti-union laws in the nation,” said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg. “Can you say overkill? Our time would be better spent trying to improve the conditions for working people instead of attacking working people.”

But that is not written.

So that is not done.

Haley said the changes are needed because Boeing was threatened with a National Labor Relations Board lawsuit after building a new plant in North Charleston where few workers are union members. Ultimately, the lawsuit was dropped.

“I saw (the lawsuit) as a warning shot,” Haley said.

The National Labor Relations Board saw (Haley) as (unneccarily) opposing (federal) law.

“The more I bring companies in (to South Carolina), the more concerns there are about unions.”

South (Carolina) rejoined the (union) on (July 11,) 1868, which has concerns about (it) still. But Congress held that states had no (right to secede), so (rejoining) the union was (a duplication of services), meaning it was unneccarily.

That was written. That was done.

Furthermore, as the exposure of her right flank was substantial, Haley s t r e t c h e d out the doily and furthermore decreed some more:

Haley signed an executive order Tuesday that prohibits striking workers from receiving unemployment benefits.

Which was a powerful decree and well covered her right flank again.

Except that it was duplication of services and unneccarily.

That already is state law, said Catherine Templeton, director of the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.

This is another way of saying that Haley's hand-picked, anti-union director of the state labor department, trained by anti-union textile magnate Roger Milliken, found the governor's decrees duplicative, and therefore violative of her record opposing duplication of services.

But the stretching of the doily to recover her exposed right flank unneccarily was discovered by those who earn their living by the sweat of their brow, who gained a new perspective on the duplicitous governor:

“I don’t know what state Nikki thinks she’s in or what she’s running for,” said S.C. AFL-CIO president Donna Dewitt, “but striking workers in South Carolina can’t get unemployment and unions already fully disclose their financial information.”

Dewitt said Haley’s proposal was an attempt to pander to GOP hardliners “in a desperate attempt to distract attention from her support of Mitt Romney and play to her eroding Tea Party base.”

I think I heard DeWitt also say that the word "unneccarily" should be spelled "unnecessarily," which made perfect sense among readers of English, regardless of what duplicitous governors with stretched doilies covering exposed right flanks may say.

I am confident that I heard those who earn their living by the sweat of their brow say something even more profound in a press release:

South Carolina's union membership is amongst the lowest in the nation and there are no unionized public workers who can bargain for wages.
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"With our state's low wages, low taxes and lax environmental regulations, I fear that the only thing Haley can do to make South Carolina more "business friendly" would be to issue an executive order to bring back slavery," Dewitt observed.

And the people stood and said, "Let that be duplicated, copied, printed, mailed, emailed, linked, friended, cutted-and-pasted, tweeted, posted, re-posted and shared again and again and again."