Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey talking with First Steps director Georgia Mjartan during a Senate Education Committee meeting on Wednesday, April 26, 2023 in Columbia, South Carolina. (Photo by Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — South Carolina senators are weighing solutions for hard-to-fill vacancies on the state’s myriad governing and advisory boards while also seeking to close loopholes and strengthen checks on agency heads appointed by the governor.
A bill remains under consideration by a Senate panel to eliminate the need for the upper chamber to sign off on gubernatorial appointees to 35 citizen boards and commissions in the state that oversee a host of issues, such as publicly funded arts programs, foster care placements and state historical archives.
Most of the seats that senators would no longer need to confirm are on professional licensing boards for a plethora of careers, including barbers and real estate appraisers, social workers and podiatrists.
From foster care to fine arts, SC has hundreds of citizen boards and lots of openings to fill
On the other hand, when it comes to the leaders of state agencies, the bill sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, wants to make sure the Senate is getting a say.
The Edgefield Republican’s measure seeks to tweak the law governing interim agency appointments to ensure an interim appointment, as happened in 2018, doesn’t happen again.
Following that year’s regular legislative session, Gov. Henry McMaster made former Attorney General Charlie Condon interim chairman of state-owned utility Santee Cooper. The Senate had chosen not to confirm him amid fallout from a failed nuclear expansion in the state. When McMaster appointed him unilaterally after the Legislature adjourned, the Senate sued.
Somewhat surprisingly, the state Supreme Court sided with McMaster in 2018, ruling he acted legally in his recess appointment.
“The Supreme Court ruling really screwed up the whole interim process,” Massey said.
His proposal seeks to address that, spelling out in the law that the governor can make interim appointments only if a position opens during the mid-May to January time period when the General Assembly is out of session.
“Things can come up and you need to allow for the continuation of government,” Massey said. “So, there needs to be a process where a governor can make interim appointments. But there’s also got to be a process whereby the Senate can respond.”
The measure also would keep a nominee from being left in an interim role indefinitely. If the Senate doesn’t sign off on an interim candidate before the end of the following legislative session, the spot is automatically vacated.
“An interim appointment should be interim; it shouldn’t be a long-lasting thing,” Massey added.
In the case of Condon, legislators told The Post and Courier their lack of action wasn’t a green light for the governor.
“While we can understand the governor’s frustration at the lack of consent for Mr. Condon, we cannot allow the end to justify any means — particularly when the means would upend the constitutional and statutory process,” Senate President Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, said at the time.
The utility company’s previous chairman, Leighton Lord, resigned amid a public feud with McMaster over the abandoned V.C. Summer nuclear project in rural Fairfield County.
More recently, frustrations have bubbled up between Massey and the governor’s office over the appointment of a new state Department of Corrections chief, after the former prisons agency head took a posting as U.S. attorney for South Carolina.
Massey claimed the governor declined to put Interim Director Joel Anderson through the Senate confirmation process last May, when legislators were in Columbia working on the budget. Instead, the governor opted to use the interim process, putting off Anderson’s screening until this year.
“It appears to me that they have been dismissive of the Senate’s role,” Massey told reporters earlier this month.
Massey said he understands the governor’s own possible frustrations with the speed at which the Senate acts on these nominations.
“But the Senate has an oversight check-and-balance role, and I don’t like how that’s been treated, especially in the last year,” he said.
Also, as South Carolina prepares to elect a new governor come November, senators want to ensure any agency heads who may be held over from one administration to the next are vetted.
When McMaster moved from the lieutenant governor’s office to the Governor’s Mansion in 2017, following former Gov. Nikki Haley’s appointment as United Nations ambassador under the Trump administration, he kept many of Haley’s appointments in place.
Former state Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt, former Corrections Director Bryan Stirling, Department of Motor Vehicles Director Kevin Shwedo and state Parks and Recreation Director Duane Parrish are among agency heads who stayed on when McMaster took over.
Because they remained in their same jobs, they did not have to seek Senate approval. Massey’s proposal would change that to require all gubernatorial appointed agency heads be renominated and re-screened.
Beyond agency heads, keeping seats full on South Carolina’s vast and vague committees is a challenge for the state’s political leaders, especially the governor, who’s tasked with making most of the appointments, with the Senate’s approval.
High-profile boards, such as the authority overseeing the state’s port, have a long line of hopefuls. But vacancies can linger for lesser-known groups.
The Palmetto State has just shy of 300 such boards and advisory groups with about 5,000 politically appointed positions. A list maintained by the Secretary of State’s office shows more than 425 vacant slots. Even boards without vacancies are stacked with people serving well beyond their prescribed term, left in what’s known as holdover status, often for years.
The issue of board vacancies led McMaster in his 2025 State of the State address to call for the review and potential elimination of the state’s more than 40 professional licensing boards, handing oversight directly to the state’s licensing agency.
The General Assembly ultimately did not oblige that request.
Instead, Massey is suggesting legislators address the issue in another way, by eliminating the paperwork barrier that often holds candidates back.
Many of these board members are not paid for their time beyond covering travel expenses.
The Senate screening involves a financial and criminal history check and public hearings. The governor’s office previously told the SC Daily Gazette that it’s common for applicants to drop out once they find out about the six-month to year-long procedure.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
