Gov. Mark Sanford’s Thursday guest column, “Change has to start in the S.C. Senate,” is interesting but wide of the mark. He asserts that the Senate rules, specifically those governing extended debate and a senator’s ability to contest a bill, are responsible for the Senate’s failure to pass many, if not most, of the bills judged important by one group or another; his last charge is leveled at bobtailing. The examples used by the governor to explain the operation of the rules have some small grain of accuracy but are simplistic and, in practice and in reality, just plain wrong.

Referring to the rules of the Senate, the governor says that “we have a system in our state that’s very adept at stopping ideas.” I could not disagree more. Most of the landmark legislation enacted in the past 25 years has been the object of extended debate and considered under rules far more stringent than those now in effect.

When vital protections for our coastline were put in place through passage of the Coastal Zone Management Act, the rules required 31 votes to break a filibuster and the motion to cut off debate could only be made by the senator at the podium. When Gov. Carroll Campbell’s 3-cent gas tax increase was passed to help save a road system that had become an impediment to economic development, the Senate weathered a filibuster under rules requiring 31 votes to cut off debate.

The Freedom of Information Act, the constitutional tax and spending limitation, the constitutional Capital Reserve Fund, PSC merit selection, the Children’s Code, the Education Finance Act, the Consolidated Procurement Code, the penny sales tax and the Education Improvement Act, the Low Level Radioactive Waste Compact, the education lottery, the bond bill containing a $750 million authorization to build new schools; the list goes on and on and on. All of these worthy and critical enactments were forged in the crucible of extended debate under rules far more onerous than those in effect today.

The essential difference is that then we had a leadership determined to reach a fair, well-reasoned and positive result. We had leaders who used the force of a filibuster to craft consensus, bring disparate views together and deliver a victory in which all ideas and positions were valued. We had a leadership whose only agenda was what was best for our citizens and the future well-being of our state.

The point is, we have overcome the hurdles of fiercely held positions time and again and produced positive results, no matter what the rules required. My own nearly three-day filibuster on the right to carry a concealed weapon occurred under less stringent debate rules than we have today. It wasn’t about the vote requirement, it was about passing a bill that would respond to the public’s demands and at the same time include the necessary life safety protections. At the time the Senate determined that this balance had been reached, it produced the 27 votes needed to sit me down, and it passed the bill.

As for bobtailing, this is a very simplistic euphemism for the complex and often multifaceted concept of germaneness. The constitution establishes germaneness as those things that fall under the single subject matter of a bill as expressed in its title. If one takes this at its broadest cut, we could pass everything during the session in one bill. Cut too thin, the General Assembly would choke on literally tens of thousands of introductions. Germaneness must be reasonable, flexible and judged one instrument at a time.

Finally, it appears to me that the governor’s comments imply that the “ideas” he has advanced are necessarily “good” simply because he has advanced them. I do not argue with this assessment, just as he should not argue with the Senate’s process for evaluating his assessment. In my experience, when an idea is really not mature enough or in reality “good” enough to enshrine in permanent law, its author often attacks the process used to consider the idea.

In any event, I pledge to work with all of my colleagues in the Senate to craft, offer and pass a set of rules that will reform the processes of the Senate, make the body more efficient and able to react to the demands of the session and, most importantly, that will treat all ideas fairly and advance those that the majority judges worthy of further and final consideration.

Sen. Land of Manning is the Democratic minority leader.