As South Carolina moves into its third holiday season under Gov. Mark Sanford’s leadership, we’ve made only moderate progress in improving our economic climate and slowing the growth of government, and absolutely zero progress in implementing market-based education reforms and restructuring our 1895 system of government.

Citing unnamed sources and refusing to reveal the slightest hint of its methodology, Time magazine recently heaped these failures squarely on the shoulders of our governor.

Time is as far off the mark as possible.

Gov. Sanford is in fact an island of progressive, common-sense reform in an ocean of big-spending, status-quo politicians seemingly intent on sailing the ship of our state further into the ground.

Exhibit “A” is the South Carolina governor’s office itself, which despite Sanford’s efforts remains the 4th-weakest chief executive office in the nation. During the 2002 campaign, Sanford offered a vision of an ordered, efficient and responsive state government designed to shift South Carolina from its post-Reconstruction, horse-and-buggy model into the 21st century. After his election, in an effort to secure passage from a belligerent General Assembly, Sanford compromised on his grand restructuring vision not once but twice — first by slicing the scope of his sweeping campaign proposal in half, and second by postponing the reforms until 2011, when he would be out of office.

Sadly for our state, these attempted compromises were ignored by legislators. In fact, with the exception of making the Department of Motor Vehicles a Cabinet agency (to overwhelmingly positive reviews), legislators in Columbia have failed to pass even one of Sanford’s major restructuring initiatives.

Remember that when someone blames Sanford for the failings of a government over which he still exerts relatively little authority.

More disappointing has been the behavior of legislators with respect to taxes and spending. Running in 2002, Mark Sanford proposed a gradual elimination of our state’s income tax in an effort to raise income levels, stimulate job growth and spur capital investment — all things income tax relief has provided in other states where it has been implemented. Told by Republicans and Democrats that his plan was too “ambitious,” the governor has since offered no fewer than three different compromise proposals — each of which has been rejected by legislators.

Only this year — dragged kicking and screaming — did legislators finally approve a long-overdue small-business income tax cut that levels the playing field between our job-creation backbone (95 percent of companies in our state are small businesses) and their larger corporate cousins. Sadly, working South Carolinians still pay the highest income tax rate in the Southeast.

Remember that when someone complains Sanford is responsible for South Carolina’s third-highest-in-the-nation unemployment rate.

Just as negligent as their repeated failures to compromise on restructuring and job-creating tax relief, the General Assembly has also failed to work with the governor on our $6 billion state budget.

In March 2005, Governing Magazine, hardly a bastion of conservative thought, hailed Sanford’s groundbreaking approach to activity-based budgeting as “a challenge to state agencies to act more cohesively toward a set of common goals.” The fruits of this cohesion were evident in both of Sanford’s landmark executive budgets — not just in structural improvements, but in millions of dollars in taxpayer savings as well.

Sadly, legislators turned their noses up at most of the governor’s proposed savings, and those they adopted quickly became an excuse to spend more of your money. With paychecks growing in South Carolina at under 4 percent last year, legislators embarked on a pork-fest that grew government spending by well over twice that amount — 9.1 percent.

Remember that the next time you pay a tax or usage fee.

Third-worst governor? Not hardly. Try the worst Legislature.

Mr. Folks is president of Viewpolitik, a Columbia communications firm. He served as press secretary to Gov. Sanford from 2001 to 2005.