Having nine executives undermines system of checks and balances

“There is a real danger in shifting to a total Cabinet form of government — losing our system of checks and balances.”

Charles Sharpe,

agriculture commissioner

THE BIG DEFENSE of the status quo is that we need checks and balances in government. A separation of powers.

Clearly, we do.

But that’s not what’s provided by electing nine independent statewide constitutional officers.

Having all those competing executives actually diminishes the effectiveness of our system of checks and balances, by making it more difficult for the executive to serve as an effective check on the much more powerful Legislature.

Like too many concepts that are so ingrained in our lives as to become second nature, we seem to have forgotten what “checks and balances” are all about.

The principle was first enunciated in The Federalist Papers, a series of essays designed to convince voters to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Even without reading the essays, that very historic fact is instructive to the current debate: The U.S. Constitution doesn’t provide for a separately elected federal commissioner of agriculture and secretary of state and comptroller general and education superintendent and other officials. It provides for two elected members of the executive branch of government, both on the same ticket.

The check was to be provided by the judiciary and executive on the legislature, by the executive and legislature on the judiciary, by the legislature and judiciary on the executive. In addition, a check was to be provided by the legislature — the Congress — on itself; hence, the separate U.S. House and U.S. Senate.

As Alexander Hamilton explained, “A democratic assembly is to be checked by a democratic senate and both these by a democratic chief magistrate.”

Indeed, one of the concerns acknowledged in Federalist No. 51, which outlined the idea, was that the executive might not be strong enough to serve as a proper check on the more powerful Congress, and that it might need to be strengthened.

With that in mind, it seems amazing that folks in South Carolina today could base their argument for keeping the executive branch of government divided into nine parts on the concept of providing checks and balances.

The only thing accomplished by dividing the executive into nine independently elected fiefdoms is to weaken the executive branch, which makes it even more difficult to serve as a check on the Legislature. That, by the way, was just what the elitist drafters of our state’s constitution had in mind; they feared that the rabble could too easily control a governor.

Today, this perverted “separation of powers” is one of the primary reasons our state is widely considered to have one of the most powerful legislatures, and one of the weakest executive branches, in the nation.

It’s also why our state can’t seem to get any traction.

A powerful legislative branch of government is essential for many reasons, primarily because it best reflects the passions of the majority while simultaneously protecting the rights of the minority from those very passions. But because it is itself divided — in our case 170 ways — it is practically incapable of forming a comprehensive vision of where the state needs to go, and then leading us there.

That’s the role of the executive. But it’s a role the executive can’t very well play when it is itself divided, when the governor works at cross-purposes with the independent executives who oversee those agencies of government that we spend well more than half of our tax money on.

Ah, but that’s just fine, you say; we still trust our Legislature far more than we would ever trust a governor. Better for the former to be unchecked than for the latter to serve as a check.

If that’s the case, if we really do want to pervert the entire idea and leave the Legislature effectively unchecked while providing checks and balances within the executive, would these nine checks really provide the balance we desire?

Is it really more important that the Agriculture Department be an independent political fiefdom than the Department of Health and Environmental Control, or SLED?

The secretary of state is little more than a secretary. If we wanted to check the power of the governor, shouldn’t the separately elected official be the ethics czar or the elections director?

And what’s with an independently elected treasurer and comptroller general? The current treasurer and the immediate past comptroller have argued that the state’s fiscal house would fall apart if they had to report to the governor. But the one glaring time recently when the governor clearly chose to use his fiscal power in an irresponsible and damaging way (refusing to act to close a gaping midyear budget shortfall, because he wanted to delay such action until after the upcoming elections), both of those men voted right along with him to let state agencies keep spending money they knew the state did not have.

That’s a check all right — a check that bounces.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.