Smoking shelter outrageous waste of money: Close it

ITEM: IT COSTS SO much to provide routine medical care to a smoker that the state of South Carolina recently launched a $1 million-a-year program to help state employees kick the habit.

Officials project that in five years, taxpayers will save $8 for every $1 they invest in this program — and that’s without even counting the reduction in absenteeism. That’s because the state covers three-quarters of the cost of medical insurance for state employees, and smokers’ health care costs an average of $1,623 more each year than the health care for non-smokers.

ITEM: The state Revenue Department, like many other state agencies, has complained in recent years that budget cuts reduced its ability to do its job; in fact, those cuts hurt the tax agency so much that legislators had to go back and give it extra infusions of money just to get the taxes collected.

ITEM: That same Revenue Department just opened a $32,460 shelter to protect employees from the rain and wind while they are outside ... smoking.

That might not be a lot of money for an agency with a $50.7 million budget, but it’s enough to enroll 92 state employees in the smoking cessation program for a year. And it’s enough to make reasonable people wonder what in the world is wrong with the folks who are running the Revenue Department — and whether this sickness infects other state agencies as well.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot that can be done to hold the agency accountable, since Burnie Maybank, who was Revenue director when the decision was made to build the shelter, recently resigned to return to the private sector.

Cutting $32,460 out of the agency’s budget hardly seems like an adequate response. Lawmakers should do that anyway, though, since the agency obviously has money to burn; and we’re open to other ideas to send a message to other state agencies that lawmakers won’t look the other way when they squander state resources and take actions that are counter to state policies.

Beyond that, the Revenue Department should apply the same “no-smoking” rules to the new shelter as the Legislature already has applied to government offices — and it should set about finding a productive use for the facility. If the agency won’t do that, then either the Legislature or the governor should. There simply is no way to justify the government facilitating unhealthy behaviors — particularly when doing so results in higher costs to the taxpayers.

We’d also like to see the governor’s office take some responsibility. Gov. Mark Sanford normally is quite good at opposing wasteful government spending. But his spokesman’s response to this outrage by one of his Cabinet agencies was that it was better to provide the smoking area than to have smokers stand around when families visit the State Museum, where the agency’s offices are located.

No. What’s better than allowing state employees to blow smoke on museum visitors is to make the museum’s entrance off-limits to cigarette smoke as well. If it’s too inconvenient for Revenue Department employees to smoke, maybe some of them will take the state up on its offer to help them quit. That way, everybody wins.

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