SEN. ROBERT Ford predicted that the government restructuring bill “could just destroy our state,” and declared that the effort a decade ago that turned control of a third of the government over to the governor was “a minor restructuring compared to all this stuff we’re talking about now.” Sen. Jake Knotts, with a straight face, called it “a very, very far-reaching piece of legislation for the people of South Carolina for years to come.”

Even some responsible senators joined in the hyperbolic gymnastics. Sen. Larry Martin, who chaired the subcommittee that worked on the bill, said the new inspector general and chief information officers in the bill “are two big parts” of Gov. Mark Sanford’s request.

Welcome to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s debate on one of the most over-hyped pieces of legislation it has ever considered, a debate that would make anyone who has actually read the bill wonder whether English was a second language for all of the members of the Senate.

Did someone sneak in a real restructuring bill — one that actually reduces the number of state agencies and makes it possible to hold them accountable for their actions — while I wasn’t looking?

Alas, no.

I could understand the confusion if these were ordinary citizens, who had not just sat through Sen. Martin’s summary of the proposal. After all, the Senate’s restructuring bill is loaded down with enough superfluous tripe to intimidate all but the most determined readers. It’s got so many pages, one might reasonably conclude, that it must do a lot.

But that wasn’t the problem last week. Senators know perfectly well how pathetically little the bill does; as several noted, the main reason it does so little is that senators insisted that it do no more.

It would be misleading to simply say that the bill reduces the number of stand-alone health agencies from eight to seven, adds one board-run agency to the Cabinet and creates a Department of Administration that the governor would oversee.

Misleading because most of those changes are a farce.

Once merged, the departments of Mental Health and Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services would still be required to be treated as separate agencies; the umbrella agency couldn’t consolidate divisions — or even office space— in the old agencies without legislative approval.

The Department of Administration is even more vacuous. It would include that new inspector general, as well as the state energy office, the state fleet, and business operations such as the state government mail service, office supplies purchasing, surplus property and the State House parking garage — all currently part of the Budget and Control Board. It also would maintain some government buildings.

But what the bill moves into the Administration Department pales compared to what it leaves in the Budget and Control Board — and how much additional power it gives that constitutionally offensive entity. The board would still oversee human resources, the State Retirement System, government contracts, auditing and performance review functions, the purchase, sale and lease of government land and buildings, and the maintenance (through a whole new division) of buildings used by the courts and the Legislature.

Moreover, that new chief information technology officer would answer to the Budget and Control Board. So would a new coordinating council made up of representatives of the state’s nine cultural agencies — a council that is being created as a pathetic substitute for merging those agencies. The board would have new power to veto “permanent improvements” to other agencies’ buildings. And it would have to sign off on several Administration Department decisions.

What makes this not just wasteful but outrageous is the fact that there’s no good reason for the Budget and Control Board even to exist, much less be expanded. The agency is governed by the governor, the comptroller general, the state treasurer and the chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees. Those last two people — who have no business helping to run an executive agency — are the reason the Legislature is so protective of it. Except in those rare instances when all three executive officials agree, the legislators have the opportunity to dictate executive branch policy.

So of course no one on the Judiciary Committee questioned giving the Budget and Control Board even more power. No one asked why no more of its duties were given to the Department of Administration. In fact, the main question was why the department was being created at all. That would be a reasonable question if those asking it were concerned that it’s nothing but a shell; they weren’t. Consider Sen. Brad Hutto’s question: “Is there some policy reason (to move offices out of the board)? That the Budget and Control Board doesn’t want these duties any more?”

That is, in a nutshell, the legislative mindset: State agencies should only be changed if the people who run them seek the change. Indeed, the only reason senators agreed to make the Department of Natural Resources a Cabinet agency was that the part-time board that now ostensibly runs it supports the change.

Late in the debate, when Sen. Tom Moore argued that moving a handful of offices from the governor’s office to an agency controlled by the governor was “diluting the responsibility” for those offices, Sen. Martin interjected a bit of sanity, declaring the argument about where to put them was “really gagging at a gnat.”

Unfortunately, the same could be said for the whole bill.

Critics have long argued that the fight over restructuring is about power. They’re absolutely right. It is about the Legislature’s fierce determination to cling to all power — and perceived power —no matter how much that might drive up the cost of government, no matter how much it might degrade the government’s ability to serve the public.

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