NIKKI HALEY GIVES IT ANOTHER SHOT …
|| By FITSNEWS || Two months after her last choice withdrew in disgrace, S.C. governor Nikki Haley is once again trying to find someone to lead the largest agency in state government.
Haley’s appointees on the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) board have tapped Upstate, S.C. attorney Catherine Heigel to run the agency – which oversees a host of regulatory functions. Heigel is a Haley donor and a board member of the governor’s non-profit organization.
She’s also a former executive at Duke Energy – a crony capitalist, Democratic-leaning public utility based in Charlotte, N.C.
Back in February another Haley confidante – former Texas bureaucrat Eleanor Kitzman – withdrew her name from consideration for the $155,000 a year SCDHEC gig amid allegations that she lied to lawmakers, and amid controversy over the $74 an hour temporary job she was given during her confirmation process.
Kitzman’s decision to withdraw surprised many Palmetto State politicos seeing as she was generally expected to be confirmed in spite of her various issues.
The SCDHEC post came open three-and-a-half months ago when former director Catherine Templeton announced her decision to step down after three years at the helm. Templeton – whose tenure at the agency was universally praised (by us, included) – is expected to challenge former S.C. governor Mark Sanford in a GOP primary for the first congressional district seat he holds in 2016 (or run for governor in 2018).
Will Heigel be confirmed? It sure looks that way …
The (Columbia, S.C.) State newspaper – a left-leaning legacy media outlet – wrote her a highly favorable article featuring positive quotes from environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers.
Not everyone is pleased though. One environmental advocate told us there was concern about Heigel’s history with Duke.
“This is a stroke of genius – one of the biggest polluters in the state now has a nice leadership role with (the) environmental police department.”
We don’t know much about Heigel – other than her leadership would certainly seem to be preferable to the goat rodeo being run by Halay confidant Jamie Shuster in the aftermath of Templeton’s departure.
53 comments
What is wrong with DHEC is–and was–NOT in the Commissioner/Director’s office, it is embedded in the middle-management bureaucracy below.
CT never got down to that level to “fix.”
It will be interesting to hear this appointed leader explain what she wants to do.
In business when the new captain takes the helm, it is not uncommon to ask everyone in middle management to offer their resignations in the shadow of conflicts of interest, financial controversy or other. … Then the captain can accept or not, those who he/she needs to find the money leaks and possible fraud … and then proceed with the real job at hand. … Just saying.
That should be the standard action of any new manager. The problem in any political appointment is not the head. It is the second and third level bureaucrats that last forever and “interpret the law” —write the actual rules used every day. Herein lies the problem.
The more layers of bureaucracy cut, the better.
If a GI employee is doing a good job, the captain can respond by “re-hiring”. In a huge but useless bureaucracy, well, good workers will always be in demand elsewhere.
I personally have been fired from several jobs, and that has, for me, always turned out for the best. … In some cases my firing was just and deserved. I was useless/non-productive/negative to the task … In one case I just started my own company and never looked back.
“CT never got down to that level to “fix.”
NOTE: I didn’t state that as a criticism, there was plenty else she had to do first and in a way the allotted time ran out.
Imagine an environmental-permitting system so poorly run that the director of a ~3700-employee agency and her chief of staff had to personally–PERSONALLY–interview almost every lowermost manager to determine why the compliance, monitoring, and enforcement functions were not functioning properly or at all, this with three or four intervening levels of higher-paid management who should have long ago had this running right being excluded (properly, as they had already failed). No director or chief of staff should ever have had to find and solve such lower-level but pervasive problems. It burned up valuable time.
And there is much more.
“PERSONALLY–interview almost every lowermost manager to determine why the compliance, monitoring, and enforcement functions were not functioning properly or at all, this with three or four intervening levels of higher-paid management who should have long ago had this running right being excluded (properly, as they had already failed)”
If upper management was such a failure then why didn’t she fire any of them?
She did force two top levels out at the end of their TERI periods, but for the three levels below (above the level she interviewed) that is a good question. I guessed in part, time. But I really have no knowledge as to why. She certainly had some staff recommending it. The main problems are still there, still in charge.
Remember the 500+ permits (mostly from department of water) REMAINED in *EXPIRED* status – private citizen foia exposed this department as the captured flunkies they really are.
Water is still rife with problems, so I’m told. Same with underground tanks.
Templeton “universally praised”? Good God.
By Haley’s staff?
She was the only politician / bureaucrat / regulator I ever heard of that stated she wanted to lessen the burden of regulation on any one. I really miss her. All these people can only add to the problem. Finally someone who wanted to lessen it.
The only reason we have regulations at all is because businesses can’t be trusted to do the right thing when doing something else will fatten their wallet.
Regulations are mostly a direct result of business misbehavior in the first place. They were not precipitated out of a vacuum.
I have to call BULL SHIT on all three of you. It goes like this: politicians are paid by lobbyists to pass a bill. Bureaucrats write the rules, someone has to enforce the rules, thus a tax or fee to pay the bureaucrats and regulators. Then someone in the bureaucracy decides the rules need to be strengthened, more rules for the regulators to enforce, more taxes or fees to pay the regulators. After a long enough time fighting for life against all this red tape the business says “to Hell with it ” and moves to Bum-f–k where they have no rules. We lose jobs here and still get the product only now it is shipped in un regulated at a lower price. Most likely all over something that didn’t amount to a hill of beans to start with.
“politicians are paid by lobbyists to pass a bill”, no argument with this. The problem is that it is generally the “businesses” doing the paying to pass a bill that benefits them and screws the public.
“and moves to Bum-f–k where they have no rules”
we will miss you when you move to your libertarian paradise in Somalia. Better take some food and clean water with you to tide you over till you can settle in.
Rules, insofar as they are respected and enforced, give businesses a framework on which to manage and calculate risk. Without them most people would not be willing to invest time and money in anything.
You have a jaundiced view of business. Businesses that “screw the public” don’t last long. I’m definitely not a liberal-tarian. Solid Republican. That government is best which governs least. Jeffersonian Democrat — todays Republican. I was thinking more like Mexico, where the auto companies went , not Somalia. Being a farmer I picked up on the environmental wackos taking our good pesticides and outlawing them for US to use. The companies just put them in 55 gal. drums, now totes, shipping them to other places and shipping the food produced more cheaply with their use back to US. We get the pesticide residue in unknown amounts but everyone is happy knowing that those nasty chemicals aren’t used here.” Rules give business a framework on which to manage and calculate risk.” That is what I was talking about. When the rules get too burdensome to cash flow, something has to be done. Move it or lose it .
Still might want to take some clean water with you to Mexico and maybe a gas mask if you go to Mexico City…but ironically, regulatory changes over the years have helped considerably.
Mexico…seriously…better bring a bag a cash with you so you can get what permits you do need for your business. Also, might want to bring some protection in the event you run afoul of the cartels.
Your example of pesticides shows your ignorance. Take DDT for example, its dangers are well known and documented yet it is still used in some countries in the 3rd world. Although banned for use in the US in 1972 it was still manufactured well into the next decade. I am willing to bet the reason we still made it was because the makers lobbied hard. Once again the $$$ outweighed to good to the population.
“Businesses that “screw the public” don’t last long” – right, they close up shop, form another LLC under a new name and start all over again.
DDT was used in Sub Saharan Africa for decades. President Bush tried to top it’s use. The cases of Malaria skyrocketed almost over night. They went back to using it. Most of these “dangerous” chemicals are outlawed here so the environmental wackos can feel good. I don’t believe in burning books , but if one ever needed burning it was Silent Spring. I was a teenager when it came out and farmer friends of mine said nothing good will ever come of it. And nothing has.
“farmer friends of mine said nothing good will ever come of it”, I think its probably safe to assume your farmer friend did not have degree in biochemistry.
So, your farmer friend apparently valued a cheap pesticide and higher crop yield ($$$) over any damages that the pesticide would cause to the ecosystem or human health.
Thanks for proving my earlier point that businesses value $$$ or doing what is right.
Then go take a big slag straight out of the Broad River or rent a house in Lockart/Chester where the landfill has been on fire for several months. Tell that to the folks living there having to endure REAL Bullshit. The company/individual that owned/operated the landfill is nowhere to be located.
The textile industry tried to place partial blame on EPA’s water pollution acts for the mills floundering all the while rivers in the upstate flowed black,red or other color depending on what the dyehouses were running and foamed like hell (I was around back then so I fucking know – all right???)
The textile industry and many others were (and continue to be) victims of economics and who can produce something at the lowest cost – plain and simple
Businesses and their stooges (legislators and captive bureaucrats) write the regulations. They are almost always watered down if someone with money is affected..
That’s old Republican.
All these Billionaires yacking about “burdensome Regulations ” while they’re making millions.
Who the Hell are they kidding with that line?
Well,obviously stooges like you!
I’m not a hippy by any stretch of the imagination, but can we please get somebody with a background in medicine or public health? Being an attorney for the biggest energy company in the country shouldn’t count as experience enough to run DHEC. Is she well qualified? Sure. Maybe for attorney general or as a senior counsel to Haley (or something law-related), or even to be a judge, but not as the head of the state health and environmental agency.
How else is SCE&G going to get around all of those environmental regulations without an energy industry attorney leading DHEC though?
I’m sorry, have you met Dukes Scott? If you knew about him or ORS, you wouldn’t worry one bit about SCE&G not being allowed to do anything.
Praised by who? Just give me 3 names of people in South Carolina who praise her or even know who she is.
Any full body or nude photos of ol’ Kate?
Any full body or nude photos of ol’ Kate?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0YIJQ1jgEI
WE HAVE 92 MILLION AMERICANS OUT OF THE WORK FORCE
HALF OF COLLEGE GRADS UNEMPLOYED
50 MILLION AMERICANS ON FOOD STAMPS
18 TRILLION DOLLAR NATIONAL DEBT
MIDDLE EAST ON THE VERGE OF WWIII
TRY AGAIN FITS…Haley AIN’T the problem…
92 million and one counting Big Turd.
Hate what you are…don’t you?
Haley isn’t the problem, but Haley isn’t what she originally represented herself as either.
The Haley Administration has actually brought in some jobs, despite a HORRIBLE national economy… She (and the GOP) fought the NLRB and won, passed voter ID, defunded Gay propaganda at C of C, forced the absurd Women’s Study program at USC-U go belly-up, and fought against redefining marriage.
Compared to Obama and the Democrat Party…that’s a BIG BIG Plus….
Like he’ll she isn’t.
Hes just a Republican who likes to bitch,even about the goofs he votes for.
Shit… dumbass is back.
What does this have to do with DHEC?
You got your HEAD up your @$$, chasing Bigfoot…while your god-Obama obliterates the country…you IGNORANT, media-led, F*#k…
“Democratic-leaning public utility”
Dumbest characterization in history.
Yeh I thought the Democrats were all a bunch of Socialists?
Why would a company you describe as “crony capitalists” be involved with a bunch of damn Marxists?
You Right Wingers never can get your overblown rhetoric right,!
“a former trustee of South Carolina’s chapter of the Nature Conservancy” — The State
One hopes that counts for something. I wonder what her undergraduate degree was in?
Until Nikki Haley came along, I didn’t know someone actually thought a lawyer could manage absolutely everything in state government. Even the public health agency.
And, Vincent Sheheen was too dumb to fight back and point out that virtually every Haley hack appointee is a lawyer while she was running a ‘trial lawyer’ campaign against him.
I guess with her Duke Power connections, we can expect all of the Duke coal ash all over the state to never get cleaned up.
“Heigel is a Haley donor and a board member of the governor’s non-profit organization.”
So she is a Haley donor and apparently a friend since she serves on the board for the governor’s personal charity, those were probably the only two boxes she needed to tick.
I guess we are supposed to believe that out of 99 applicants the one that was the most qualified just happened to be a campaign donor and close friend of the governor.
Until Haley is out of office the corporate whoring will continue.
I thought Catherine Heigel was an actress? Probably just as qualified to run a health and environmental agency too.
Katherine is the actress…smokin’ hot.
Templeton is going to defeat Sanford….LMAO!!!! T-Rav is gonna run for President…nitrat has a brain…Rocky loves America…ha ha ha
Any of these clowns running for the Republican nomination are going to defeat Hillary Clinton.
I hope she’s people-smart. I hope she can see through the smoke. She is going to have to deal with a goodly number of self-promoters, connivers, and distorters, along with some outright liars. And that is just inside the agency. Then there are the businesses, consultants, and legislators on the outside. It’s no place for the credulous.
Just another Haley appointment failure.
Somebody with no experience in anything that DHEC does.
No experience leading any government agency ever.
No experience leading or managing any large employment area ever.
No experience handling large budgets.
No experience that applies to this job at all!!!
Just a lot of experience donating money to Haley for bribery jobs.
I hope the Legislature does not allow this outrageous appointment.
Too bad she doesn’t look like Katherine Heigl….yummmm
So she’s an attorney for a large CPA firm. I guess she lives in Greenville. Will she be moving to Columbia?