In a new series on corruption in South Carolina, The Post and Courier states that roughly half of all journalism jobs disappeared during the past 15 years. As community news organizations have folded or are just hanging on, “news deserts” are created where public officials operate without reporters keeping tabs, causing corruption to flourish as […]
Editorial: ‘News deserts’ and weak ethics laws allow corruption to run rampant in SC
February 18, 2021 By
Public (Special) Education Should Look to Barclay School for Guidance
March 12, 2020 By
Private alternative schools like The Barclay School, which operated for more than a decade in Fairfield County before closing at the end of February due to funding challenges, are a testament to the unmet need in special education. The tiny little school in Ridgeway, which ran on a shoestring budget with the help of volunteers […]
As Blythewood Turns: R2 board condones bad behavior
February 21, 2019 By
Some Richland Two school board members have gone months – years, even – without addressing unfiled ethics forms, with five-figure fines levied against two elected officials. The Richland Two Board of Trustees had an opportunity to institute a sound system of accountability by amending board policy so that a member’s board office title could be […]
Editorial: The picket man will be missed
November 30, 2017 By
Tom Utroska was about as reluctant a candidate as you will find when he ran for Blythewood Town Council in 2012. But that’s not to say he was a political wall flower. Or that he was shy. Like many in the town in 2010, Utroska was choosing sides about how the town was being run, […]
Editorial: Desmond’s Law could affect animal abusers in S.C.
November 22, 2017 By
ORANGEBURG – In 2016, the FBI started to track animal cruelty, including neglect, torture and sexual abuse, because of disturbing connections between abuse and killing of animals and dong the same to humans… Desmond’s Law enacted in 2016 creates a program that allows courts to appoint supervised law students or lawyers to serve as volunteer […]
Who Knew?
January 12, 2015 By
If there is one thing to which the old cliché “It was in all the papers” aptly applies, it is Fairfield County’s recreation debate and its long-awaited plan, revealed last September, to spend $500,000 in each of its seven voting districts. That Ridgeway Town Council was surprised last month to learn that the plan for […]
Naughty or Nice?
December 19, 2014 By
It is the season for giving, and there has been no shortage of it in Fairfield County and Blythewood of late; although some of what has been passed along appears more like a gnarly lump of sooty coal than anything one might put a bow on. If Santa is indeed watching, it looks as though […]
Priceless
December 12, 2014 By
Everything may indeed, as the saying goes, have a price; there may also be things, however, for which a price would be so absurdly high as to render that thing essentially priceless. Other things there are still for which one cannot imagine a price, however high. The Statue of Liberty, for example, and Mt. Rushmore, […]
Setting the Agenda
November 14, 2014 By
With the final race for Fairfield County Council heading for a protest, the tremors from last week’s election results do not appear to have completely died down. It is difficult – as it should be – to overturn or order a new election, so regardless of the merits of that protest, the odds are long […]
Say, You Want a Revolution?
November 7, 2014 By
Regardless of the outcome of today’s recount in the County Council race for District 3, a seat that appeared to outside observers and amateur political strategists in the local newspaper industry as the single most secure seat for any incumbent in any race in the nation, the results of Tuesday’s election is clear. For if […]
