The end is near. Our state lawmakers will soon be going home to their families and whatever they do over the other six months of the year.

Some critics including those in the local media are quick to rant about their extravagant spending – often on themselves.

Is it not a shame that lawmakers must bear the blame for their lack of action on what others see as vital to the health and wealth of the taxpayers?

To that we say poppycock.

As wise men and women still occasionally say, no one’s life, liberty or fortune is safe while the legislature is in session.

As for us, we are happy the end is near and their loving families will welcome them home where they may take their own sweet time about six-month household to-do lists.

If you think we just might be joking, you’re right. We are.

But there as much to be said for lawmakers who hesitate to jump on the latest fad and saddle the rest of us with the bill.

We know that more than 700,000 of us wanted something more done about SC Electric & Gas’s larcenous executives who wasted $9 billion on a nuclear plant that now appears was never going to work.

The promises they made 10 years ago to bring us cheaper power and cleaner air is not to be. And some of the crooks who made those claims have slipped away into retirement with millions of ratepayer and investor dollars in their bank accounts.

House members are always more aggressive than their staid counterparts in the senate.

Are they right to demand that SCE&G quit charging us for a nuclear construction project that they have since abandoned?

Is the senate timid in proposing that a so-called 18% nuclear charge be lowered only 15%?

Should lawmakers not also demand SCE&G repay us for our money that they wasted or apply reimbursement to ratepayers for it over future years in reduced electric bills?

What’s more, should we expect gutless Public Disservice Commission regulators to do anything what so ever?

– JerryBellune@yahoo.com