Tomorrow, I’ll chair my first House Agriculture Regulations Subcommittee.
Two of the regulations (aka “regs”) before us are proposing fee increases for DHEC.
One I found very interesting and wanted your thoughts. It begs the question: are ALL fee increases “bad”?
You can go to this link to see the full regulation but the ending sums the situation up quite well and I’d like to know your thoughts.
Statement of Rationale
The fee increases will allow the Department to collect enough fees to cover the program, as required by the statute, while keeping the license fees at 50% of the U.S. NRC’s fees for an identical license. If the Department does not collect and retain enough fees to adequately fund the program, South Carolina is at risk of losing its Agreement State status with the NRC. If this occurs, licensing fees will automatically be assessed on the NRC’s fee schedule, which is 100% more than the fee increases addressed in these amendments. Therefore, these fees are needed and reasonable.
So, in essence, do we keep funding a program with a fee increase OR, if we do not (based on information present by DHEC) the result would be we then have the federal government regulating these areas and apparently charging double what the state agency has proposed for those services.
I’d like to get you opinion if you’re willing to post it here or by sending directly to me by using the contact button above.