First, the good news. After three years of trying to get a bill strengthening DUI to the floor of the State House of Representatives, H. 3496 was passed, despite objections by Reps. Rutherford, Whipper, Brantley, G. Brown, and Bales. Getting it through the Senate will prove even tougher. Stronger DUI laws have been a priority for Gov. Sanford since he took office.

More good news for the governor came when the filibuster on DOT reform, in its third week, finally ended as the Senate approved a compromise Wednesday. The showdown between Sanford and the Senate got uglier as time went on, with the governor yesterday calling the standoff a “mockery.” The Rock Hill Herald reported that, “Both supporters and opponents said the new plan addresses their key concerns and should make the agency, with an annual budget of more than $1 billion, more accountable to public needs.” As of Thursday morning, Sanford was still reviewing the terms.

The bad news today for he governor is that Dan Huntley at the Charlotte Observer submitted an opinion piece ripping a York County-sized hole in Sanford’s “one school district per county” idea as proposed in last month’s State of the State address.

In South Carolina, we have 85 school districts in 46 counties. On the surface, that may sound like we now have nearly twice as many school districts as the state needs (and nearly twice as many school superintendents and their salaries). And you might say, certainly we could save tax dollars by consolidating — a state study estimated that the state could save $25.7 million if we had no school districts with fewer than 2,500 students.

But here in York County, where we have four school districts, a proposal to have one super-sized school district of more than 35,000 students just won’t fly. In fact, the reaction here to Sanford reminded me of Fritz Hollings’ comment in the late ’90s about President Bill Clinton that in South Carolina he was “about as popular as AIDS.”

What better way to beef up education in South Carolina than create massive, underfunded, overpopulated school districts?