NEWBERRY — Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette stopped by Newberry during a Rotary Club of Newberry meeting as the organizations guest speaker. Before giving updates on her time as lieutenant governor, she talked about how much Newberry has changed over the years.
“Newberry is such a great town, and I got to see it a lot during the campaign, it is just amazing to see how much it changed. My niece came down here from Ohio and started going to school at Newberry, and played soccer for Newberry College 12 years ago. That was the first time I’d ever seen Newberry,” Evette said. “Just to see how much has happened to your city and how wonderful it is; great shopping, I was able to walk around and do some shopping — it was wonderful. Always great to be in Newberry.”
Evette said being lieutenant governor is her first time ever having the honor of serving in any capacity.
“I wasn’t even class president in high school, but I did always have a willingness to serve and give back,” she said.
People often ask Evette why would she leave her business to be in public service, and she answers them by discussing her grandparents.
“My grandparents were Polish immigrants, they came over in 1910. They were just so adamant about telling us how lucky we are to have been born in this country, and to be able to do and be and worship anything we wanted to, that we could,” she said. “So if we ever had the call to serve, we should do it. I think that is why I’m passionate about doing this.”
Prior to the last six months, Evette spent her life in the business sector. She said along with her husband David, started their business, Quality Business Solutions, 19 years ago. They built the business from a start-up company to a company that operates in 49 states — with a lot of great accomplishments, according to Evette.
“I think that helped set me up my role as lieutenant governor because of what we do. We help small to medium sized businesses grow,” she said. “We do their back-end, their payroll, their benefits, their HR (Human Resources). So for 19 years I was able to see what made it hard for businesses to be successful.”
Evette said there were a lot of regulations that made it hard to enter a market.
“Regulations came into play that they couldn’t abide by because they didn’t have money to do it,” she said. “I think that was a big reason why the governor asked me to run as lieutenant governor.”
This is the first time in South Carolina history, based on a Constitutional change, that the governor picked his/her running mate, according to Evette.
“This was the first election that happened; in years past you could have governors and lieutenant governors who didn’t see eye to eye, maybe they were different political parties,” she said. “Now the lieutenant governor makes up the Governor’s Office; we work together as a team, kinda like the president/vice-president, to get things done across the state.”
Evette also pointed out that the lieutenant governor position is completely different from what it previously was. She said prior to her, the lieutenant governor was in charge of the Senate, and they were the tie-breaking vote.
“They sat in the Senate everyday, listened to everyone talk back and forth — I’m really glad I don’t have to do that, that wouldn’t have been much fun as what I do now,” she said.
She added that the lieutenant governor was also in charge of the Office of the Aging, now that office is in the Governor’s Cabinet.
“Still have a big hand in it, but it is not something I solely do on my own,” she said. “What I get to do now is what I love to do — especially coming out of the business world. I get to travel the state, meet with businesses, find out what they need.”
Evette said the governor likes to tell businesses, large and small, “Don’t assume we know what makes it hard for you to do business here in South Carolina, because we can’t know everything; we only know when you tell us.”
“The governor made that a huge initiative among workforce development, industry development and economic development across the state,” she said. “So we deal with businesses, find out what they need, find out what is working well for them. So we can talk about it to other businesses thinking about relocating here in South Carolina.”
Evette meets with a multitude of groups, she said, to find out what they think the challenges are; as well as municipalities to hear what the challenges are and what they need from Columbia.
Along with that information, the teamwork happening among the elected officials of South Carolina, Evette said a lot of great things are happening in South Carolina.
“Coming out of my first legislative session, that was a huge learning curve for me. I do get to work with our House members and Senate members a lot to talk about our initiatives at the Governor’s Office; things that are important to us that we want to see throughout the state, and reach out to them and see if we can compromise,” Evette said.
A big initiative this year for the Governor’s Office has been education. Evette said they needed to be bold, so along with Jay Lucas (Speaker of the House) they came up with a comprehensive educational plan.
“A lot of people don’t realize we are 25th in the nation of putting money in per student, but we are 50th in outcome,” she said.
One of the first things Evette said they needed to do was get pay for teachers up.
“We have some of the best colleges and universities in the country, our technical schools are just amazing — no other state has technical program like we do. So we wanna make sure that we are investing in all of our youth coming up,” she said. “I’m proud to say that we got that passed this legislative season, our teachers got a five percent pay increase — which is a huge step forward in what they were making.”
Evette added that they wanted to strip away some of the regulations, including any testing that the state controls.
“There is a lot we can’t control, there is a lot that comes down from the federal level,” she said.