SC senators advance choice for DHEC director

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The leader of South Carolina’s labor agency is a step closer to taking the helm of the state’s public health and environmental control agency.

The Senate Medical Affairs Committee voted 13-0 Wednesday to advance the confirmation of Catherine Templeton to the Senate floor. Three senators abstained.

The vote followed two meetings in which senators grilled Templeton about her lack of experience in the agency’s fields, her refusal to live full-time in Columbia, and layoffs at the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation in her year there.

Templeton says the Department of Health and Environmental Control needs a skilled manager, not a health specialist. She says she will be in Columbia whenever necessary and always available but will not uproot her three young children.

Many senators praised her job at LLR.