News Article

Posted on Thu, Mar. 13, 2008

S.C. legislature | House OKs budget, cuts

Senate will now get crack at $7.2 billion spending plan

By JOHN O’CONNOR
joconnor@thestate.com

The S.C. House approved a $7.2 billion state spending plan Wednesday night that includes across-the-board cuts for most state agencies, but also adds money for AIDS drugs, health care for poor children and K-12 education.

With state revenues essentially flat, lawmakers faced a difficult task in balancing the budget. To do so, they used more than $200 million from agency savings and other reserves. In addition, most state agencies will have to trim 2.5 percent, while state employees will receive only a 1 percent raise for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

“Hopefully this downturn won’t last that long,” said Ways and Means chairman Dan Cooper, R-Anderson, “And the (savings) will help us. There is a substantial amount of money left in (savings) for next year.”

Gov. Mark Sanford praised the House for adopting some of his budget suggestions, such as cutting travel and other expenses, but said the House paid for too many programs with one-time money and did not do enough to reduce spending.

“This budget doesn’t do a good enough job in setting priorities,” Sanford said in a written statement. “There’s some real room for improvement in this budget, and we ask that the Senate take that into account.”

With so little money to spread around, this week’s debate was quicker than last year’s, when lawmakers had to debate what to do with a more than $1 billion surplus. With the exception of some short disputes, the budget is largely unchanged from what the Ways and Means committee approved two weeks ago.

One of those moments came Wednesday, when a group of lawmakers tried to withhold money for new technology in the state court system.

Led by Lexington Rep. Ted Pitts, those lawmakers wanted the Judicial Department to release an analysis of its disciplinary rules, or not receive half the money allocated for new information technology.

“We don’t think this hinders them in any way,” Pitts said. “This is just a way to make sure the report is public.”

Many in the Legislature, some attorneys, said the House was trying to micromanage the agency. S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal said the Judicial Department planned to make the report public.

“I think it would have been (micromanaging) if it had passed,” Toal said. “It would have been very simple for the sponsors of the amendment to call me on the phone.”

The House also rejected a proposal that would have created a committee to review the statue of former Gov. Ben Tillman on the State House grounds. Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, said the nine-member committee would review the statue and its historical markers. Rutherford hoped to remove the statue of the former governor, who was a member of a group that lynched blacks in the 1870s.

The House will reconvene at 10 a.m. to give the budget a third and final reading, a vote that is considered a formality.

The Senate now must approve a spending plan and send it to Sanford, who has the authority to veto parts of the budget he doesn’t like.

Reach O’Connor at (803) 771-8358.