Lawmakers must find $500M in reductions

October 15, 2008 by senatormcconnell

State agencies last week submitted a list of recommended cuts to the governor’s office. Altogether, the cuts make up about $321 million and would result in hundreds of layoffs.

The Legislature may or may not consider these suggestions when it convenes to cut state spending next week.

Here are some cuts that would affect the Charleston area:

The Citadel: $1.6 million. This money would come from delaying a few programs and cutbacks in travel and library funds, as well as leaving open positions unfilled. Some layoffs are possible.

College of Charleston: $3.4 million. The majority of these cuts would come from various programs, including the Economic Partnership Initiative, the Global Trade and Resource Center and the Marine Genomics program. No layoffs were mentioned.

Trident Technical College: $2.7 million. There was no detailed breakdown. This figure was included in the Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education budget.

Sea Grant Consortium: $61,303. This would come from overall budget reductions and one layoff.

MUSC: $0. MUSC officials told the governor’s office they could not make additional cuts.

Other proposed cuts:

–The Department of Natural Resources has proposed cutting more than $1 million from its law enforcement division.

–The Department of Motor Vehicles would save a little more than $1 million by closing offices on Saturdays.

Additional story

State budget writers sharpening their knives, published 10/09/08

In behind-the-scenes talks Tuesday, the state’s top lawmakers agreed to call the Legislature into session to decide just how much and where to cut South Carolina’s over-extended budget.

The lawmakers will be back in the Statehouse on Monday; in the days until then, they will continue figuring out how to cut nearly another $500 million in spending, or 7 percent of the state’s $7 billion budget.

“It’s going to take five legislative days to pull this off,” said Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston.

The session is expected to last until Oct. 24.

At play is election-time politicking, an economically hurting electorate and a bitter, simmering feud between Gov. Mark Sanford and legislative power-brokers.

“Not anything in particular is off the table, except tax increases,” said House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston.

Tuesday’s decision locked in the timetable for forging a compromise on what services get the ax. The House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to meet Friday, and the Senate Finance Committee will meet Monday.

The committees will consider a long list of recommended cuts prepared by agencies at Sanford’s request.

About $260,000 in forensic testing that helps solve crimes at the State Law Enforcement Division could be chopped. Or $157,000 for court-appointed advocates for children from broken homes. And possibly $50,000 from a fund that helps defend impoverished death-row inmates.

Also at stake are slots for 50,000 poor children to receive health care benefits for the first time, nearly $300,000 in programs at the College of Charleston for gifted high school students and $400,000 for teen pregnancy prevention.

The lawmakers will choose whether to lay off as many as 900 government workers, stop giving prisoners bus tickets home when their sentences are up, cut about $35,000 in rape and violence prevention and eliminate beds in mental health facilities.

The decision to reconvene was prompted by the determination last week by the state Board of Economic Advisors that state revenue would be lower than estimated. It was the board’s second such determination this year.

The board estimated that tax collections would fall a total of $554 million short of the spending plan passed by the Legislature in late May.

Slumping revenue collections forced a 2 percent budget cut in August that came from state reserve funds. The board ordered a 6 percent cut Oct. 8, but legislators decided Tuesday to call for a 7 percent cut just in case.

Some have theorized that South Carolina’s economic predicament is self-inflicted, caused by the Legislature’s elimination of the sales tax on food sold in grocery stores and its swap of the dependable property tax for the volatile sales tax to fund schools.

Some chalk the problem up to overspending, and that’s been Sanford’s position. For years, the governor has hounded lawmakers about spending and warned that mid-year budget cuts would come again.

“It’s been a long time coming, but we’re very pleased and we give the General Assembly credit for choosing to come back to make targeted cuts,” Sanford’s press secretary Joel Sawyer said.

Sanford for weeks has been calling for the Legislature to come back and make prioritized budget cuts, rather than see all agencies suffer equal losses when the missions of some agencies are more vital than the missions of others.

The governor recommended legislators use his spending vetoes and his executive budget as a road map for savings.

Lawmakers pointed out that the governor, like legislators, relied on revenue estimates, and that Sanford’s executive budget released in January was actually $62 million more than the budget passed by the Legislature in May.

By Yvonne Wenger
The Post and Courier
October 15, 2008

Comments