Sanford takes budget session pitch to public
Gov. Mark Sanford took his pitch for an immediate special legislative budget session on the road Thursday, and it drew a quick rebuff from legislative leaders.
Saying that 3 percent across-the-board budget cuts unfairly play havoc with core services and small agencies, Sanford used law enforcement offices in Greenville, Florence and Charleston as a backdrop for building public pressure for a session that would impose targeted cuts in the face of a projected $140 million downturn in revenue.
“Ask your legislators to come back in the fall and deal with the budget cuts,” Sanford said at County Square, outside the office of the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. “All the dollars spent within state government are not equal.”
House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, and Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, threw cold water on the request.
“It is disappointing that the governor’s answer to far too many of our state’s problems is to fly around the state holding press conferences complaining,” Harrell said in a press release.
In a Florence press conference, Leatherman said that the State Budget and Control Board, of which he is a member, “voted to impose an across-the-board … cut because the courts have ruled that is the only way such cuts can be implemented without legislative action.”
Although Harrell said he agreed that targeted cuts are preferable, he said potentially spending millions of dollars to have the General Assembly return in September for a special budget session isn’t the right answer. “The Legislature can easily address these targeted cuts when the session begins in January.”
However, Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said the problem with waiting five months is that “you’re five more months into the fiscal year and that means that all of the agencies hit by across-the-board cuts are already impacted before it’s dealt with.”
He suggested that legislative leaders were making a political, not a fiscal, decision by delaying targeted cuts until after the Nov. 4 elections. All 170 state House and Senate members are on the 2008 ballot.
After the Board of Economic Advisers last month reduced fiscal 2008-09 revenue estimates by $140 million, Sanford was on the short end of a 3-2 budget board vote to impose 3 percent across-the-board agency cuts rather than selective reductions.
By Dan Hoover
The Greenville News
August 21, 2008