Senate backs budget cuts
Reduction plan sent to Sanford
The Senate on Thursday gave key approval to nearly $500 million in budget cuts, after swatting down proposals to shorten next year’s legislative session, raise the cigarette tax or use one agency’s surplus to pay for shortfalls in children’s programs.
Gov. Mark Sanford criticized some parts of the budget-cutting plan and attacked what he called “misinformation” used on the Senate floor during the debate about an agency’s surplus.
“While we’re pleased that the Senate stuck with the overall approach we called for in making targeted cuts, we’re disappointed that they didn’t take this opportunity to address some real flaws in this spending plan,” Sanford said in a statement.
“We’ll be taking a close look at this plan when it reaches my desk to determine what if anything can be corrected via a veto. In the meantime, it bears repeating that at the end of the day, this budget is the result of four years of reckless overspending by the Legislature.”
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman said he awoke at 2 a.m. worried about the impact the cuts will have on the state’s residents. “During a tough year, no cut is easy,” he said afterward.
Cuts approved by lawmakers to the $7 billion budget include a nearly 15 percent reduction in state support to the state’s colleges and universities, nearly $20 million less in funding for local governments, a cut of 8.5 percent to the Governor’s School for the Arts in Greenville and more than $200,000 in cuts to University Center in Greenville.
The plan largely spares classroom education, Medicaid and the state’s prison system, currently operating at a deficit.
Discussed but never voted on were proposals to cut next year’s legislative session in half, to create a committee to study new sources of revenue including gambling, to raise the tax on cigarettes, and requests to restore funding to a state conservation land bank and for the nonprofit group the Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities Inc., which saw all of its state funding disappear.
Most senators with proposals to change the plan withdrew them after Leatherman warned that any change would have to be approved by the House, a delay that could trigger across-the-board cuts by the State Budget and Control Board, including $76 million for classrooms.
Sen. John Drummond of Greenwood, 89 and retiring after this session, told colleagues that they weren’t responsible for the financial shortfall and that the cuts were unavoidable. He later received a standing ovation.
“Folks, we just don’t have the money,” he said. “It has to be done. The public knows what we have to do.”
Sen. Greg Ryberg, an Aiken Republican, insisted the Senate hear and vote on his amendment, a proposal to transfer about $24 million in reserves at the State Budget and Control Board to other agencies for children’s education, electronic monitoring of sexual offenders and child protective services.
Ryberg said all three programs had been cut by the budget plan and all three are “more important than keeping that reserve fund.”
Leatherman countered that other agencies also had reserve funds. Sanford said that while senators were told agencies’ reserves total about $600 million, the true number “is a fraction of that.”
Other senators argued that Ryberg’s proposal could jeopardize an agreement between House and Senate leaders on the cuts and cause the Senate to have to return to Columbia unnecessarily as well as trigger the across-the-board cuts. Ryberg said any action taken by the Legislature would supersede any action taken by the State Budget and Control Board.
Ryberg’s amendment was tabled 37-6.
The Senate then approved the budget-cutting plan on a voice vote. It also approved automatic final approval today, sending the plan to Sanford. Lawmakers will return next week to take up any vetoes by the governor.
Sen. Kevin Bryant of Anderson later said he had voted against the plan because he feared it would cut out funding needed by the state Department of Pardon, Probation and Parole to continue electronic monitoring of more than 70 sexual offenders, one of the aims of Ryberg’s amendment.
“Out of a budget containing several billion dollars, this amount is a small fraction,” he said. “However, we cannot take the chance on allowing these predators to go unmonitored and our children fall prey.”
Some senators said they had received assurances that even with the cuts, the monitoring wouldn’t end.
By Tim Smith
The Greenville News
October 24, 2008