Emergency Session Maneuvering

South Carolina politicians are already starting to position themselves in anticipation of next Monday’s emergency session of the General Assembly.

House Speaker Bobby Harrell and Senate President Glenn McConnell put out a press release yesterday outlining their intention to cut the budget by seven percent, while Gov. Mark Sanford presented his own plan for $321 million in cuts.

So who’ll win and who’ll lose in the first emergency session in this state since 2002?

Clearly, the taxpayers. Lawmakers spoke at length yesterday about avoiding cuts to “critical services,” but it’s precisely those sorts of cuts that help them make the case for “revenue enhancements” and additional spending down the road.

So expect vital services to be cut every bit as much as useless pork, and expect conservatives to have absolutely no voice in the process.

“Nobody’s telling us what the plan is,” said one conservative State Representative. “Asking us what will be cut is assuming that we have a say in what’s happening here. We don’t.”

Who does have a say?

Well, the Senate Finance Committee will begin meeting in Columbia today and the House Ways & Means Committee is being brought back on Friday with the intention of passing a first draft of spending cuts.

A vote on those proposals could be held immediately after lawmakers reconvene on Monday.

Meanwhile, Superintendent of Education Jim Rex broke with his agency’s typical “top-down” philosophy by saying that local school districts should be given the authority to make specific cuts.

Rex’s move, as usual, is by far the shrewdest of all the pre-session posturing.

After years of fighting against more local control of education funding, now that times are tough he’s doing an about-face and trying to shift the onus for cuts onto local officials.

It’ll be interesting to see whether or not Rex’s slavish disciples at the S.C. School Boards Association appreciate such a tactic, but our guess is that they’re just dumb enough to fall for it.

Stay tuned for much more today as the maneuvering ahead of the 2008 Emergency Session only intensifies …