Trick Or Treat For SC Budget

South Carolina lawmakers are likely in store for a special Halloween session after Gov. Mark Sanford signaled today that vetoes to the legislature’s amended spending plan are likely.

Lawmakers were forced back to Columbia this week to deal with “cuts” to the state budget after four years of reckless government growth and a national economic downturn combined to send state revenues plummeting through the floor.

The “cuts” approved by both the House (yesterday) and Senate (today) were essentially the same as those proposed last week by legislative budget writers, with the state’s chronically over-funded higher education system bearing the brunt of the reductions in excess.

Two fiscally conservative efforts to force a freeze in spending for next year and to shorten the legislative session by three months (both sponsored by Democrats, ironically) were easily defeated by the Republican majority.

Sanford chided lawmakers for “missing their chance” to improve the state’s fiscal condition, and said that his office would be “taking a close look at this plan when it reaches my desk to determine what if anything can be corrected via a veto.”

He also specifically called lawmakers out for defeating the shortened session proposal and a plan that would have freed up more money for K-12 - which by the way has gotten a billion dollars in new money over the past four years.

“We were disappointed that efforts at change - like Senator (Darrell) Jackson’s proposal to shorten the length of the next session and Senator (Greg) Ryberg’s proposal to use Budget and Control Board funds to put more money into the classroom - were stifled by a number of tactics, among them misinformation,” Sanford said.

Specifically, the governor claimed that lawmakers were overstating balances that have been carried forward from the previous fiscal year by several of his Cabinet agencies.