|
By Jay King
HOMETOWN NEWS
With action expected this week at the State House to move forward a $5.7 billion budget that includes $350 million in federal stimulus money, the stage is set for a showdown between lawmakers and Gov. Mark Sanford over accepting federal help for the state’s budget woes.
Sanford said in a press conference Monday that lawmakers were continuing to act irresponsibly by passing budgets that include federal stimulus money that the governor has insisted be used to pay down state debt. Among the budgetary excesses Sanford cited were plans to fund a new Capitol police force to protect the State House.
Sen. Glenn Reese said after the Spartanburg County Legislative Delegation meeting last week that the senate planned to move forward with a budget including the federal money and that a veto was expected from the governor. Reese added that if that happened, there have already been discussions among lawmakers raising the possibility of impeachment proceedings against the governor.
Rep. Keith Kelly said in an interview last month about ongoing budget issues that House members had started discussing the possibility of impeachment action if the governor maintained his stance against using federal money already designated for South Carolina to stabilize budgets for state education and law enforcement agencies.
While the budget wrangling continues in Columbia, local governments are left facing some tough choices. For agencies like Spartanburg County, the most recent state budget includes significant cuts that local budget planners have to work around.
County Administrator Glenn Breed said Monday that the county is building a budget around the worst-case scenario from the state, which in Spartanburg County’s case includes a 42.6 million cut in the aid to local government funding from the state.
A series of mid-year budget cuts necessitated by declining state revenues have hit local governments across the state, and in Spartanburg County’s case led to mandatory employee furloughs and sharp budget cuts across every department. Breed said the administration challenged each department to cut between seven and 20 percent from its budget in order to meet budgetary shortfalls during the past year.
Breed explained that the county is having to plan for not only the budget concerns facing the state next year, but even more importantly the likely budget issues for the following year, fiscal year 2010-2011. He said that even though the General Assembly seems to be embroiled in issues related to this next budget, local governments don’t have the luxury of looking only one year ahead.
“We have to think farther ahead,” Breed said. “We don’t have a choice.”
He explained that local governments like the county have only a limited number of options when trying to accommodate budget cuts from the state. For this reason it was essential when preparing the 2009-2010 budget to envision the worst-case scenario in terms of revenue coming in from the state.
“We aren’t taking into account any stimulus money that may or may not be coming our way,” Breed said. He said the new budget is designed to maintain county services while anticipating a lean year in terms of revenue that can be expected from the state.
‘”We’ll deal with whatever hand we’re dealt,” Breed said. “We’ll likely have to make some tough decisions down the road based on the hand that we are dealt.”
jking@hometown-news.com
 Email This Post
|
