By Bill Davis, senior editor | The biggest unseen and immeasurable line item in the forthcoming legislative budget bill will be the amounts of unanimity between the state House and Senate.
Yes, the state Senate this week approved its $7.5 billion general budget package in a near-record four hours. And, yes, that chamber could have posted an even faster time if it weren’t for some last-second grandstanding from Sen. Lee Bright (R-Roebuck) regarding who can use what bathroom.
But what really stood out this week, according to legislators from the Senate and House, was how closely the Senate budget plan mirrored the House version. This could mean for an equally lightning-fast conference committee delivering a compromise plan for spending General Fund revenues to Gov, Nikki Haley to mark up with her red veto pen.
For the past 10 years, the Senate, fueled by politics and an unstable tax forecast, has politely received House budget plans, pooh-poohed them, called them “inartfully crafted,” and then set to work recasting them.
But with four “whole” hours spent on the budget in the Senate this year, it appears it has switched spots with the House and became a legislative racetrack “where anything can get passed.” Several legislators said the hard work put in by the House on a road funding bill earlier in the session paved the way (pun intended) for the unanimity.
Road to success
Earlier this year, House Ways and Means chairman Brian White (R-Anderson) introduced a solution to the vexing problem of road funding. In an election year, no legislator was too interested in hiking the gas or any other tax.
So White introduced the idea of shifting debate to using existing General Fund money to fund bonding schemes that would deliver the billions that the Department of Transportation said it dearly needed to deal with the state’s crumbling infrastructure.
The only real difference between the House and Senate versions on this scheme was how much in recurring funding was being funneled into the equation. The House sought to dedicate more total dollars leaning on new money, while the Senate wanted to lean more heavily on recurring dollars.
So with a tacit agreement on how to handle roads, both chambers were able to agree more quickly and easily on the FY 2016-17 budget.
Still, some saw the road measure as “kicking the can down the street,” or putting off paying for current problems over coming decades.
But lawmakers quietly hailed it as a way to appease voters wanting better roads as well as voters who hate raising taxes. Furthermore, the road might be only a few blocks long because next year, Haley will be a lame duck and may not be as big of an obstacle to passing a more permanent solution for recurring road revenue, such as a gas tax.
Not a complete budgetary dovetail
Road funding aside, there are only a few differences between the two budget packages.
Raises. Where the Senate plan called for a 4-percent raise for state employees, the House only called for a 3-percent increase. Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D-Orangeburg), who advocated for 5-percent raises, said she hoped the conferees would adopt the Senate version on state employee raises.
Beaches. The House set aside $40 million for beach renourishment, while the Senate appropriated $20 million.
Otherwise, the budget versions are remarkably similar, according to several observers on both sides of the aisle in both chambers. Both plans dealt with K-12 school funding and higher education funding with similar increases, for instance.
But, when the Senate version is introduced in two weeks to the House, which is on furlough next week, there will be little to fight over, with obvious “landing spots” cut into the budgeting jungle.
A 4-percent state raise is too high? And 2-percent is too low? How about 3 percent? Done. Boom.
Renourishment mired between $20- and $40-million line items? How about $30 million? Gavel! Sold! Next item.
White, the Ways and Means chair, said that a steady increase in funding helped limit fights. “But at a $7.5 billion General Fund budget, we’re really just getting back to where we were 10 years ago,” said White. “It’s taken us that long.”
According to state documents, that $7.5 billion is taken from a projected $8.2 billion in tax revenues, but is reduced immediately with tax relief measures, primarily in real estate and property taxes.
Next step
White said that while he has no crystal ball, he’s not sure what Haley could object to in the budgets.
“We’ve taken care of some of her projects, not all of them, but she’s won some,” he said. “There may be some philosophical differences on what she may consider to be a ‘pet project’ or pork in our bills, but we can work those out.”
Rep. Kenny Bingham (R-Cayce), who chairs the House Ethics Committee and serves on Ways and Means, said removing annualizations from the budget, beyond what is required by law, has sped the process.
Bingham held that many of the House brass have political ideologies that mirror each other, partly because so many of them came to the legislature at roughly the same time.
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