Category Archives: Priorities

I took care of that deficit thing. Ya got anything else needs doin’?

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Thanks to Phillip for bringing our attention to this NYT page, where you, too, can try to eliminate the national deficit.

I managed to do it. And it wasn’t especially hard. It was a little hard, just not especially. I’ll be happy to let the Congress use my plan, for a consideration of a mere half a percent of the amount by which I reduced it.

The only thing I did that I had real qualms about (and yeah, I know that credible arguments can be mounted against everything I did, but the rules of the game, in real life and here, are that you’ve got to do something) was when I decided to cap Medicare growth starting in 2013. That sounds to me suspiciously like the kind of arbitrary limit that Tom Davis et al. want to enact in South Carolina. But I excused myself in the hope that it would exert downward pressure on costs. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t, though. The only way the federal gummint would really be able to lower costs is if we are ALL in the program — then there wouldn’t be anyone left to raise prices on. Note that I did NOT raise the age of Medicare eligibility. That’s because I think it should be extended to everybody — except that those of us under 65 would pay for it, just the way we do for employer-provided insurance.

I really went back and forth on that one. But if I didn’t do it, I fell short of the goal, and there wasn’t anything else I would consider doing. If I did do it, I exceeded the goal. (As you can see if you check my plan, I have surpluses. Am I good or what?)

And of course, of COURSE, we should raise the age for full Social Security eligibility. Average life expectancy today is 77.9 years. Those born in 1900 only expected to live 50 years. So 70 is like the new, I don’t know, 45.

And yeah, I know states are hurting, but aid to states is just not a core function — and maybe not even a legitimate function at all — of the federal government.

I didn’t touch military spending, particularly not ongoing operations — except for cutting some new weapons programs.

Overall, 33 percent of my deficit reduction came from tax increases, and 67 percent from spending cuts. So take THAT, all of you think I love all tax increases.

Seriously, I charted a middle road on the whole Bush tax cuts issue, because I find both sides of the debate sort of persuasive and sort of not. Democrats’ ranting about Republicans’ “tax cuts for the rich” leave me cold. So does Republicans’ love for tax cuts for the rich. Heh. The issue is what makes sense for both our economy and the proper functions of government. Hence my middle road.

Where in SC is he seeing government “grow”?

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Glenn McConnell and other who say stuff like this completely mystify me:

“Today, I again introduced a joint resolution that would limit the growth of government.  My desire was to give the people of South Carolina the opportunity to decide at the ballot box if government should grow faster than their wallets.   I have introduced this bill every session since 2007, and hope that it will pass this year.  The need for this legislation has been made clear by the current crisis we are in.  I believe that we should have manageable growth that allows for providing core services of government.  We do not need a feast or famine approach to budgeting for our core government functions.  I also believe that what the government does not need should be returned to those who paid the bill in the first place.  Sadly, I have seen that government, when faced with a buffet of tax dollars, could not control its appetite.  Therefore, I felt compelled to introduce a legislative way to staple its stomach.”

That’s from an e-mail release I got today from Senate Republicans. Set aside the overuse of weary cliches. My point is this: Where, oh where in the state of South Carolina is Glenn McConnell seeing government “grow,” or indeed do anything other than retrench, shrivel, stumble and limp along? Where is the “problem” that his is allegedly addressing? I see it nowhere in this state, and haven’t in the 23 years I’ve been closely watching.

If this were anyone but McConnell, I would say it was just mindless GOP rhetoric. Since the Republicans have decided to nationalize all politics, since we’ve seen expansions of such programs as Medicare and Homeland Security under Bush, and other medical programs and the stimulus under Obama, a state senator of GOP persuasion might spout such nonsense reflexively.

But we know that McConnell is particularly a South Carolina creature, and he knows this state inside and out. He thinks SC thoughts, in SC symbols. There’s nothing generic about him.

So in his case, it really makes no rational sense at all.

Of course, he’s not alone. I hear Tom Davis has done the same. I like Tom, and he’s certainly right about some things, but he definitely loses me when he puts forward such Sanfordesque legislation as trying to create a formula limiting future spending to an arbitrary formula:

Tomorrow, I will pre-file a bill that caps general fund appropriations to a “population growth plus inflation” increase over the amount spent the prior year, with revenues above this cap returned to taxpayers, pro-rata in accordance with their payments. Time to draw the line.

The problems with such proposals should be obvious. To name four of my favorites:

  1. There is no solid reason to believe (except that it sounds like it might apply) that such a formula will bear any accurate relationship to the future requirements of government. There’s no way you can know that a formula based on population growth and inflation will be more relevant than one based on a function of the ERAs of left-handed pitchers in the American League.
  2. The Framers who handed down our system of republican government (of which our SC system is a sort of Bizarro World parody, but hey, it’s what we’ve got) intentionally placed such decisions as taxing and spending in the hands of regularly elected representatives who are delegated to decide how best to address the needs of the moment. They most assuredly did NOT set up a system that would make future Congresses’ (or in our system, Legislatures’) decisions for them, much less try to substitute present or future representatives’ deliberation with a mathematical formula. It’s hard to imagine any decision that lawmakers make that is more central to their responsibility as stewards, or more sensitive to the particular factors of the given year, than the annual budget.
  3. No one who believes in any sort of democracy, representative or otherwise, should support anything like this. Basically, a proposal like this arises from a desire to use a momentary political advantage to bind all future elected representatives to follow the proposer’s philosophy. The idea is, get a momentary majority, and then you don’t have to win elections in the future — even if your philosophy is completely rejected in future elections, you have prevented those elections from having consequences. And that is unconscionable if one believes at all in the American way of democratic republicanism.
  4. Finally, we return to the objection I raised initially above: This is South Carolina, gentlemen. At no time has there been any indication that there is a problem for which this proposal might be even an imperfect solution. “Time to draw the line?” Really? On what, Tom, on what?

Whew! McConnell owes Democrats a favor

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After Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., oh-so-reluctantly gave in to Tea Party demands to swear off on the earmarks he so dearly loves, the Senate Democrats came to his rescue today:

Senate shuns push for elimination of pet projects

By ANDREW TAYLOR

The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 30, 2010; 11:41 AM

WASHINGTON — The Senate Tuesday rejected a GOP bid to ban the practice of larding spending bills with earmarks – those pet projects that lawmakers love to send home to their states.
Most Democrats and a handful of Republicans combined to defeat the effort, which would have effectively forbidden the Senate from considering legislation containing earmarks like road and bridge projects, community development funding, grants to local police departments and special-interest tax breaks.
The 39-56 tally, however, was a better showing for earmark opponents, who lost a 29-68 vote earlier this year. Any votes next year should be closer because a band of anti-earmark Republicans is joining the Senate…

He owes them one. But will he repay? Is there honor among earmarkers?

Another failure to communicate

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Mitch McConnell has something in common with Barack Obama. Actually, two things: First, he now agrees with the president that we need to do away with earmarks. (Oh, you didn’t know that? Yes. That’s something Jim DeMint and Barack Obama agree on. This isn’t a debate between Democrats and Republicans. It’s a debate between entrenched legislative leaders of both parties, and just about everybody else.)

But he also believes that this is more of a communication problem than a question of there being anything wrong with the practice.

Oh, he says he’s been listening to the people, and I suppose that’s true as far as it goes:

I have thought about these things long and hard over the past few weeks. I’ve talked with my members. I’ve listened to them. Above all, I have listened to my constituents.  And what I’ve concluded is that on the issue of congressional earmarks, as the leader of my party in the Senate, I have to lead first by example. Nearly every day that the Senate’s been in session for the past two years, I have come down to this spot and said that Democrats are ignoring the wishes of the American people. When it comes to earmarks, I won’t be guilty of the same thing.

But this is the thing that jumped out at me when I heard it on the radio this morning (the bold-faced emphasis is mine):

Make no mistake. I know the good that has come from the projects I have helped support throughout my state. I don’t apologize for them. But there is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and the out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight. And unless people like me show the American people that we’re willing to follow through on small or even symbolic things, we risk losing them on our broader efforts to cut spending and rein in government.

Did you get that? Essentially, the way he sees it is, the problem is that YOU, the people, don’t understand how wonderful earmarks (at least, HIS earmarks) are, even though HE knows better, and has always known better, which is why he’s not going to apologize. But against his vastly superior judgment, he’s going to have to act on this purely SYMBOLIC concern that YOU, the uninformed people, have, or else he’s going to lose the ability to do all the wonderful things that only he and his brethren can possibly provide to you, the people.

Got that? I certainly did.

Buddy, can you spare a scholarship?

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Got this from Stan Dubinsky. I got it without any context, so I don’t know who produced it, or anything else about the campaign it’s a part of (help me out, Stan — do you have a link?).

Most of the way through it, I was thinking, “You’ll never get anywhere with this.” That’s because the kinds of people who are the reasons higher education was never funded at a competitive level in South Carolina, and has been incredibly slashed from the already-low levels to a fraction of those levels, really don’t give a damn about the considerations depicted in the video. When the video asks the viewer to imagine “no social workers,” I’m thinking that the Tea Party types are going, “Hell, yes! Sounds great to me!” (And no, historically the “Tea Party” has not been a factor, by that name. But the mentality that it represents has long held sway in our state, and is one of the main reasons we lag economically behind much of the rest of the country. )

But then I get to the end and realize, this little film isn’t aimed at them. Or at me. It’s aimed at people in a position to give private dollars to prop up the institution. The makers of this video assume that the public conversation is long ago finished, and lost. In this piece, they’ve moved on.

And well they should. Several rounds of cuts back, the Legislature was only funding between 12-15 percent of the cost of running our supposedly “public” institutions of higher learning. I don’t know where the percentage is now. These formerly state institutions now look to the state as one of many, many donors it has to line up.

And this video is one way of doing that.

Don’t miss Cindi’s package comparing Nikki’s & Vincent’s records

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This afternoon, a friend who is an experienced observer of South Carolina politics asked me whether I’d read Cindi Scoppe’s package on today’s editorial page comparing the records of Nikki Haley and Vincent Sheheen.

I said no, but I had glanced at it, which pretty much told me everything I needed to know. Or rather, what I had already known without tallying it all up. But Cindi did that for us, and the result is both superficially telling — because Vincent’s accomplishments take up so much more room on the page — and also substantively so. It tells the tale rather powerfully of who is better qualified to move South Carolina forward — or in any direction you choose. It shows that Vincent Sheheen is far more qualified, and inclined, to take governing seriously.

Of course, as I told my friend, the fact that Nikki has accomplished virtually nothing will be embraced as a positive by her nihilistic followers. They will vote for her for the same reason they voted for Strom Thurmond, and Floyd Spence — because they did very little in office — with the added Sanfordesque twist of blaming the Legislature, rather than herself, for her lack of accomplishments. But the truth is, Nikki simply hasn’t even tried to accomplish much at all.

Basically, what Nikki has done is get elected, introduce very few bills of any kind, gotten almost none of them passed because she doesn’t care about accomplishing anything, then run for governor. That’s Nikki in a nutshell.

Vincent, by contrast, has taken the business of governing as a serious responsibility, one bigger than himself and his personal ambitions.

And there’s much more to it than sheer volume. As Cindi wrote:

The easiest, though not necessarily most useful, way to compare the lists: Ms. Haley has introduced 15 substantive bills, of which one has become law and one has been adopted as a House rule. Mr. Sheheen has introduced 119 substantive bills (98 when you weed out the ones that he has re-introduced in multiple sessions), of which 18 have become statewide law and four have become local law….

What’s most striking about Mr. Sheheen’s list is its sweep, and the extent to which it reflects initiatives that either know no partisan boundaries or that easily cross them. Although his focus has been on giving governors more power to run the executive branch of government and overhauling our tax system, his bills touch on far more — from exempting small churches from some state architectural requirements and prohibiting kids from taking pagers to school to giving tuition breaks to the children of veterans and eliminating loopholes in the state campaign finance law.

This is the body of work of someone who understands what the government does and is interested in working on not just the broad structural and philosophical issues that politicians like to make speeches about but also the real-world problems that arise, from figuring out how to move police from paper to electronic traffic tickets without causing problems to writing a legal definition for “joint custody” so parents will know what to expect when they go to court.

One thing that’s notable in relation to this campaign: Ms. Haley attacks Mr. Sheheen as being anti-business because he does some workers compensation work (although his firm represents both businesses and employees), but he has written only one bill regarding workers compensation — and that was a “pro-business” bill that said employees of horse trainers didn’t have to be covered.

Cindi published this list of Nikki’s legislative record, such as it is, and this list of Vincent’s, in the paper. Vincent’s was obviously far more weighty. But in truth, she couldn’t fit all of the Sheheen record in the paper. Here’s the fuller record, including the ones that Cindi found too boring to put in the paper.

I doubt this will win over anyone, because the kind of people who would vote for Nikki view lack of experience, and the lack of the ability to accomplish anything in government, as virtues. They care about ideology, not pragmatic governance. I just publish this for the sensible, serious folk who see things differently.

Which is sort of the point of my whole blog, come to think of it…

Nikki and the “slush fund:” Belly up to the trough

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Have you seen the latest Nikki Haley ad? As I said in a comment yesterday:

Wow. Did you see that incredibly weak, intelligence-insulting ad that Nikki released attacking Vincent?

It’s all about attacking him as a “liberal,” a “Columbia Insider” and a “trial lawyer.

So there you have it: Vincent criticizes Nikki for things that she — an actual, living, breathing woman actually living in South Carolina — has actually done. (You may have noted that the keyword here is “actual.”)

And her response is to throw some of the less imaginative canned, off-the-shelf, standard-issue GOP epithets at him — because, you know, since he’s a Democrat it must all be true, right?

How utterly pathetic. What total contempt she obviously has for the South Carolina electorate.

The only thing Nikki had to offer as a specific, relevant charge in her weak effort to paint Vincent as a tax-and-spend “liberal” was that he had voted to override the governor on the Orwellian-named “Competitive Grants Program” and Nikki had voted to sustain.

Of course, I take a back seat to no one in my disdain for the grants program. Sure, it’s not much money in the grand scheme, but it’s a textbook example of the wrong way to spend, with no regard for state priorities. The local projects the money tends to go to are sometimes worthwhile, but that money should be raised locally.

So bad on Vincent for going along with the majority on that. But Vincent’s voting with the Republican majority while Nikki voted with the minority says more about the fact that Nikki is one of Mark Sanford’s few reliable allies than it does about who is tighter with a buck.

Especially when you consider the following, which the Sheheen campaign was so thoughtful as to share today:

Nikki Haley’s Slush Fund Hypocrisy

Camden, SC – Nikki Haley’s credibility has taken another hit after she released a misleading advertisement yesterday criticizing Vincent Sheheen for supporting a “legislative slush fund,” a fund that she vigorously supported.  Haley requested over $1.5 million in legislative earmarks for her home district from the South Carolina Competitive Grants program but has campaigned boasting of her opposition to the program.

Nikki Haley has been a full-fledged participant in the program, requesting at least $1.5 million in earmarks for special projects in her district and county.  She has sponsored at least twenty-four applications for competitive grants including $90,000 for the Lexington Fun Fest.

After she ran for governor, Haley decided that she could score political points by opposing the program, claiming that she objected to state money funding her local Gilbert Peach festival.  Yet that same year, 2008, she requested at least $160,000 in other projects.

Kristin Cobb, Communications Director for Sheheen for Governor, had this to say: “Once again Nikki Haley has created an even greater level of hypocrisy with her recent attack ad against Vincent Sheheen.  Haley claims she voted against this program but apparently that was because her $1.5 million earmark requests were not approved.  She wasn’t against the program, she was just upset she didn’t get her share.”

“The more South Carolinians are learning about Nikki Haley the less they like.  If we can’t trust what she says on the campaign trail, how can we trust her to be governor,” Cobb concluded.

Here is a sample of Haley’s Earmark Requests:

West Columbia – Sewer Project $370,600
SC Parents Involved in Education $100,000
SC Office of Rural Health $100,000
West Columbia – Riverwalk Expansion $100,000
Newberry College – Nursing Program $99,000
Lexington County – Web-based Tourism $91,099
Lexington Fun Fest $90,000
Lexington County – Industrial Park $80,000
Lexington County – Clean Water Act $77,700
SC Philharmonic $69,274
Alliance for Women at Columbia College $60,000
Healthy Learners $50,000
Brookland Foundation $50,000
Outdoor Journalist Education Foundation $34,450
Killingsworth $30,000
Lexington Downtown Renovation $26,000
SC Office of Rural Health $25,000
Lexington Fun Fest $25,000
YMCA Adventure Guides Program $24,445
Girl Scout Council of the Congaree $21,520
Lexington County Museum $20,000
Lexington – Video Conferencing System $15,000
Lexington County Museum $10,000
Lexington Community Fun Day $3,500
TOTAL: $1,572,588

They also attached this PDF of supporting documents for your perusal.

That assertion about “She wasn’t against the program, she was just upset she didn’t get her share” reminds me of something. Nikki has a habit of being selectively principled — as in, principled when it serves her ambition. For instance, remember the Tweets Wesley Donehue put out a while back about Nikki’s effort to stop the Senate from passing a roll-call vote bill?

Wesley, who works for the Senate Republicans, was pretty insistent about making sure we knew how hypocritical she was on the subject:

Nikki Haley called me last year angry that the Senate filed a roll call voting bill.    about 1 hour ago  via TweetDeck
Nikki Haley told me that she didn’t want the Senate “stealing my issue.”    about 1 hour ago  via TweetDeck
Let me repeat – Nikk Haley asked me to get the Senators to pull the companion bill from the Senate.     about 1 hour ago  via TweetDeck

I haven’t heard Wesley mention this since the primary — since, that is, she has become his party’s nominee. I’m going to be with him on Pub Politics this evening, and will ask him about it…

Sexual predator price tag seems a bargain

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Non-journalists are always complaining about editorials masquerading as news. Usually, they’re wrong. But sometimes reporters and their news editors are so obviously, nakedly, unabashedly (although not admittedly) making an editorial point that it’s painful to read. And mainly (to one like myself, who does not worship at the altar of the god Objectivity or even belief humans are capable of it) because it’s so badly done.

It’s particularly painful if you happen to be a real editorialist. News people, generally speaking, simply don’t think about what they’re writing about in the necessary ways to do it well. So they come blundering into an issue that they have defined poorly and explained badly, making a mockery of serious commentary. This is not because they lack intelligence. It’s because their jobs don’t require them to think about things that way. When you have to set out your opinion on various aspects of an issue, day after day, for the world to pick apart and throw stones at, you think a lot harder about what you DO think, and WHY, and what the implications are. And parts of your brain that were shut off when you were in news and strictly forbidden to air opinions suddenly get oxygen and start to function. It’s sort of weird. After I’d been in editorial for a couple of years, I was sort of embarrassed to recall some of the facile assumptions I held about issues before I really started thinking about them.

But when you are telling yourself that you don’t HAVE an opinion about it, that you are utterly objective, and yet have an editorial point you’re pushing with all your might, the result is likely to reflect that lack of understanding about what you’re doing.

And the thing is, you can’t even fully explain to news people this epiphany that hit me after I made the transition. You couldn’t even state it without insulting them. (In fact, I’m sure you are horrified at my arrogance, and you’re nothing but a layperson. But seriously, it’s not that I’m BETTER or SMARTER. It’s that the different functions make different demands of whatever poor faculties I may possess.) So you just held your tongue, and were frequently appalled by news people’s ventures into places where they should not go.

For instance, take a look at the piece that ran on the Metro front of The State over the weekend. But this is not about The State, but about the Charleston Post and Courier, from which the piece was reprinted.

The original headline was “S.C.’s tab $7.4M for predators,” which wasn’t particularly helpful, so we go to the subhead “Treating each sex offender in program costs state about $63,000 per year.”

An excerpt:

For 12 years, South Carolina has tried to protect the public by keeping its most-dangerous sex offenders locked up behind concrete walls and razor wire long after their prison sentences have ended.

But that sense of security comes at a steep price.

The state shells out about $7.4 million each year to treat those confined under the Sexually Violent Predator Act, which allows authorities to lock up some sex offenders indefinitely for the purpose of alternative care. That translates to about $63,000 per offender annually for each of the 119 predators in the program…

Oooh, golly — $63,000! Of course, it occurred to me immediately that that was probably less than what other states spend on similar programs, because SC always goes the cheap route. And sure enough, the story admits that inconvenient fact down below, but sandwiches it between TWO admonitions to ignore that fact, because… well, because it’s still just too damned much money we’re spending:

Those costs have put the squeeze on many governments struggling to cut expenditures in a crippling recession that has forced layoffs, furloughs and deep program cuts. Though South Carolina spends a good deal less than many other states on its predator program — New York spends $175,000 per inmate and California, $173,000 — the effort is still a drain on already strained coffers.

I mean, knock me down and hit me with a club, why don’t you?

So really, what we’re left with here is whether we think is whether we should keep sexual predators locked up. I happen to think we do. Lots of other people think we do as well.

But that’s just because we’re dumb as a bag of hammers, apparently. We’re a bunch of Neanderthals taken in by “this get-tough tactic” sold by pandering politicians. We are fooled by a “sense of security” rather than the real thing. And the politicians aren’t about to back down and “be seen as soft on rapists and child molesters.”

That’s what it’s about, you see. The mob’s desire for vengeance. Pitchforks and flaming torches. Irrational, emotional responses to problems that could easily be resolved by putting the money into “increased supervision of sex offenders in the community,” the way Colorado has done.

I find this irritating for several reasons, including the fact that I am NOT a “lock ’em up and throw away the key” yahoo. I actually happen to believe that one of THE greatest policy errors committed year after year in South Carolina is that we lock up WAY too many people who don’t need to be locked up. And we do it because politicians DO play on irrational fears of crime and desires for vengeance on the part of the public. This is foolish, because it simply makes no sense to lock up a guy who wrote back checks. It DOES make sense to lock up a guy who robbed a liquor store and pistol-whipped the clerk into a coma. There’s a difference.

And difference involves a calm, rational assessment of whether someone is a threat to others.

But here’s the thing about sexual predators. Their crimes are not like other crimes. One can rationally understand why an unemployed person — particularly one with a drug addiction — might hold up a liquor store. If he was particularly desperate or high from his latest fix, you can understand his getting violent. You don’t condone it; you punish it; you lock him away for a while to protect society. But someday, when he’s clean and sober, when he’s established a record for calm behavior and maybe when he’s no longer 19 years old or even close, you let him out. It’s a rational decision to lock him up, and a rational decision, under the right circumstances, to let him out again.

But while we’re all prone to greed and many of us have violent impulses, we know about living with those things and dealing with them. But most of us find it unimaginable that anyone would ever, under any circumstances, be attracted to child pornography. And while the thought of anyone having to do with such may make us angry, may make us want to run for the torches and pitchforks, it’s perfectly rational to think, “If someone can EVER have such an impulse, can they ever be sufficiently normal, or sufficiently in control, to be allowed to walk free in the world where our children play?”

Sexual desire is such a complicated, mysterious mechanism even at its healthiest. The sheer galaxy of factors — the light traveling to my eye and through neurons to parts of my brain that process color and contrast and pattern recognition combined with experience-based understanding of such subtleties as facial expression combined with precognitive programming on the cellular level all mixed up with the biological imperative to reproduce — that causes me to react as I do when I look at this picture or this one or, for comic relief, this one is so independent of will and resistant to reasoning, that it’s quite natural to assume that in a person in whom such mechanisms are so twisted as to lead them to unspeakable crimes… well, it’s just not going to go away because of a few years in a quiet place with regular sessions with a therapist.

Of course, we could assume wrongly. And indeed, a quick search on Google establishes that there is no end of arguments out there against the widely-held notion that sexual predators — rapists, and those who prey on children — are incurable.

Fine. Let’s have that discussion. Let’s see the data, and hear the latest findings. But of course, that news story didn’t bother with that. In other words, it didn’t touch upon the one question upon which the issue of whether to treat sexual predators different from other criminal was well-founded or not.

But then, that’s a common flaw in news stories, especially (but not only) those of the ersatz-editorial type: They don’t mention, much less answer, the one question I most want to see addressed. I have spent a huge portion of my life reading, all the way to the bottom, news stories that piqued my interest and made me think, “Maybe there’s an editorial or a column here,” only to find that the one ingredient most needed to help me decide what I thought about it was entirely missing. Which means it got into print with neither the writer nor his editor thinking of it. Which means that the one ingredient most valuable to the reader, as a citizen trying to decide what to think about this issue, is missing.

Nor did it touch upon the second question that should arise, which is whether the circumstances surrounding such crimes are indeed so different as to cause us to set aside such constitutional considerations as equal treatment before the law (due process would seem to be covered by the additional hearings necessary for such commitment). But newspaper stories have finite length, and I would have been happy merely to have had the first question answered, or even acknowledged. But it wasn’t.

And I find that hugely frustrating.

Anton Gunn on why B&C Board didn’t need the money

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What do Doug Ross and Anton Gunn have in common? They were both thrilled to see the headline in The State this morning, “Budget Board finds millions to offset cuts” — Doug because he’d predicted all along the money would materialize, and Anton because he had predicted it in detail.

(And what do Anton, Mark Sanford and I all have in common? None of us believe the Budget and Control Board should exist. More on that later…)

Anton and I met Wednesday morning and he went over the spreadsheet below with me, which seems to show the agency had like $60 million lying around that it could plug the $25 million hole in operating funds vetoed by Gov. Sanford. I’ve been looking ever since for a couple of hours to write what he told me, and to try to confirm that the numbers meant what he thought they meant, but haven’t been able to. Every day has been like today … today, I just got out of the Converge SE conference, where I had been since 9:30 this morning. (The conference, by the way, was awesome.)

And as I was typing that paragraph above, my wife called me (I’m at the ADCO office) to say one of the twins split her lip and had to go to the hospital today, so I’m about to run over there right away. So I can’t go into Anton’s explanation.

But here’s his spreadsheet anyway. Some of it will at least seem self-explanatory. There’s an interesting narrative to go with it (if I were still at The State, it would have been my Sunday column), but it will probably be Monday before I can write that. (It’s all about his frustrations with the Board, combined with his frustrations with ever getting useful information about the budget before having to vote on it). And at least Monday before I can get any kind of response regarding what just happened from the B&C Board. (As well as their version of what these numbers mean.)

But here’s the raw material. I’ll be back to this early in the week. Gotta go check on my babies now…

Apparently, the B&C Board has lost the big one

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Looks like maybe the governor won — meaning South Carolina lost — on the big Budget and Control Board $25 million vote, according to James Smith via Twitter this afternoon:

RepJamesSmith

25 million eliminated from B&C Board jeopardizes our AAA credit rating & eliminates 800 MHz radio funding essential for emergency response.

Actually, I wrote this post right after getting that Tweet late this afternoon. But then I got another Tweet from Anton Gunn saying that wasn’t right, and I got confused, and I had to go do “Pub Politics,” so I took this post down. But everything I’ve seen since then indicates James was right the first time: The $25 million veto has been sustained. So this post is back up.

That’s all I know right now. If you’ll recall, this is the veto that Frank Fusco said would key functions of the Board. To quote, he said:

If our General Fund budget is not restored, these areas of the Board would have to virtually cease operation:

• The State Budget Office

• The SCEIS statewide financial system

• The Board of Economic Advisors

• The Office of Human Resources

• The Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum

More when I know more.

But if this report is right, there are essentially no grownups in charge over at the State House.

Folks, just so you know where we all stand: I agree 100 percent with the governor that the Budget and Control Board should not exist. In fact, I’m pretty sure he got the idea from ME.

But until we actually do away with it, it actually performs a lot of vital government tasks (which would be performed by the executive branch in a more rational system, but we don’t have such a system — all we have is the B&C Board). To simply eliminate its funding, thereby making it impossible for it to perform these tasks, is simply insane. It’s anarchistic. It’s nihilistic. It’s appalling. It’s… it’s … South Carolina.

House overrides ETV and tech school vetoes

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Went over to the State House after lunch, but when you’re trying to follow something like this all-day march through the governor’s vetoes, you can’t just drop in in the middle and know what’s going on.

Modern irony: As I sat there, listening first to Jerry Govan orate about S.C. State, and then to Glenn McConnell showing off his parliamentary razzle-dazzle, I found that I learned more about what was happening from Twitter than I did from being there, such as this Tweet from James Smith:

Vetoes of ETV, DHEC, tech schools archives have thankfully been overridden – rural health, technology incubator EEDA – sadly sustained.

And this one from Nathan Ballentine:

voted to override 1, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 31,33 (Tech Board, ETV, Library, Museum)

… both of which I reTweeted while I was there.

And then when I got back to my laptop, I saw that my buddy Mike Fitts had put out a comprehensive report of what had happened thus far. From that, and other sources, I learned that the House overrode the governor on:

Mind you, the Senate must ALSO garner two-thirds for the governor to be overridden. I’m not sure where the Senate is on things at the moment. I do know that the House plans to work into the night and not be in session tomorrow, while the Senate will have a Thursday session.

Meanwhile the House has UPHELD the governor’s vetoes of the following, which means the Senate doesn’t have to act, because the governor wins (and, in most cases, South Carolina loses):

  • The Small Business Center at the University of South Carolina
  • Innovista research funding
  • Education programs known as High Schools That Work and Making Middle Grades Work.
  • the Education and Economic Development Act, which ecodevo types have relied on as a critical tool in readying youth for the working world

How many budget vetoes did they deal with? Zero

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Having seen nothing on the Web about the big budget showdown, and seeing that the House had quit for the day, I called James Smith back to see what was up; how did it go on the budget vetoes.

They didn’t get to any today. Good thing I didn’t go over and watch.

They’ll be back tomorrow morning at 9 a.m.

OK, so that means there’s still time to set the record straight on something. As midlandsbiz points out:

“The State” Newspaper Prints Incorrect Budget Amount for Museum

COLUMBIA, SC – June 15, 2010 –  The State Newspaper printed an article today about the Governor’s budget vetos.  This story has an incorrect figure for the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum’s budget.  The museum’s general fund budget of $765,000 is a part of the Budget and Control Board’s total general fund budget of $25 million.  Governor Sanford’s Veto #52 would eliminate the entire $25 million, including the museum’s much smaller budget, and will be voted on as a single line item by the General Assembly beginning today.

Yeah, I saw that when I was reading the paper this morning, but by the time I had gotten to my laptop I had forgotten about it.

For days, I’ve been moaning about how the MSM wasn’t doing enough on the vetoes, and then I saw that huge error. Twenty-five million instead of 765,000. I saw where the confusion came from, but still. Man-oh-man, if THAT was what was budgeted for the museum even I might vote to sustain.

I’m happy to report that the figure has been corrected on thestate.com. But you know, there are some people out there who still rely on the dead-tree version…

At least Cindi had that good column on the subject today.

Man up, lawmakers: Override those vetoes

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Little left to say, except it’s time for lawmakers of both parties in the House to set aside all the B.S., lay down their insecurities, eschew their customary fecklessness, man up and veto those indefensible vetoes. I’m talking about this veto and this one and this one and most of the others.

I’ve really had it with the argument from the GOP leadership that they just have to sustain most of these vetoes. Kenny denied it the other night when I asked whether Nikki Haley’s strong showing last week had scared the leadership into thinking they have to go along with the Sanford nihilists, even though they’ve slapped him down every other time (even when he had a case, which he doesn’t this time). But I’m convinced that’s the only logical reason to explain this fear to do the right thing. Cindi thinks so, too. And Cindi knows WAY more about the budget process than I do. You’ll note that she gives the governor credit where he deserves it, on fairly marginal issues that don’t involve much money (Cindi has always been much more inclined than I am to reach WAY out to try to find some things to give the governor credit on), but she concludes with this cold bath of common sense:

Most insidious is his repeated implication that by vetoing what he considers frills, he will cause the money to be spent on “core services” of government. Now, I’ll be the first to agree that, as he puts it, “the vast majority of this year’s budget should be directed to core government functions like public safety, education, and health care.” But the facts are that 1) that already is happening and 2) his vetoes do not redirect money from “frills” to “core services”; they simply allow the money to sit in the bank for a year.

I have long believed that the Legislature needs to either increase taxes or else eliminate some programs or agencies altogether (and probably eliminate some even if it does raise taxes). But that’s a decision that needs to be made in an orderly way, by a clear majority in the Legislature — not by a disgraced lame-duck governor with an ax to grind and a third of the members of the House. And perhaps not even by a Legislature that is too frightened of its own shadow to make rational decisions about the responsibilities that come with insisting on operating the government. If lawmakers can’t override most of the governor’s vetoes this week, perhaps they should make arrangements to come back to town later this summer, when emotions have settled down, to consider taking some of the money Mr. Sanford wants to squirrel away and using it to patch critical holes that he has created.

And as for you Democrats: I was much reassured by James Smith telling me yesterday that the Dems would override (with the caveat that while that was the leadership position, Dems don’t do bloc voting), but then I read the paraphrase of Joe Neal in the paper this morning saying Democrats have not decided how they will handle Sanford’s vetoes today and I wonder: Will they stick it out and do the right thing? (And you know what? This is one case in which we actually NEED the Dems to vote as a bloc, because that might embolden the jittery mainstream Republicans.)

If they don’t, and if the Republicans (minus the Sanford loyalists) don’t, then on the whole they are useless.

Why ETV Matters, by Mark Quinn

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Trying to catch up on my e-mail, I ran across this item which also bears upon the Sanford vetoes:

Why ETV matters

For nearly 3 years, my job in public television has forced me to explore many of the crushing effects America’s Great Recession has had on our state. Now, it appears, the economic tsunami which began to wash over the land in 2008, may wipe away 50 years historic and pioneering television produced by ETV. The Great Recession has arrived on ETV’s doorstep, and I am forced to report on what may be the demise in vitality of a treasured state institution.
I work as the host of a weekly radio and television program entitled, The Big Picture. The premise is fairly simple, and almost ancient in its origins. Barry Lopez, the prolific novelist and essayist, summed up my job thusly: “it means to go out there and look and come back and tell us, and say what it is that you saw.” For millennia, this has been an integral part of the human experience. The earliest cave drawings were nothing more than one person’s reporting of the world that existed over the mountain or across the river. And it has always been so.
And while it’s deeply gratifying to travel our state to find the stories that give expression to the lives we lead today, there’s equal satisfaction in being a conduit to help serve another timeless need that we all have, the need to be heard. There is immense power in the connection with ordinary, everyday people and the dignity they claim when they are allowed to tell their story. The brilliance of ETV hasn’t been its coverage of the powerful or the popular, as essential as that may be. It’s been thousands of collective glimpses into the lives of everyday people doing extraordinary things. Or peeks at places you never knew existed. It’s the story of South Carolina.
For me, public television is taking you somewhere you will never go you’re your local newspaper. Nor will you ever go there with your local television station.
For me ETV is sitting in the Sullivan’s Island living room of best-selling author Dorthea Benton Frank, laughing riotously at the random acts of calamity life will throw at you… knowing if you don’t laugh, you will likely cry.
It’s thumbing through a scrapbook and shedding a tear with Dale and Ann Hampton in their Easley home, remembering their daughter Kimberly who was killed in the war in Iraq. This is where divine grace lives.
It’s being completely captivated by the force of nature known as Darla Moore. Her bank account is impressive, but her resolve, wit and determination are much more so. The first woman to conquer Wall Street still lives in Lake City.
It’s sitting down with 5 former first ladies of South Carolina, and hearing what we all assume; that life inside the Governor’s mansion is for most, a pretty grand affair.
It’s Mrs. Iris Campbell, recounting the thick fog of cigar smoke that surrounded the pool of the Governor’s mansion, as her husband hosted a group of German businessmen and wrote out the plan for BMW’s move to South Carolina on a series of cocktail napkins.
It’s the terrible misfortune of Mike Burgess, staggering as best he can through a life that includes a wife who contracted Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 46. Another day when it’s tough not to cry.
It’s spending a day with the resolute Mayor of Marion, Rodney Berry. The city has been in an economic funk for 20 years. It’s on the rebound now thanks to a fierce pride and stubborn resolve to remake its image in the absence of textiles and tobacco.
It’s hiking to see the rare rocky shoals spider lilies on the Catawba River, knowing the river itself has been named America’s most endangered. I’m not a naturalist, but the lilies are regal and captivating.
It might be a boat ride down the Pee Dee River with a group of unlikely activists. They are hunters and fisherman who opposed the building a coal-fired power plant on the river’s banks. They won.
It’s standing in Arlington National Cemetery on a gray, cold November day with Colonel Charles Murray, recipient of the Medal of Honor. He’s a World War II veteran who calls today’s soldiers America’s Greatest Generation.
It’s a long walk through the Harvest Hope Food bank in Columbia with Denise Holland. She saw the Great Recession first. The number of people they serve is up 250%. Denise Holland is scared, but grateful to tell the story of the down and out, and the dispossessed.
It’s 82 year old Laura Spong, now a best-selling artist. Her paintings fetch as much as $10,000. She took up serious art at the age of 62. Anything is possible.
It’s Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, trembling in anger when he produces a small picture of a teen-age boy, shot dead. Mayor Joe wants better supervision of people on probation and parole. Some of his pleas are now being heeded.
It is the absolute decency of former Governor Richard Riley, and his pleas for civil political discourse as we talk about leadership in the 21st century. This one will take some work.
It’s conversations with Dr. Walter Edgar about the complex history of the south, and why it’s meaningful traditions are an endless source of fascination for people all around the world.
And it’s the passion of Charleston chef Sean Brock. His seed-saving campaign to bring back South Carolina grains and vegetables that are almost extinct, is the biggest revolution in lowcountry cooking in a half century.
Chances are, unless you watch ETV, you probably haven’t heard much about any of these stories. And let me be clear, these stories will not be told, will never see the light of day if our institution is starved of its support.
Think about this: the average story on your local television news station is 75 seconds. Imagine that. I worked in that world for many years and can tell you that most all of these stations are truly committed to their communities. But how effectively can they tell you about our collective condition in 75 seconds?
I represent a very small part of the overall efforts of ETV, and its deep connection to the many thousands of people in South Carolina. And yet, I know that my enthusiasm is matched and even exceeded by many of my co-workers. What we do, everyday, is collect the patchwork pieces of stories that make up the fabric of our life here in this state. Public media is an incredibly important resource in a noisy and sometimes polluted information environment.
Bill Moyers, dean of public broadcasters said, “the most important thing that we do is to treat audience as citizens, not just consumers of information. If you look out and see an audience of consumers, you want to sell them something. If you look out and see an audience of citizens, you want to share something with them, and there is a difference.”
More than 50 year ago, in the advent of a ground-breaking experiment that came to be known as ETV, the mission of public broadcasting was to create an alternative channel that would be free not only of commercials, but free of commercial values, a broadcasting system that would serve the life of the mind, that would encourage the imagination, that would sponsor the performing arts, documentaries, travel. It was to be an alternative to the commercial broadcasting at that time. And guess what, it worked… and it still works today.
Can South Carolina survive without ETV? Absolutely. Will she be as rich? Not a chance.
What will you do to keep the story going? What will you do to help save ETV?
.
Mark Quinn
Host, The Big Picture
www.scetv.org

Rep. Smith: Democrats WILL vote to override all 107 Sanford vetoes

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Not as a bloc, mind you, because as you know, Democrats don’t do blocs. But according to Rep. James Smith, who called me a few minutes ago to set me straight (thereby saving me a call to him or Minority Leader Harry Ott), it will be the official House Democratic leadership position that ALL of Gov. Sanford’s 107 vetoes should be overridden. And he hopes they will be — but of course that will depend on the Republicans doing their duty by South Carolina — which James suggests the Tea Party has made GOP lawmakers scared to do.

James called me because a lot of y’all were calling him, egged on to do so by this blog (in the absence of really helpful coverage of the

Rep. James Smith

budget vetoes by the MSM). I urge y’all to keep on calling your lawmakers, Democrats and especially Republicans (since there’s more of them) to tell them what you think. And if you’ve forgotten who your lawmakers are, or how to contact them, here are instructions on enabling yourself.

If you’ll recall, House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham told me over the weekend (“Lawmakers will uphold most of Sanford’s vetoes“), the governor is likely to prevail on most of his vetoes of funding for such things as public libraries, the State Museum, technical colleges, SC ETV, the Arts Commission and the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum in part because Democrats can’t be relied upon to vote to override. He based this on the lack of support he got from Democrats on some key votes on the budget.

James says that was then, this is now.

Indeed Democrats were divided on some things such as court fees. But that has nothing to do with these budget vetoes. If the Legislature fails to override, says the former Minority Leader, it won’t be because of lack of Democratic votes. And of the governor’s 107 vetoes, “I have yet to find one that we would not override.”

And while Kenny is worried, James still hopes “to be successful in overriding them.”

If the Democrats can indeed stick together tomorrow, that means the fate of these vetoes will lie in the bitter rivalry between regular mainstream Republicans and the Sanford fringe — a fringe that was emboldened by Nikki Haley’s near victory in the primary last Tuesday. All Sanford and Haley and their allies need is to drum up a third of either the House or the Senate for Mark Sanford to have his biggest victory in his eight sorry years in office.

So once again, folks, rather than merely refer you to a link, here are the instructions on how to contact your legislator, as we used to say at the bottoms of editorials:

To find out who your legislators are and how to contact them, go to www.scstatehouse.net and select “Find your legislator” on the left. Or call Project Vote Smart at 1-888-VOTE-SMART.

Tech system funding, by the numbers

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A little more perspective on the governor’s three vetoes of Technical College operational funding, courtesy of Midlands Tech President Sonny White, who spoke to the Columbia Rotary Club this afternoon. (He only mentioned the vetoes in passing; I got the rest from him in an interview afterward.)

When the Technical College system was founded at the behest of Gov. Fritz Hollings (who got the Legislature to go along by buying Sen. Edgar Brown a bottle of bourbon and helping him drink it, which shows that in an altered state of consciousness at least, our lawmakers can be forward looking), the system was paid for thusly:

  • 70 percent of funding came from the state
  • 10 percent came from the counties served by the 16 schools — this went to physical plant and other local operating costs
  • 10 percent came from students — which made sense, since this was about providing a bright future to folks who did not already have good income
  • 10 percent came from auxiliary services such as bookstores and the like

In the 2011 fiscal year, the breakdown will be:

  • 70 percent will come from students — some of it from Pell Grants and lottery-funded scholarships, but it will still be up to the students to find the way to come up with it
  • 10 percent from the state — which is just so many different kinds of pitiful that it defies words
  • 10 percent from counties — Sonny expressed his appreciation that counties have at least kept their part of the bargain over the years.
  • 10 percent from auxiliary services.

Oh, and by the way, the technical system has seen a 20 percent increase in enrollment during this period in which unemployment has hovered around 12 percent.

So now you know.

Some background on Sanford’s tech system vetoes

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You may have seen a piece in The State today by Otie Rawl regarding governor’s vetoes of funding for the S.C. Technical College system. (This may be the only place you’ve seen mention of this in the MSM).

Let me give you some numbers to add to your perspective on this particular outrage of the governor’s.

Basically, the governor was looking for $4 million. What he wanted to do initially was ReadySC. As Sonny White, Midlands Tech president, ‘splained to me this afternoon, ReadySC is the entity at the heart of South Carolina’s ability to tell industrial prospects — the example he gave was Boeing — that yes, we’ll be able to train your workforce for you. To explain to you what the governor apparently doesn’t understand, here’s what ReadySC does:

As an integral part of the SC Technical College System, The Center for Accelerated Technology Training and its readySC™ program work together with the 16 Technical Colleges to prepare South Carolina’s workforce to meet the needs of your company.
Established in 1961, readySC™ is one of the oldest and most experienced workforce training programs in the United States. We are ready to bring this experience and expertise to work for your company.
  • We are ready to quickly and successfully start up your new facility.
  • We are ready to help you seamlessly expand your existing facility.
  • We are ready to discover the skills, knowledge and abilities needed at your facility.
  • We are ready to design new and innovative training solutions customized specifically for your needs.
  • We are ready to respond to your time frames and deadlines no matter how tight.
  • We are ready to deliver world-class training and project management.
The Center’s new moniker — readySC™ — sums up perfectly our message to
companies that are considering a relocation or expansion in South Carolina.
We are ready!

As Sonny explained to me, the problem is that the governor simply doesn’t believe that the technical colleges should be involved in economic development. Let me say that again: Our governor (Nikki Haley’s guiding light) does not believe that the technical college system — which was created under Gov. Fritz Hollings as an economic development tool — should be involved in economic development.

The good news is that Sanford was talked out of this, by ecodevo types like Otie Rawl, according to Dr. White.

But the governor still wanted his $4 million. Fine. So he took it out of administration for the 16 technical colleges. He said that the three biggest colleges — Midlands Tech being one — should provide administrative services for the other 13.

Fine, says Sonny. But there’s no plan to do that, no authorizing legislation, no nothing — except the governor’s airy wish that it come into being.

Fusco says veto WOULD decimate programs

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I was going to write “Fusco Says Sanford Full of It” as my headline, but it probably would have given ol’ Frank a heart attack. But that’s what this amounts to.

Remember how I wrote that, according to Kenny Bingham, the GOP leadership seemed inclined to take the governor’s word for it that his veto of the entire $29.5 million appropriation for the Budget and Control Board would NOT decimate several state programs, because, according to the gov, the board just had all this money lying around? And I asked Kenny what Frank Fusco, the head of the B&C Board, had to say about that, and Kenny told me he hadn’t talked to Frank yet? Remember?

Well, here’s what Frank has to say:

Veto Would Devastate Board, Key Programs

This week Governor Sanford vetoed the Board’s entire $29.5 million General Fund appropriation plus other line items for the S.C. Enterprise Information System.
In his veto message to the General Assembly, the Governor stated that he was taking this action because the “Board has sufficient carry-forward and other funds to maintain its operations in this fiscal year.”
The Board does not have funds to make up for this cut. If sustained, the impact of this veto would be severe and would result in very significant staff reductions in our agency.
Board programs rely on a variety of funding mechanisms. Some areas, like the Employee Insurance Program and the S.C. Retirement Systems, draw money from dedicated accounts outside the General Fund and are not impacted. But many other areas of the Board are entirely or partially dependent upon general funds.
If our General Fund budget is not restored, these areas of the Board would have to virtually cease operation:
• The State Budget Office
• The SCEIS statewide financial system
• The Board of Economic Advisors
• The Office of Human Resources
• The Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum
In addition, other areas would see very significant staff reductions:
• The State Procurement Office would lose 30 percent or more of its staff. The auditing function would be eliminated and the State Engineer’s Office will be virtually eliminated.
• The Office of Internal Operations would lose about one-third of its staff and would be severely crippled because it has already made so many reductions.
• The Office of Research and Statistics would lose funding for mapping, redistricting of Congressional and legislative seats and the Geodetic Survey. It would lose about 30 employees.
• The General Services Division would lose all funding for operation of the State House and Capitol Complex. Layoffs would be necessary.
• State funding for local water and sewer grants would be eliminated.
We wish it was the case that the Board had ample extra funds that we could simply use to make up for the shortfall. But that is not the case at all.
While some Board programs have funds in trust or other accounts, most of these dollars can be used only for purposes directed by law. For example, funds from the Retirement System could not be moved to General Services. Nor would it be right, for example, to take money we receive to provide Internet service to public schools and libraries and redirect it to a totally unrelated purpose.
And it is exactly because we do not have lots of free cash that we have reduced spending and staffing, including layoffs last year.
The S.C. House of Representatives will take up the vetoes on Tuesday. If two-thirds of the House votes to override the veto, it would then go to the Senate which would also have to override the veto with a two-thirds vote. Please know that I and the Board’s senior leadership team are working diligently to communicate all the facts to the General Assembly as they prepare to consider the vetoes. We will keep you up to date as events warrant.
– Frank Fusco

Thanks to Bob Amundson for bringing that to my attention. There it was, big as life, already up on the Web — although not anyplace I would normally look. Saved me a phone call, which I appreciate…

Lawmakers will uphold most of Sanford’s vetoes

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Governor threatened to veto entire budget again

It took me all afternoon, but I finally balanced my checkbook. Having done that, it is with a great sense of self-sacrifice that I know turn back to the state budget. Oh, my head!

Anyway, you’ll recall that I mentioned the e-mail exchange that a reader had had with House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham, which to me raised questions. That reader later wrote to me again to relate a phone conversation that he’d had subsequently with Kenny. That caused me to send Kenny an e-mail asking him the following:

Kenny, I’ve got a question for my blog… is this correct? Did the governor threaten to veto the whole budget again? And did y’all promise to uphold his vetoes if he didn’t?
If so, why in the world didn’t you just tell him to veto the whole budget if that’s what he wanted to do, and then override him, just as you did before?
I’m just not following this…
— Brad

Kenny responded last night by calling me at home and taking a long time to explain to me what had happened. The two startling things I learned are reflected above in my headline and subhead, to repeat:

  • In all the wrestling back and forth over the budget at the end of the session, at one critical moment the governor threatened again to do the outrageous thing he did in 2006 — veto the entire budget. Rather than call that bluff, the GOP leadership (the group led in the House by Speaker Bobby Harrell, Ways & Means chair Dan Cooper and Kenny) made a deal to uphold most of his line-item vetoes. Why did they not just let him veto the whole budget and override him as they did in 2006? Because between the Democrats, who were voting as a bloc against every move the GOP leaders made, and the Republicans who could be counted on to vote with Sanford, the leaders didn’t think they COULD override a veto of the entire budget. And the leadership didn’t want to see the government shut down.
  • To avoid that, the leadership agreed to sustain most of the governor’s vetoes. I can’t give you numbers, because frankly I’m not sure of them, and Kenny wasn’t giving me precise numbers anyway. We’re talking about roughly $70 million in vetoes that will be sustained. That’s nowhere near the $414 million that the 107 vetoes total up to. But about half of that is a special pot of money created to deal with a special, stimulus-related, higher Medicaid match that Congress hasn’t yet extended, and the governor says they won’t and lawmakers think it will, and even if it doesn’t there’s enough money to last in the program through next February or April, and… well, it gets REALLY complicated. That disputed Medicaid match is isolated in a section of the budget called Part Four. Most of the vetoes lawmakers will be sweating over are in Part One. (Part Two is where you find provisos, and I never even bothered asking about Part Three, if there is a Part Three…)

And yes, the parts they’re likely to sustain include some of the things that folks are most upset about being cut, such as the State Museum. So does that mean the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, for instance, will shut down?

Kenny says no, because the Budget and Control Board has reserves that will keep the museum and other drastically cut programs

Kenny Bingham -- 2006 file photo/Brad Warthen

going. But there he is relying on the governor SAYING those reserves are available to bail out those programs. And the e-mail campaign against these vetoes that I’ve seen says the governor is wrong about that. I asked, how do you know the governor’s right? And he doesn’t know. I asked, what does Frank Fusco (head of the B&C Board) say? Kenny said he hadn’t talked to Frank yet. Presumably he will before the voting on Tuesday.

Bottom line, Kenny doesn’t know exactly what will happen Tuesday on all those vetoes, because there are a number of things that haven’t been worked out yet. And THAT’S what’s different about this situation. In the past, at this point he would have said with confidence that no one should worry; the vetoes would be overridden. That’s what we’ve seen year after year: Sanford makes his symbolic gesture, and the Legislature keeps the government running.

But this is the first time I’ve seen the GOP leadership this flummoxed over the Sanford vetoes. And as Kenny tells it a lot of it arises from the fact that the leaders just don’t think they have the votes. They blame the Democrats (no surprise there, huh?) for voting against them on a number of key budget votes. He said every single Democrat, with the occasional exception of Herb Kirsh, voted against them. Add to that the minority bloc of Republicans that can be relied upon to vote the Sanford way, and the leadership barely had the votes to pass a budget at all, much less come up with the two-thirds to override the governor.

As an example of the things they fought over… the leadership came up with a plan to raise court fees and license fees to help keep the courts running and pay for the next class of state troopers. The Sanford loyalists wouldn’t go for it, and the Democrats said Republicans should raise a general tax rather than paying for the added expenses with new fees.

I need to talk with somebody with the Democratic leadership this week to get their side of it, but Kenny’s account of the Democratic position sounds pretty credible: Basically, they’re saying that the Republicans got themselves into this mess with their tax cuts and such, and the Democrats aren’t inclined to help them out of it.

Anyway, what I got out of all this was this time, we might actually see some of the more headline grabbing consequences of the governor’s vetoes actually happen: shutting down the State Museum and the Arts Commission, for instance. Might not happen, but there’s a bigger probability this time than ever.

And in spite what I’ve been hearing about how the governor has tried to be more reasonable in dealing with lawmakers since his personal troubles began, it appears that he’s up to his old shenanigans, engaging in the same kind of ideological brinksmanship that we saw at the height of his arrogance.

It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens Tuesday. And those who care about the State Museum or ETV or the arts in SC have every reason to be in suspense.

Museum and ETV supporters mobilize against Sanford vetoes

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As the word passes around about Sanford’s vetoes, and as the day for lawmakers to consider them approaches, supporters of such state services as the State Museum (which would be wiped out under the governor’s approach) and SC ETV (which would lose most of it’s state funding) are gearing up with e-mail campaigns such as this message passed on by Stan Dubinsky:

Attention State Museum Members!
We need your help!
GOVERNOR SANFORD VETOED $1.69 MILLION IN FUNDING FOR THE STATE MUSEUM
PLEASE CALL YOUR LEGISLATORS!
We need you to call your House member first, and then your Senator and ask them to OVERRIDE VETOES 33 and 106.
Two weeks ago, the General Assembly gave final approval to the state budget which included $2.8 million for State Museum operations. On June 9th, Governor Mark Sanford issued 107 budget vetoes. Included in these vetoes was $1,693,893 in funding for the State Museum’s operating expenses (Vetoes 33 and 106).  The Governor’s cut would leave $1.2 million for Museum operations.  After paying mandatory rent of $1.8 million to the State Budget & Control Board, and paying other fixed expenses, the State Museum faces a devastating $800,000 deficit if the Governor’s vetoes are not overridden!
THIS WILL ENDANGER THE PRESERVATION OF SOUTH CAROLINA HISTORY & HERITAGE, THREATEN ONE OF THE STATE’S UNIQUE EDUCATION EXPERIENCES & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ASSETS, & CRIPPLE ONE OF THE STATE’S TOURISM CROWN JEWELS!
Please go here to find your legislators. Please call their local numbers through Monday evening. On Tuesday, call their statehouse numbers.
If you are available to come to the State House lobby at 11:30 on Tues., June 15, PLEASE DO.  We need CALLS MADE and a MAJOR SHOW OF SUPPORT on Tues. in order to achieve these overrides.
CALLING INSTRUCTIONS:
It is critical that you make the call to your House Member, and then your Senator ASAP! We are expecting the House members to take up the Governor’s vetoes on Tuesday (June 15) at Noon.   The Senate will take them up once the House completes their actions on the vetoes.
CALL YOUR CONSTITUENT HOUSE MEMBERS FIRST!
Also place calls to other House & Senate members with whom you have close relationships.
Please make at least two attempts to call YOUR legislators.
If you do not reach them, be sure to leave several things in your message:
1) Your name
2) where you live and your phone number
3) that you want them to vote to OVERRIDE the Governor’s budget veto numbers  33 and 106.
Thank you for your support!

Meanwhile, I still haven’t seen a good, comprehensive list of the vetoes and their impact from an impartial source (such as the MSM). There’s this story about ETV in The State this morning, but nothing comprehensive. I have the governor’s veto letter, and Wes Wolfe is promising a post this weekend that gives a full list. But the governor paints the vetoes his way, and Wes promises to be in heavy advocacy mode. Here’s what Wes told me:

I’m going to go through the vetoes tonight. May well have to continue tomorrow. When I’m done, I’ll have a post up. It’ll likely be heavy on defending museums, the State Archives, the arts and such. People who back the humanities need every person at the barricade that they can get. They’ve been devalued since the beginning of the Cold War (as in, we need people who know a lot about math and science to beat back the Red Menace). The rise of Japan and Germany in the ’80s didn’t help, nor did the tech explosion of the ’90s. I could go off on this for hours. Anyway, yeah, I’ll have something up in the next 24 hours or so.

Hey, advocacy or not, it’s better than nothing. Thanks for doing all that work Wes!

Also, Rep. Nathan Ballentine writes to me, “go to NathansNews, my most recent post has link to all.” But when I went there it was mainly a reference to the governor’s message. Unless I’m looking at the wrong thing…