State budget: Lawmakers decide on $488M cut

COLUMBIA -- State lawmakers agreed Friday to a draft plan to cut $488 million from the state budget with smaller cuts to K-12 education coming at the expense of state colleges and other agencies.

The budget also will likely correct expected deficits at state prisons and for purchasing school bus fuel.

Budget writers in one week rewrote a $6.6 billion spending plan they typically spend months preparing. Those cuts, for the budget that began July 1, were required after state economists cut revenue estimates earlier this month.

Lawmakers will begin voting on the budget plan next week. Both the House and Senate must pass it, and Gov. Mark Sanford must sign it.

The budget gives agencies broad authority to implement the cuts, and many agencies said Friday they do not yet know the impact. House Ways and Means chairman Dan Cooper, R-Anderson, said he did not know if or how many state workers might be laid off. Lawmakers also allowed agency heads to require employees to take unpaid furloughs.

"I don't think it's a fun job, but it was certainly necessary," said Rep. Jim Merrill, R-Berkeley and House majority leader. "We got a little bit of what everybody wanted."

Merrill said lawmakers tried to target cuts to areas of greatest need, and that critical programs, such as children's health insurance, specifically were protected.

The governor has pressured lawmakers to target their cuts. Sanford said Friday he felt lawmakers had listened.

"We're pleased that, at first glance, the House and Senate seem to have heeded our calls for real and targeted budget cuts," Sanford said.

The budget cuts $88.5 million from K-12 education, but that 3.6 percent cut is among the smallest.

Lawmakers also tapped one-time sources to find nearly $20 million to purchase fuel for school buses.

Schools also have lost $100 million in funding from lagging sales-tax collections. South Carolina collects an extra penny on the dollar in sales tax that is devoted to schools.

Harder hit are state colleges and universities, most of whose budgets were cut by at least 14 percent, for a total of $126.6 million. USC will lose $26.9 million.

"All state agencies are being given some hard medicine," said Harris Pastides, president of the University of South Carolina.

Lawmakers sternly warned colleges against raising tuition. Pastides agreed. "It's just not the right place to make up the funding," Pastides said.

Health-care programs also were cut, though not as deeply as other agencies.