TWO YEARS AGO, Gov. Mark Sanford and Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom discovered that the state had been running a $155 million deficit — which the state constitution prohibited — for more than a year, and that the Legislature had done nothing to pay it back.

There was some talk of the Budget and Control Board appropriating the money to pay off the deficit, but even Mr. Sanford’s attorney agreed that the body didn’t have that kind of authority. So the governor had to use his bully pulpit to convince the Legislature to pay back the money it had, essentially, borrowed from the state.

It is against that backdrop that Mr. Eckstrom decided, on his own, to plug another deficit when he closed the books on the 2004-05 fiscal year earlier this summer. Mr. Eckstrom correctly noted that the state had an obligation to pay back the $105 million deficit that it had accrued by essentially borrowing money from the upcoming fiscal year to pay for the current year. And budget writers, for their part, agree. (Some lawmakers seem more interested in talking about how they could spend the money, conveniently forgetting that while the state’s overall economic condition is the main thing that had endangered our creditworthiness, this accounting problem also contributed to it. Fortunately, they appear not to be in the majority.)

But the fact is that no matter how good his ideas may be about how to use tax money, Mr. Eckstrom has neither the legal nor the constitutional authority to do that. That power belongs to the Legislature, with the approval of the governor.

Mr. Eckstrom says he didn’t actually “appropriate” money but, rather, used his authority to arrange the state’s books at the end of the fiscal year. And if this deficit had just occurred, we might buy that argument. That’s not the case, though: This “accounting mistake,” as the comptroller calls it, has been on the books since 1991. That’s right: 1991.

That’s when the Budget and Control Board voted to pay off bills from the fiscal year that ended in June by essentially floating a check — changing the state’s accounting methods, so that some July sales tax receipts could be counted toward the previous fiscal year. The Legislature did that again, with other tax receipts, in 1993. And again in 2002.

And each year since then, lawmakers have had the opportunity to right the books by going back to the old, legitimate, accounting method. Each year, they have declined to do so.

This isn’t an accounting error or a sudden shortfall. This is a deliberate policy decision.

It’s a bad policy decision; but it’s a deliberate policy decision.

Mr. Eckstrom has no more right to correct this bad policy decision than the courts do. If this comptroller general is allowed to correct this policy decision, what’s to stop the next one from deciding that it would be better for the state’s debt to be lower, and start paying off bonds with surplus funds?

Correcting the Legislature’s policy decision on the deficit is something that can properly be done only when the Legislature and the governor agree to do it. And agree to do it they should, when the 2006 General Assembly convenes.