Date Published: January 7, 2006   

Lawmakers discuss priorities

Session to include Medicaid, tax reform

By LESLIE CANTU
Item Staff Writer
lesliec@theitem.com

Any discussion about taxes must include discussion about services, local lawmakers said during a meeting with League of Women Voters members Thursday evening.

State Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter, and state Reps. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, and Grady Brown, D-Bishopville, spent a few hours talking about the hot topics going into the new General Assembly session, as well more local concerns.

Property tax reform, school funding and Medicaid are the three big ones. But the correctional system should be of as much concern, Brown said. The top local issue, they said, will be the future of the Sumter County Career Center.

The three legislators offered a different perspective on the property tax debate than what has mostly been heard so far. The property tax debate gets down to the fundamental question of how government should be financed, Leventis said.

Some people want to “starve the beast” of government by cutting off taxes, he said, but he views taxes as an investment in the state’s future. He questions the emotional rhetoric surrounding the property tax debate.

Smith, too, said he’d like to slow down and wait for some comprehensive reports that would show options for funding government. The million-dollar question, of course, is how money from a sales tax would be distributed to schools, he said. Despite his caution, he expects the House to pass bills quickly once it reconvenes.

“It’s an election year, and everyone’s running scared,” Smith said.

Leventis said there are people in South Carolina who could be taxed out of their homes, but they are few and far between. For example, he has a friend on pricey Sullivan’s Island who’s lived there since before it boomed. But she’s highly unusual, he said. Most people on Sullivan’s Island, Leventis said, are newcomers who knew the price of land and the resulting property taxes.

“We need to solve the problems for those people who truly have them,” he said, rather than insulate people who don’t need help.

Other legislators, such as state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, have also pointed out that freezing property tax assessments shifts the burden from people with property that’s increased greatly in value to those with property that hasn’t increased as much.

Medicaid is also screaming for attention from the General Assembly, lawmakers said. Brown compared the Medicaid situation to a leaky roof: The legislature can either fix the roof, he said, or wait for the roof to cave in and then try to build a new one.

No one has truly attempted to address Medicaid, Smith said. A reform bill passed a few years ago that looked for fraud in Medicaid was “a bunch of foolishness” that didn’t look for real solutions, he said.

And Leventis slammed Gov. Mark Sanford’s request for a waiver from the federal government for how the state administers Medicaid, a plan that would create personal health accounts for recipients.

“It’s based on assumptions that are, at best, fantasy,” he said.

Medicaid costs are growing quickly, he said, but no more than health care costs overall.

Brown also said the state needs to make changes to its correctional system, but he doubts any change will happen in an election year because no one wants to be perceived as soft on crime.

“We’re doing nothing in this state to rehabilitate prisoners. Absolutely nothing,” Brown said.

Leventis and Smith said Jon Ozmint, director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, has testified to legislators that the mandate that prisoners serve at least 85 percent of their sentences has backfired.

Prisoners don’t have an incentive to behave, they said, because they can’t get out early. Someone with a 20-year sentence, for example, must serve at least 17 years under the current law. He could earn that three-year reduction in his sentence within the first six or seven years in prison, Leventis said, but past that point he can’t earn anything else, meaning he doesn’t have as much of an incentive to behave for the next 10 to 11 years.

Ozmint asked the General Assembly for more flexibility to determine incentives, Smith said, but Smith doesn’t anticipate much happening this year. It’s a thorny issue, he said, because people don’t want to tolerate horrific crimes, yet the corrections system needs room to maneuver.


Contact Staff Writer Leslie Cantu at lesliec@theitem.com or 803-774-1250.