South Carolina needs tighter rules to keep the legislature from raiding the Insurance Reserve Fund, or any trust fund, to balance its budget.

It is bogus for the General Assembly to brag about avoiding tax increases when its spending plan is propped up by borrowing from these special-purpose funds.

This practice goes unnoticed by most citizens, but state Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head Island, is making it a public issue.

Richardson is trying for the second consecutive year to achieve through legislation what the General Assembly has been unable to achieve through business acumen and common sense. He is sponsoring a bill to limit use of the Insurance Reserve Fund to its intended purpose -- paying claims and settling lawsuits.

If that bill sounds like it states the obvious, think again.

The fund's assets have shrunk from $167 million in June 2001 to $102 million today, with only $71 million readily available to handle emergencies. The rest has been lent out to other state agencies, which, in Richardson's words, use reserve funds "like interagency bank accounts."

That is an unsound practice and it needs to stop. It is deceptive to taxpayers. It unfairly encumbers future budgets, passing a problem to the future rather than solving it today. And it is unethical to use trust funds for purposes other than those for which they were set up.

All one has to do is look at all the red ink in the federal budget to see where living off trust funds will get you.

Top budget leaders in the state government insist the state is not at risk with its shoddy treatment of the Insurance Reserve Fund. They say the state would be covered in a disaster because it buys reinsurance. But that's no excuse for fiddling with funds paid by 196 state agencies, 27 counties, 15 school districts, 180 municipalities and 14 hospitals. The fund insures more than $17 billion in property, 200,000 government employees and more than 20,000 vehicles, including the state's school bus fleet. With that immense responsibility on its shoulders, it is disconcerting that state budget writers see the fund as a piggy bank full of play money.

Other trust funds have been raided, as well, including some created to clean up low-level nuclear wastes and other threats to the environment. Richardson said a fund to clean up nuclear waste in Barnwell is supposed to have $100 million in it, but it is down to $15 million.

Richardson's bill should help bring some maturity and fiscal constraint to the legislature. The trust funds should be off-limits, across the board.