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Governor
visits Greenwood
Sanford
tells Park Seed employees small business ‘bedrock’ of economy
October
8, 2003
By MISTY
EBEL
Index-Journal
staff writer
 |
| Park Seed employee Rebecca
Quinn talks to Gov. Mark Sanford Tuesday about her job
at the company. Sanford toured the Greenwood company
after speaking briefly with a group of employees.
| Gov. Mark Sanford called
small business the “bedrock” of South Carolina’s economy
during a visit to Park Seed Co. in Greenwood, and said the
state needs to do more to help small businesses.
“You all
are, in essence, the role model for what we’d like small
business to be,” Sanford told a group of employees Tuesday.
The stop was part of a three-day, nine-city tour.
The
Commerce Department does a good job of promoting industry,
Sanford said, but doesn’t do much for small businesses, which
make up 90 percent of the businesses in the state.
A Small
Business Ombudsman office has been created within the Commerce
Department to address that issue, he said.
Sanford is also
pushing for an income tax cut that he says will promote an
entrepreneurial spirit and encourage more investment in small
business.
South Carolina’s income tax rate, at 7 percent,
is among the highest in the Southeast, Sanford said. He’d like
to bring it down to 5 percent, still above the national
average of 4.62 percent. Sanford fielded an array of questions
from Park Seed employees, most of which centered on the
economy and the state budget.
Owner Karen Park Jennings
expressed her concern about the effect of budget cuts on
education.
“When we try to bring a new person into town,
one of the first things they ask us is, ‘What kind of
education are my kids going to get?” Jennings said.
With
the state facing about a $500 million shortfall this budget
year, and education getting 52-55 percent of the budget, it
was bound to be affected, Sanford said.
“It’s just a
remarkable hole,” he said. Education’s “been shielded more so
than anything else in state government, but with the economic
slowdown, it’s been impacted.”
But education does need to
be a priority, he said.
“If you’re going to talk about
bettering the state economy, you’ve got to talk about
education,” he said.
Jennings also wanted to know what had
become of the budget surplus the state had a few years
back.
“We got ahead of ourselves,” Sanford said, because
the state grew its government too fast during strong economic
times. He is suggesting legislation that would restrict how
fast the government can grow to prevent the same problem down
the road.
With the textile industry struggling to compete
with cheaper import products, Sanford is headed soon to China
for a trade conference.
He plans to talk with some business
officials about the trade deficit and the political problem
that deficit may soon create.
“I think you’ll see trade
sanctions go up at the federal level within the next few years
if something doesn’t break loose,” he said.
But, at the
state level, officials can’t do much for the industry, Sanford
said.
“We can do some things to help, but it’s in the
margin,” Sanford said.
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