A bleak state budget

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There's really no way to sugarcoat the state budget crafted by the Legislature. Barring a last-minute outbreak of legislative leadership in Columbia, the $5.3 billion budget may result in the elimination of

6,000 public school teaching positions and the reduction of the Medicaid rolls by 30,000 poorer South Carolinians.

The budget will leave the state trooper ranks dangerously underfunded, contributing to our state's high rate of road fatalities. Prisons will remain disturbingly understaffed as well, with few instructors to give prisoners the workplace skills they need to become productive citizens. The state's inadequate mental health and juvenile justice systems also are likely to get hit hard by budget cuts. Universities will be shortchanged, forcing big tuition hikes.

Worse, the state budget hasn't even received final approval. Lawmakers may extend the legislative session, costing the state as much as $75,000 a day — wasting the equivalent of a few annual teachers' salaries every day.

An unexpected federal bailout will provide about $265 million for some state programs, but that money will not close the funding shortfall for education. The budget reduces state per-pupil spending to $1,701, the level of eight years ago. Adjusted for inflation, the actual reduction takes the state back to 1970s funding levels, according to news accounts. The per-pupil expenditure is $300 less than the Legislature approved last year and $500 less than the amount recommended by state law.

There's little doubt that these cuts will hurt educational opportunity in South Carolina. Schools already have cut 2,300 jobs for the new budget year. The Greenville County school district, the state's largest, may have to cut almost 300 teaching positions. School districts across the state will be forced to expand class size and eliminate some courses, especially advanced courses. The result will be a narrower curriculum and less time for teachers to grade assignments, communicate with parents and work with students on an individual basis.

Many school districts will have to increase student fees or property taxes to help close yawning budget gaps, and thus school boards will wind up as the fall guys for the Legislature's abdication of responsibility.

The federal windfall will brighten the Medicaid picture, although Gov. Sanford is right that the one-time contribution from the federal government provides no long-term solution to the Medicaid problem. Lawmakers refused to raise the cigarette tax, which would have provided a stable, recurring revenue source for Medicaid while freeing up state money for education, prisons and other vital needs. A reasonable increase in beer and wine taxes that also might have shored up crucial state programs never got very far in this legislative session.

On the spending side, lawmakers failed to set clear priorities with this budget. The Legislature's cuts too closely resemble the sort of across-the-board reductions that most lawmakers promised to avoid. Legislators seem to prefer spreading the pain without regard to a program's relative merit. This is bad policy in good budget years and disastrous policy in bad years.

There's very little evidence lawmakers followed through with promises to eliminate waste, duplication, inefficiencies and programs that are not central to the state's responsibilities. In addition, taxpayers still are waiting for the top-to-bottom scrutiny and zero-based budgeting practices pledged by many lawmakers in last year's campaigns.

Moreover, lawmakers balanced the budget by draining reserves and raiding trust funds by as much as $100 million in the past two years — a risky fiscal practice that erodes the trust of taxpayers.

It's true, as lawmakers say, that their hands were tied this year by a weak economy and declining tax revenues. It's also true, however, that legislators created many of their own problems by starting new programs and spending like crazy during the boom years of the 1990s while cutting taxes with little thought to the consequences of their actions when the boom years ended.

Lawmakers this year should have prioritized, reduced waste and streamlined spending — and raised new, stable revenue through a cigarette tax hike. The Legislature still has a small space of time to meet the budget crisis head-on, but so far state leadership has faltered in a year when leadership was most sorely needed.