A real plan for South Carolina’s budget

When you sit down at the kitchen table to balance your family or small business budget, you are faced with choices. How you make those choices — the sometimes painful process of setting priorities — is often how you and your family or your business define success or failure.

As South Carolina’s government begins what has become an increasingly painful process of crafting a tax and spending plan, we all have a stake in the priorities that go into that nearly $5 billion process.

It is impossible to establish priorities without a vision that clearly articulates the state’s needs in a context of how what we spend for government services affects each citizen. While a vision shapes priorities, it takes an equal, or perhaps greater, measure of leadership to make a vision reality.

As we begin the budgeting process for 2004-2005, we have a rare opportunity in Gov. Mark Sanford’s executive budget to see those two vital elements come together.

On Jan. 8, Gov. Sanford unveiled the first executive budget of his administration, a plan that includes structural reform, efficiencies to the taxpayer and sale of nonessential state assets. At the same time, Gov. Sanford pledges not to raise taxes.

By using the same zero-based budgeting principles that prudent businesses and families have long relied upon, Gov. Sanford believes South Carolina can begin to tackle problems that have historically faced the state, including insufficient funding for education and health care, and a shortage of high-paying jobs.

A zero-based budget, which starts from scratch each year, carries no built-in assumptions. It enables leaders to take a fresh look at funding and avoid wasteful practices such as year-end spending binges, where budgets are spent down to the last penny to ensure at least as much money is available the following year.

Because South Carolina’s future will be determined in large part by its ability to steward its resources wisely, education is a top priority in Gov. Sanford’s budget. He proposes increasing spending for K-12 nearly $30 million, with extra funding coming partly from the state lottery.

Health care spending, specifically at Gov. Sanford’s newly restructured Department of Health Oversight and Finance, would also be boosted, and state government would begin to wean itself from the bad habit of annualizations — that is, pretending you can afford a new, long-term program when there’s barely enough money to pay for the first year.

Responsible families and businesses don’t budget that way.

But Gov. Sanford knows that during this extended period of shrinking government revenues, some tough choices need to be made as well.

The governor has proposed saving money through consolidation of 15 state agencies, privatizing some state-run services and selling state assets such as the Department of Mental Health property on Bull Street in Columbia.

The end goal is three-fold: Close the $350 million funding gap South Carolina faces, allow state government to deliver its core functions with excellence and efficiency, and make state government more accountable to the people it serves.

Like South Carolina’s families and businesses, state government must find ways to do more with less. We cannot afford to simply dismiss Gov. Sanford’s budget like some of the political pundits suggest the General Assembly will do.

Instead, it is time for us to use the executive budget as the starting place — the platform around which we can all come together — as we plan South Carolina’s future. It’s time for our leaders to roll up their sleeves and set priorities that will make South Carolina a better place to live, to work and to grow.

Mr. Hall, a Columbia attorney, was a member of the Sanford for Governor campaign staff and served as co-chairman of Gov. Sanford’s Task Force of Government Restructuring and Campaign Finance Reform.