In his first
State-of-the-State Address earlier this week, South
Carolinians got their first significant taste of what it will
be like under a Gov. Mark Sanford administration: a Spartan
government brought on by the state's budget crisis. But a
better government if the legislature will just "give me the
tools."
Though there are still "i's" to be dotted and "t's" to be
crossed, it's hard to argue with anything he said. Even
Democrats had words of praise. Sanford stressed his
restructuring plan, which he said would save money, and said
there'd be no new spending programs, at least in the short
term.
"I wish I could tell you the state of our economy was
strong," Sanford said. "I wish I was assuming leadership of a
state whose budget was sound, but everybody in this chamber
knows that it is not. Our budget is a mess," and there is a
"disconnect between the promises of government and our ability
to pay for those promises."
Indeed, that's telling it like it is. Government has
promised more than it can deliver - and now it's time to pay
the piper. The state's budget is expected to fall as much as
$1 billion short of meeting more than $5 billion in spending
needs.
Sanford wisely has no
plans to raise taxes to get the state out of its $5 billion
hole. He said, however, he would consider a cigarette tax
increase to rescue the state's crisis-laden Medicaid system,
as many lawmakers seek to do, but only if the legislature also
agrees to lower income taxes. That has always been his
long-term goal anyway - to get rid of the state income tax by
replacing it with sales taxes.
One of the best slim-down-the-government recommendations
the new governor made is to fire lobbyists, at a saving of
nearly $2 million a year, who lobby lawmakers to allocate more
money to their agencies. This program is an outrage in the
first place. Why should taxpayers pay propagandists to put the
arm on legislators to spend more taxpayer money?
Some more sound ideas from Sanford's address:
Zero-based or performance-based budgeting for every agency.
In other words, no ongoing program will be automatically
refunded; each will have to prove its value to the public,
just like it was starting from scratch.
End annualizations, i.e, the practice of spending capital
or one-time revenues to fund ongoing programs. Much of the
state's budget shortfall can be attributed to annualizations.
Have the state move to a biennial budget and extend renewal
period on driver's licenses from 5 years to 10 years in order
to relieve the Department of Motor Vehicle crisis.
The speech was light on education initiatives, but the
governor did push for more charter schools and he asked
lawmakers to help make schools smaller, to include conduct
grades on report cards and to make teachers "sovereign" in
their classrooms.
Overall, Sanford came across as a committed, compassionate
conservative and if the legislature cooperates with his agenda
and the economy improves, South Carolina should be a better
place to live and work four years from now than it is today.
.gif)
.gif){kind=spacer}
Have a thought? Go to the 
