Taxpayers have a right to see votes on vetoes

By MARK SANFORD

Guest columnist

The notion that it is always easy to spend someone else’s money is proving true with the wrap-up of the budget in Columbia — just as it has proven all too true in Washington.

The unusual part in South Carolina’s budget process this year is the extraordinary efforts that have been taken by many legislative leaders to make certain taxpayers will not be able to see how their representatives voted prior to Tuesday’s elections on overriding any vetoes I might cast.

We pushed hard to dispense with the budget process before the election for two reasons.

First, spending. For the first time ever, we have more than $1 billion in new money coming into S.C. government. If you had a banner year in your personal finances and big debts looming, would you allocate most of your budget to spending? There are certainly some good things done with the additional billion dollars that we applaud lawmakers’ action on — making the final installment in paying back trust funds that had been raided in years past, $133 million in tax reduction, $50 million in a contingency fund — but the overwhelming bulk goes to spending. This brings with it several problems.

We don’t think government spending should grow faster than the growth of people’s pocketbooks and wallets, and in this case it is growing more than twice as fast. This has happened before, and it has had bad consequences. In 1999 and 2000, state government spending grew by 11.4 and 12.2 percent respectively — for a near 25 percent increase in government spending. When the growth stopped, not surprisingly, policy makers found themselves making midyear cuts.

We have more than caught up from the lean times of three and four years ago, and the question we have to ask is whether it is a good idea to set ourselves up for the same fall again. This year’s proposed budget is almost $750 million above the previous budget high-water mark that people talk of “getting back to,” and the total budget has moved consistently upward from $15 billion to $19 billion as a result of more money from the federal government and state government shifting to fees when revenues flattened in the early 2000s.

We are arguing for restraint in spending not only to avoid a replay of the early 2000s, but because we believe putting more money into the private sector is key to growing the economy of our state. If you really believe we live in a time of transformative change, it seems you would want to maximize the sector of your economy that can change the fastest.

This year’s spending is unsustainable. If you look at the new money coming into our state government, our revenue growth exceeded the revenue growth of the fastest-growing economy in the world. China’s new revenue grew at 19.5 percent; South Carolina’s was at 19.98 percent. Even if you argued we should include non-recurring sources of revenue, our revenue grew at 17 percent. These times of plenty will not roll on indefinitely. Yet the legislative budget proposes increasing spending $177 per person while Georgia increased its spending by $109 per person, and we do so while we face significant future costs: The federal government will soon require all states to account for unfunded liabilities, and the state health plan has a $9 billion unfunded liability. We will be required to recognize $535 million in costs each year. Wouldn’t it be smart to set some money aside while we have the opportunity?

Second, this whole thing raises the question of budget accountability.

For a small state such as South Carolina, spending more than $1 billion in new money is extraordinary. Our rate of revenue growth is extraordinary. The new federal ruling and the $500 million liability are extraordinary.

The Legislature has been called back over the years for ethics reform, reapportionment, bond bills, rural development, the African-American history monument and video poker — and lawmakers obliged without incident. Yet when we suggested they be called back to deal with a spending crisis, the leaders withheld the budget to prevent us from indeed calling them back.

This is unfortunate. It unearths the lack of accountability that too often comes from Columbia in the way taxpayers’ dollars are spent. Too many votes in Columbia are unrecorded. In fact, since I came into office, only about 13 percent of the bills that have become law got a recorded or roll call vote so that people could see where their legislators stood. Their shot at seeing how their House member voted on vetoes that impact spending is now off-limits until after the election — and all of this begs a much larger question of voters demanding change in the way things like this are too often done in Columbia.

Mr. Sanford is the governor of South Carolina.