SPARTANBURG, S.C. - One Senate budget fight during the last three weeks involved efforts to add a $25 fee to uniform traffic tickets that can be issued for a variety of offenses, including speeding and marijuana possession.

During that debate, Sen. John Hawkins, R-Spartanburg, showed he was staunch opponent of the surcharges, despite heavy lobbying from prosecutors and judges.

Supporters said the fees would generate $23 million for state law enforcement and criminal justice agencies and restore money lost to budget cuts. The House included the fees in its version of the $5 billion state budget, but Senate rules knocked them out and Hawkins worked to make sure they didn't come back.

Hawkins said the fees are unfair to other agencies.

"It would be unfair and hypocritical of us to tell teachers we're not going to fund them through a tax increase, but we will select out a group of other agencies and fund them through what is, in essence, a tax increase," said Hawkins, who last year ran for attorney general, but dropped out before the primary.

"How do you compare education and health care to law enforcement, and say one is more important than the other? Everybody has to feed from the same spoon."

The fees also generate about $9.2 million for the state's 16 solicitors offices. The money would be divided based on population.

Solicitor Trey Gowdy says the proposed surcharge targets only those who drain the criminal justice and that makes it fair.

"This isn't going to increase my budget by one cent because the more the state gives me, the less the county will have to give me," 7th Circuit Solicitor Gowdy said.

"After all, I need a certain amount of money to run my office and nothing more," he said. "What it will do is lower the amount of my budget that taxpayers have to pay and increase the amount that people who are convicted of criminal and traffic offenses pay."

Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal appealed to Hawkins for the fees, which she says are desperately needed to keep South Carolina's court system operating.

The fees generate about $1.9 million for the Judicial Department and "could mean the difference between closing some courts and not closing them," Toal said.

"We've had a reduction in state general appropriations from $43 million to $32 million over the past three years," Toal said. "I simply can't run the court system on that deep a cut."

Toal said court fees the Legislature increased last year helped her avoid "massive layoffs" and shutting down courts.

The appeals don't move Hawkins. "We hear that kind of panic from every state agency," he said. While the Republican-controlled House says its against tax increases, Hawkins says, "they hide in the budget scores of fee increases on things like games and hunting licenses. It's very clever. I admire them for their ingenuity, but it's just a way to skirt the issue of taxes."

Supporters of the measure now have to hope that a Senate-House budget conference committee will agree to put the money back into the budget.

Information from: Herald-Journal