APRIL 24, 2009 -- With the end of this year’s legislative session fast approaching and more furlough weeks planned in the House and Senate, the number of major legislative accomplishments this year will likely be few. Other than the contentious state budget, little finished work is expected by session’s end.
Perhaps the paucity of success was to be expected for three reasons. First, state coffers dried up as the state’s economy, fueled in big chunks by the faltering national economy, slowed and slows.
Second, the arrival of the Obama Administration’s national stimulus plan threw budget makers into a tizzy as they tried to weed their way through a morass of federal documents detailing how and when and why the money could be released.
And third, when Gov. Mark Sanford stood firm on his decision to at least delay $700 million of the state’s stimulus portion, budget writers in both chambers had to re-run funding scenarios, further delaying work on other issues.
“Sometimes what we don’t do is as important as what we do do,” said House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham (R-Cayce), who defended the work done this session.
Bingham said that because this was the first of a two-year session, many of the bills that don’t make it in 2009 will be tackled in next year’s session.
The deadline for many of those bills is fast approaching. Legislators have until May 1 to pass proposed legislation to the opposite chamber without needing a two-thirds vote. There has been a call to wrap up this session as early as May 21.
And to complicate matters, the House is to be in session next week, but plans to take off the following week, and the Senate is mulling making good on two more weeks of furlough for senators and staffers in order to save tens of thousands of dollars.
“What it says is that both the House and Senate are dealing with the same cost-cutting realities that other state agencies have to deal with,” said House Minority Leader Harry Ott (D-St. Matthews).
Some accomplishments, leader says
Bingham said the accomplishments this year showed that the legislature could do with a shorter session. He said those accomplishments included House Republican Caucus agenda items like passing election laws, tax realignment commission changes and putting the state’s Employment Security Commission in the governor’s cabinet.
(Observers note that none of these things really help people who are out of work and struggling.)
Bingham admitted that none of those accomplishments had actually been, well, accomplished. According to the majority leader, elections laws still need to be sent to the Senate, the TRAC bills were still on the calendar in the House, where it’s been tough “pushing” ESC reform.
“But this is the same way it is every year since I’ve been up here; the last few weeks are when everything gets finished,” said nine-year Statehouse veteran Bingham, who said that Judiciary just passed 15 new bills, and that he was to attend a full Ways and Means meeting that week.
Ott said he was frustrated that the legislature hadn’t moved past the budget, but that realistically everything else would have to wait until it was completed. The Senate adjourned debate on their version of the budget, and will resume debate in the coming week with the hope of getting back to the House by the end of next week.
From there, the budget will likely be batted back and forth between the two chambers before representatives from the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees in conference meetings.
That will be too late for many public school districts, according to Ott, which traditionally send out contracts to teachers for the following year by May 15. “Now, thanks to the delays, school districts are in a precarious position because they’re having to write budgets or hold-up on contracts because they don’t know how much money they’re going to have,” said Ott.
Cigarette tax may come up
Ott said once the budget is finally put to bed, he believed there would be time to tackle raising the state’s per-pack cigarette tax. That tax, if passed, could provide affordable health care insurance to tens of thousands of under-employed South Carolinians.
Ott went on to say that even tax realignment may be derailed because he feared House Speaker Bobby Harrell (R-Charleston) seemed to want to focus only on reducing the number of state sales tax exemptions.
Many in the legislature, he said, were more interested in using realignment as a springboard to completing a comprehensive tax overhaul that would include addressing property tax.
In the Senate, President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell (R-Charleston) had an equally short list of potential legislative accomplishments.
“I think we will see payday lending legislation completed soon, as its own special order,” said McConnell. “But really, it’s all about the budget right now.”
McConnell went on to say that he expected completion on bills dealing restructuring the governance of the State Ports Authority and creating a Capitol police department. It should be noted that all three of those issues McConnell mentioned were ones he took a big part in pushing.
Crystal ball: Before bashing the legislature for once again not making employment, the environment and education priorities, we should compare this session to 2008. The second of a two-year session, last year’s action was hamstrung by a series of statewide budget cuts. As a result, the biggest legislative battle was over the non-issue of illegal immigration reform. If the legislature’s biggest accomplishment this year is to pass a budget that deals with cutbacks and the stimulus fight AND it passes the cigarette tax increase, it will be a better year than 2008.
Now, the bashing: One GOP representative, grumbling about how little (and what) was getting done in the House this year, said, “The state just hit an all-time modern high for unemployment, and the one word you won’t hear mentioned in their today,” he said from the foyer, “ is ‘unemployment.’”
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