Budget fix spares taxes, children

COLUMBIA --- As your lawmakers prepare to return to the Statehouse this week to patch holes a slumping economy has torn in South Carolina's $7 billion spending plan, here are some key points they want you to know:

- Your taxes aren't going to go up;

- Your children's school week will not be shortened; and,

- Poor children will still get mostly free health care.

With every state legislator facing voters at the polls next month, the sacred cows of the budget may come as little surprise. But the elements that are being protected do focus $488 million in cuts on a smaller pool of spending that includes the state's public colleges.

What's become clear in the days leading up to the special session of the General Assembly is that money set aside for university research and grants for local community projects will be hit. Most every state agency will be affected. Job losses running into the hundreds are expected from a state work force of nearly 65,000 and agencies are being given a freer hand to order workers home on unpaid furloughs.

Senate and House budget writers on Friday reached deep into college and health agency budgets while sparing much of the cash headed for classrooms, children's health care and state prisons. The House and Senate will have to approve that legislation before sending it to Gov. Mark Sanford, who will have a line-item veto.

Major action is expected to begin Tuesday.

Colleges, technical schools, state museums and libraries will see spending plans lose $127 million. That would mean hefty losses at Clemson University, the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of South Carolina, each of which would lose 14.9 percent of its budget.

At USC, that comes to $26.9 million; at Clemson, $16.5 million and at MUSC, $14.2 million. The state's technical college system gives up more than 14 percent with a $25 million cut.

Above all else in the budget fixing, Republicans and Democrats say they have no appetite to raise taxes in a budget already weighed down by tax cuts.