Across the region

Lawmakers defer raise amid budget deficit

ATHENS, GA. --- Georgia lawmakers on Monday chose to defer a 3 percent cost of living raise as the state grapples with a widening budget deficit.

Georgia's 236 state legislators were expected to add the raise to their $17,341 base salary when they returned for the 2009 session on Jan. 12.

House Speaker Glenn Richardson proposed the change, arguing that state workers are not getting a cost of living bump and neither should lawmakers.

Leaders voted to defer the raise during a meeting of the Legislative Services Committee. The change does not require the full Legislature's approval, and it garnered bipartisan support.

Budget cuts force USC to cut part-time faculty

COLUMBIA --- The University of South Carolina plans to eliminate about a quarter of its part-time faculty contracts as it deals with $39 million in budget cuts.

For now, the school doesn't plan furloughs or tuition increases despite further spending reductions expected later this week for the 12-campus system, President Harris Pastides said Monday.

Thirty tenured or tenure-track faculty positions out of 1,500 are being trimmed, and spring contracts for 100 of more than 400 adjunct or part-time faculty members are being slashed.

Fewer than 200 of 6,400 staff positions are being cut, said William Moore, the university's vice president for planning.

In all, about $17 million is being saved through academic cuts, Mr. Moore said.

In other news

The jury was set to begin deliberating today on whether to sentence Brian Nichols, 36, to death, life in prison or life without possibility of parole after convicting him last month of murder and other felonies in the 2005 Atlanta courthouse shooting rampage. Closing arguments were completed Monday.