Provisos targeted as waste of funds: State version of 'earmarks' total millions of dollars

COLUMBIA -- They guarantee free housing for Clemson University's head football coach and the directors of the Corrections and Mental Health departments, all of whom get salaries well into six figures.

State budget website that details the provisos

Find the provisos under section 1B

They cost the state tens of millions of dollars in protected fees for doctors and brand-name drugs.

Fact Box

Definitions
Proviso: Instructions in the South Carolina budget that direct agencies on how to spend money. The second half of the state's nearly 1,000-page budget is made up of these legislative decrees. They direct everything from how much the state can spend for each child in public school to limiting burial costs for foster children to $1,500 to ordering that agencies block pornography on state computers. Lawmakers also use them to direct money to special-interest groups and preserve sacred cows in the budget.
Earmark: The controversial federal process akin to state budget provisos that allow congressmen to funnel cash to projects in their home districts.
How provisos get in the budget
Agencies submit proviso requests to the legislative budget subcommittees that oversee them.
Lawmakers can request provisos in subcommittees, but they are not required to attach their names to their requests.
Each budget subcommittee is responsible for reviewing the provisos of the state agencies they oversee.
Those subcommittee recommendations generally are adopted with little debate by the full budget committees, legislative observers said.
Provisos are meant to clarify how general funds are to be spent and are meant to be in effect for one year only.
But each year, the Legislature adopts most of the old provisos after cursory subcommittee-level reviews, unless a lawmaker or agency official specifically requests a change or deletion.

They allow each of the 170 legislators to spend $250 on American and Palmetto State flags to give away to constituents.

They are called provisos, and they control spending in the state's $5 billion budget.

An investigation by The Post and Courier shows that scouring the state's 946 provisos could easily free up more than $100 million in cash to help balance this year's budget.

Provisos are the state's equivalent of Congress' much-maligned earmarks, which legislators attach to major laws to funnel spending to pet projects in home districts.

Among the newspaper's findings:

--The provisos are a catch-all for legislators' special interests and pet projects. For example, they designate $1 million for abstinence-only education and teen pregnancy prevention, direct the operation of a 24-hour illegal immigration reporting hotline and give state workers $5,000 to adopt a child and $10,000 to adopt a child with special needs -- aid regular residents don't get.

--Legislators don't have to put their names on provisos, allowing lawmakers to increase fees, protect favored donors and prop up pork-barrel projects without a paper trail. For example, a 2008 proviso -- still on the books -- prohibits state Medicaid from cutting doctor fees. By cutting those fees, the state could save tens of millions of dollars. Another proviso designates specific unnamed contractors and vendors to repair fire damage at a Winthrop University hall, avoiding the bidding process.

--Provisos are meant to last one year only. But each year, with little debate, the Legislature adopts almost all the old provisos, unless a lawmaker or agency official specifically requests a change or deletion. At one recent budget subcommittee meeting, for example, legislators spent only 60 seconds reviewing legislation that would throw out inappropriate provisios in the upcoming budget. Chairman Sen. Billy O'Dell, a Ware Shoals Republican, assured committee members: "This is what we do every year."

--Some provisos are so old that legislators can't explain their original purpose. For example, one appears to date to 1989. Even seasoned Statehouse officials couldn't explain what it was about.

--The practice in South Carolina shows a long-standing pattern of abuse. In the 1990s, provisos played a role in the Lost Trust scandal that sent state lawmakers to prison. In that case, some legislators took bribes to write a proviso that gave about $11 million in tax breaks to 21 people.

Despite the abuses, provisos are designed to clarify how budgeted items are to be spent by agencies, and many serve a legitimate purpose. For example, one proviso requires that state agencies monitor the use of lottery funds to make sure the cash is spent in a lawful way.

Les Boles, director of the Office of the State Budget, said provisos are a tool for "micro-managing" the budget, a natural way for lawmakers to clarify how they want the state's money spent.

"It's just how the sausage gets made," Boles said.

But with South Carolina facing a $700 million spending shortfall, the budget tool that has been used for decades is drawing closer scrutiny.

Contacted by The Post and Courier, some state officials said they want to end the abuse.

Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R- Charleston, said he plans to ask senators to scrutinize the provisos. Given the state's budget crisis, reviewing them should be the Legislature's top transparency issue, he said.

"I have gone after those provisos over the years because they have no business putting what should be permanent law into temporary provisos; it's an appropriations bill, not a legislative grocery bag," he said.

McConnell has tried to stop proviso abuse in the past but acknowledged that many abuses have gotten by him.

"Some of them, we won't catch, because they've been there and you're reading so fast," he said. "How do you know they were there last year, or the year before, or 10 years ago? That's the problem with this, is that they get in there and you think they're temporary for one year, but they've been there for many years."

Former Gov. Mark Sanford also opposed many provisos. Last year, his final year in office, the Legislature upheld his vetoes of some provisos, including one that directed $50,000 to the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition and another that protected jobs at the Statehouse gift shop and the Santee Welcome Center.

Rep. Jim Merrill, R-Daniel Island, will meet today with a panel of House budget writers to recommend which of this year's provisos should make it into next year's budget. Merrill said the state's spending plan is under closer scrutiny this year because the state is entering its fourth consecutive year of budget cuts.

"I think this year, it has been far, far more open and conscientious," Merrill said. "We're moving closer to zero-based budgeting."

State and national taxpayer watchdogs said South Carolinians should demand better accountability for how provisos are used.

One way to do that would be requiring named sponsors, said Leslie Paige, spokeswoman for the Washington group Citizens Against Government Waste.

Paige slammed the "micro-managing" of the state budget, saying: "They're using provisos to meddle in places they shouldn't be meddling in."

Ashley Landess, president of the S.C. Policy Council, a right-leaning think tank in Columbia, agreed. "This is how they hide the true cost of government and let themselves off the hook for pet projects," she said. "Most of these provisos are on auto-pilot. No one is reviewing them."

"At the very least, there should be complete and utter transparency so taxpayers can connect the dots," Paige said. "It looks like South Carolina hasn't learned any lessons from abuse of federal earmarks."