A way to fund school buses

State legislators shouldn't have to look far to find most of the money needed to continue the school bus replacement cycle they committed to last year. The funds are sitting in a so-called competitive grants account that has functioned as the Legislature's biggest pork barrel.

According to our report Wednesday, the $19.7 million set aside to continue the 15-year school bus replacement cycle was among the budget items removed by the Senate Finance Committee in the wake of more bad economic news. The House-passed budget had undergone previous committee surgery before the Board of Economic Advisors lowered its revenue projections even further this week by $90 million for a total revenue reduction estimate of $240 million. According to our reporter, Sen. Greg Ryberg of Aiken questioned during the Finance Committee meeting why $18.4 million in a competitive grants program that has funded such projects as "balloon festivals and frog jumps" couldn't be used to ease some of the funding pain. At issue is how the Legislature can get its hands on the grants money since it was allocated in previous budgets.

While the committee reportedly was told that the unspent competitive grant money can't simply be moved to the general fund, Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom is among those who believe that could be accomplished through special legislation. "The General Assembly," he notes, "can generally do what it wants to do and has been for the last 150 years."

The answer may be even simpler — the removal of a proviso in the House budget that allows the grants money to be carried over until the next fiscal year.

The General Assembly pledged last year to replace the oldest school bus fleet in the nation. While the action had been urged for years by various studies and audits, the dangerous state of the fleet finally got lawmakers' attention after our investigative series last year that detailed approximately 12,000 breakdowns every school year.

Five hundred and fifty-one buses were purchased last year with the expectation that 480 new buses would be added each year until 2022, according to our news account. But if the nearly $20 million specifically allocated for replacement isn't reinstated, estimates are that the Department of Education will only have funds for some 150 new buses this year. It should be noted that the Legislature felt strongly enough last year about establishing and maintaining the replacement cycle that it overrode Gov. Mark Sanford's veto of the school bus legislation. The governor argued for a different approach to the problem, including contracting with private providers.

But the Legislature recognized the critical nature of the problem then and should keep the replacement cycle a priority, something that can't be said for the controversial competitive grants program. Even if money is found elsewhere for the school buses, the grants funds clearly are needed for other priorities that are under the budget knife. Surely under these tough economic circumstances lawmakers will find a way to make better use of the funds reserved for hometown pork.