S.C. Senate OKs budget; McConnell gets $5 million more for Lowcountry schools

COLUMBIA — The state Senate approved a $7 billion spending plan Wednesday after a 12-hour session that had coastal lawmakers sparring for cash and ended with promising state workers a 1 percent raise.

Final deals were reached just after 10 p.m. after Charleston and other Lowcountry legislators were promised millions to shore up spending for their schools, as well as more tourism promotion cash as soon as the economy turns around.

That cleared the way for the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 to head back to the House. A joint conference committee will work out final deals in the next few weeks amid fears a weak economy could prompt more spending reductions.

In the past two weeks, the Senate Finance Committee has cut $90 million in regular spending and $90 million from a reserve account. The latter nixed plans to buy new school buses and to put money into tourism advertising, economic development and college research projects.

Wednesday's debate was snarled as Sen. Luke Rankin tried to get tourism promotion dollars that was stripped after a soured economic forecast. The Myrtle Beach Republican warned that cutting $12 million in tourism advertising and grants would hurt the state's fastest growing economic sector, saying that a dollar spent marketing tourism "is at least a $17 return."

Rankin and other coastal senators abandoned their efforts only after Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman assured them that the promotion of tourism would be a top priority when the economy turns around.

By the afternoon, the coast-versus-the rest of the state argument blew into outright antagonism when Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell of Charleston cast about for cash to help coastal county schools. McConnell said a state funding formula left districts such as those he represents shortchanged, adding his efforts wouldn't cost schools in the rest of the state a dime.

"It's the rites of spring," said Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, a Gaffney Republican whose Upstate district hugs the North Carolina border. "Every year, for 28 years, in the budget, we have the annual Charleston budget crisis."

Peeler cited debates over the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge and the city's port as examples.

McConnell's effort failed with a 22-21 vote, but more debate ensued after his allies fought to have that vote reconsidered.

That touched off a filibuster by Aiken Sen. Greg Ryberg, who criticized the efforts as state prisons need more funding. Ryberg filibustered for about five hours, using props including a Corrections Department radio that he said would catch fire when a fresh battery was inserted and hand-me-down bulletproof vests he said guards had been issued.

McConnell's amendment "basically put at a higher priority Charleston's additional funding than the priority of the safety of officers at our correctional institutions," Ryberg said, after giving up a fight that showed "another example of where one individual with the power that he's got is able to make sure that his hometown is taken care of at the expense of some of the state agencies."

McConnell didn't blush at winning more than $5 million for 21 school districts, which he sees as a stopgap measure to address a flawed formula of how the state distributes cash to districts.

"We appropriate millions of dollars in new money, and we've got a bunch of districts getting less money than they got last year," McConnell said. "It just makes no sense."

The battles delayed efforts to get to an amendment that gives state workers a 1 percent raise. To do that, Leatherman tapped $20 million earmarked for future retiree health benefits.

Two weeks ago, the Senate Finance Committee approved a 2 percent raise, a plan that was scuttled when an economic projection showed the state's revenues falling short of expectations.

In the end, part of the strain in the budget — which Leatherman said leaves the Senate with no special or pork projects — isn't all economic, he said, noting three years of tax cuts that took $500 million out of the budget.

"Had we not done that, we'd have had all the money we would have needed this year," he said.

Gov. Mark Sanford said called the plan an irresponsible bid to curry election-year favor with state workers.

"It's hard to imagine anything more irresponsible than taking money set aside for retirement benefits debt and use it to try and buy favor with current state employees during an election year," Sanford said in a prepared statement.

Leatherman said the state already has set aside more than $376 million for those retiree health benefits.