By admin 
South Carolina lawmakers’ decision to axe earmarks from the state budget for the second year in a row left sour feelings between the House and Senate as lawmakers took shots at the other chamber on the last expected legislative work day for the year.
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With one side saying the other chamber did not negotiate in good faith, will lawmakers’ ability to bring money back to their districts for community investment projects continue to be in jeopardy next year?
“I think it’s going to be very difficult after this year,” House Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister told reporters last week.
Last week, the General Assembly, where Republicans hold a supermajority in each chamber, sent a more than $15 billion general fund spending plan to the governor, which he formally signed on Monday. For the second year in a row, it did not include earmarks, even though there was an understanding when the budget process began that lawmaker directed projects would receive funding this year.
House members proposed $315 million worth of community investment projects. Senators proposed $130 million worth of projects.
Senators did not like when in the budget writing process the House proposed their projects and how much money representatives wanted to spend arguing there was an inequity.
“Honestly, their position has been: ‘We want you to cut it the way we want you to cut it, or we’ll have no projects’,” Bannister said.
Senators said the House had countered with $225 million proposal for House earmarks. Bannister said the Senate’s instance of allowing only $175 million in earmarks from the House had no rationale and was more like an arbitrary cap. Ultimately lawmakers could not agree on how to close the $50 million gap.
Bannister said offers to allow the senators put their name on House earmarks to allow the upper chamber members to take credit did not work.
“There’s just a senator saying this is the number I’m going to let you have, which we were never going to get there anyway,” Bannister said.
Last year, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Harvey Peeler opted not to have earmarks in the budget as the requests had gotten out of hand, but the understanding was it would be a one-year pause.
The two bodies will have to negotiate a spending plan again next year. With both chambers airing their grievances about whether to provide money for lawmaker sponsored projects, the relationship between the House and Senate budget writing committees is a bit strained.
The earmark fight had been brewing for years over how the House proposes community investment projects. The House’s earmarks are in its second version of the budget after it’s been returned from the Senate. Instead, the Senate wants the House to propose projects in their first version of the budget.
The Senate, which proposes its own projects, has said it does not have a chance to review House projects and is forced to fully fund an individual project or throw it out. The Senate has no option to lower the amount because of the budget process rules.
Senators also complained the House also lowered proposed funding in other parts of the budget to make room for earmarks.
“They underfunded things they knew we would have to come back and fund,” said Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto said.
“We’re not trying to burn any bridges here. We look forward to next year’s process. It needs to be open and transparent. There needs to be a discussion beforehand. They clearly need to put their projects in H1,” Hutto said.
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Those on the Senate side of the negotiations tried to view next year more positively.
“I think there’s a lot of a lot of opportunity for here to learn from this and to figure out what the rules of these projects are going to be, and that way we won’t have what happened this year,” said state Sen. Tom Davis, who served on the budget conference committee.
The budget conference committee agreed to set aside the earmarks into a different bill and have a new 6-member committee select which earmarks to fund and how much money they each would receive.
“For whatever reason, they decided that they didn’t want to go the route they agreed to, and wanted to instead say we want this to be appropriated, so I was completely taken off guard. I was ready to do the work this fall on that committee,” Davis said.
Some senators were frustrated over a lack of earmarks because of the effort required to ask local leaders what projects they would like to see and determine which ones would be best to move forward, only to be told at the end, the effort was all for naught.
Some of the projects included drainage work, money for fire stations, police departments, park improvements and economic development money.
“Those needs didn’t just disappear,” said state Sen. Russell Ott said. “I hear it being called pork and all that kind of stuff. I could tell you coming from a rural part of South Carolina that doesn’t have the tax base that other folks can enjoy from other parts of the state, that there are real needs.”
Ott contends lawmakers and those back in their districts may have gotten their hopes up.
“We shouldn’t have been allowed to go down this path again, if an agreement was not reached that should have been delivered to the body, and we should have been told, we’re not doing earmarks because they won’t negotiate and come up with an agreement,” Ott said.
Amid the anger over the lack of earmarks, House members have pointed to the more than $200 million money set aside over two years to go to Clemson University to build a new veterinary school at the urging of Peeler. That school is now named for Peeler.
“They have held up a budget over community investments that will impact this entire state and not just one institution, that causes a lot of heartburn to me that we’re not calling out the senator and the senate on stuff like this,” said state Rep. John King, D-York.
State Sen. Margie Bright Matthews, D-Colleton, defended Peeler and the veterinary school.
“Sen. Peeler ain’t going to that veterinary school. It might be named after him, but it’s for all of South Carolina, and we needed it,” Bright Matthews said.
As the two chambers took shots at one another, it might have been better if they listened to another rather than talking simultaneously, Bright Matthews said.
“There’s no way for us to get this right for the people of South Carolina unless we listen first and then communicate,” Bright Matthews said.
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