Panel endorses cap on state spending

A state Senate panel approved a slate of bills Wednesday including a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit how much money the state can spend each year.

Other proposals approved would make it much harder for state agencies to operate with a deficit or enact fees.

Most of the bills were introduced last year but did not advance through the legislative process.

But Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Glenn McConnell, the Charleston Republican who is head of the Senate and also chairman of the subcommittee that met Wednesday, said he will fast-track the bills once lawmakers return in January.

“The climate is such right now — with the deficit debate in Washington and the mood of the public — that if I’m ever to have a chance to get some of these bills through, now is the time,” McConnell said after the meeting.

A spending cap will be the most controversial.

It would limit growth in state spending to not more than the average of 10 years of state revenue growth. The amendment has bipartisan support, as evidenced by two Democratic senators — Vincent Sheheen of Kershaw and Gerald Malloy of Darlington — voting in favor of the amendment Wednesday.

The real fight will come later, in determining how to calculate the spending cap.

If the cap is to become law, lawmakers have to choose a budget amount to serve as the baseline. They could choose the state’s much bigger $8 billion budget from a few years ago, before the financial crisis, or its current economically depressed $6 billion budget.

McConnell said he favors using the current depressed budget.

Other proposals the committee approved Wednesday include:

• Taking away the State Budget and Control Board’s authority to allow state agencies to run deficits and giving that authority to the General Assembly

• Forbidding state agencies from putting a fee increase or criminal penalty into a regulation

Creating a commission on “streamlining government and the reduction of waste,” based on a similar initiative in Louisiana that was able to identify $600 million in savings

• A constitutional amendment to establish trust funds that only could be used for a specific purpose, unless a two-thirds majority of the House and Senate vote to change that purpose

The ideas approved by the panel are a long way from becoming law. To do so, they must clear the Senate and House. Constitutional amendments also must be approved by S.C. voters.