What should S.C. lawmakers do with $600 million surplus?
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - How would you spend around half-a-billion dollars to help South Carolinians?
Lawmakers have some ideas on where to allocate surplus funds that will benefit the state’s taxpayers, but differing views could lead to a big fight soon.
Last week, the Senate Finance Committee approved its version of next year’s budget, which will now head to the full Senate for its consideration.
One of the keystones of this proposal is an expenditure of $600 million in surplus money.
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Senators want to put it predominantly toward tax cuts and infrastructure.
In this plan, $100 million would be allocated toward accelerating the schedule to drop South Carolina’s top income tax rate, which the legislature approved a few years ago.
Local transportation projects would receive $200 million, $117 million would go to the rural roads program, $100 million to bridge improvements, and $30 million to rural water and sewer upgrades, plus $53 million for the University of South Carolina’s future health campus in Columbia.
“The governor, in his plan, he put, was it $400 million, $500 million into bridges, so it’s the best parts of the governor’s plan, a better part with the Senate plan over the House plan for this tax reduction,” said Senate Finance Committee Chair Harvey Peeler R-Cherokee.
Across the lobby at the State House, the House of Representatives’ plan focuses $500 million in surplus funds to help one group specifically: homeowners.
In the budget proposal the entire House has already ed, that half-billion dollars would go toward one-time credits on property taxes.
House budget writers said they would average to $359 apiece.
“We believe that what we should do is honor that promise to taxpayer that when those dollars became in and they were accumulated and ready, we could distribute them back for owner-occupied property tax relief. We believe that’s important to keep our word to the taxpayers to send that money back,” Rep. Bruce Bannister, R – Greenville and chair of the House’s budget-writing Ways and Means Committee, said.
Ultimately this will be a question settled in the next two months, when a small group of from the two chambers hash out a compromise between their budget plans to send to the governor.
How to spend this surplus might not be the only budget fight brewing between the House and the Senate.
They are also far apart on how much of a raise state employees should get, along with a matter that also sparked a disagreement last year: funding for Clemson’s new veterinary school.
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