SC Budget Writers Consider Cutting 10 School Days (SC)

November 19, 2010

The state House’s top budget writer said Thursday that cutting 10 days out of South Carolina’s school year could save $210 million and help ease an $800 million deficit.

Whittling down the 180-day school calendar is just one of the ideas House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Cooper offered after his panel’s first meeting, months before members begin writing a $5 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins in July.

"We’ll probably have to do something like that," Cooper said.

Cooper also is considering eliminating popular and far-reaching Medicaid programs that aren’t mandated by federal law and combining all the state’s cultural agencies, such as libraries, museums and arts programs, into a single entity.

"You’ll probably see some programs that won’t be offered anymore," Cooper said. "I look for us to have to combine some agencies — the smaller ones," Coopers said.

The state’s Medicaid program is s hort $330 million to maintain current services.

Cooper said closing that gap could mean eliminating optional programs for the elderly, disabled and poor, including extra prescription drugs or assistance to stay in their homes. Meanwhile, Cooper said his staff and the state Department of Health and Human Services are reviewing reduced payments to doctors.

The chairman said he doubts proposals to overhaul the state’s tax system — discussed for more than a year and now being finalized — will go anywhere in the Legislature. "I don’t know that it will help this budget process," Cooper told the panel.

Those proposals would only be taken up after the budget clears the House.

"If anybody is willing to introduce them," Cooper said.

That’s because they’re a complex mix of increases and decreases that leave legislators open to charges they’ve raised taxes, Cooper said. "You’ve got to be willing to put your name on that and suffer the consequences in an election cycle," Cooper said after the meeting.