Gov. Mark Sanford went before the South Carolina General Assembly on Wednesday night for his State of the State address.
As he has done in the past, he saluted South Carolinians who have been killed fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan; saluted a state government employee as a symbol for all who do a great job serving the state; and we think appropriately singled out his wife for work she has done on two historic homes included in state government property by the Governor’s Mansion.
Of course, as he noted in his budget proposal, most of the effort and talk in his address is surrounding the economic situation we are in and ways to cut costs and what core functions we can fund.
There are some issues that are being pushed that we agree are a problem but not necessarily being approached in the right way.
He won’t give up on school choice.
He will only push for incremental change in key tax policies.
We understand his reluctance to go for the complete look at the overall tax system, but it must be done as we urged earlier.
We don’t think it will happen overnight, but we have to keep pushing for it to get done.
We are happy to see him weigh in on the issue of mega dumps in rural parts of the state.
He mentions the proposed mega dumps in Williamsburg and Marlboro counties as examples of a problem where it is more economical for states in the Northeast to ship their waste to South Carolina because of the low fees we charge.
He proposes increasing those fees and finding ways not to have to charge local governments the same or get them rebates.
He proposes a change in the cigarette tax, the nation’s lowest, from 7 cents to 37 cents.
We’d like to see it increased much more than that and hope that the money can fund efforts to stop teens from smoking and to help with health care costs in some way.
Keep in mind that we are also losing millions of dollars in federal matching money on the table, as well because of our low tax rate.
The governor says he will stick with his “revenue neutral” position on the cigarette tax — meaning there has to be some similar reduction somewhere else or he will veto it.
We hope if a bill passes that this year the General Assembly can override the veto.
We also agree with continued efforts by the governor to restructure state government giving future chief executives more power to govern.
Sanford puts forth his ideas in well thought out and sets clear goals.
Not all will get passed. But the issues need to be debated and voted on we hope.
And this year, as the governor urged in the address, bills have gotten early approval in both the House and Senate for more recorded votes on issues.
Too bad they don’t go even further, but it’s a step in the right direction.
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