Haley proposes elimination of arts funding, again

I missed this entirely but Brad Warthen didn't:

Based on the emails I get, one of the best-organized lobbies in South Carolina is the one that promotes the arts. Of course, they need to be if their favored programs are to survive, since it appears that each year that Nikki Haley is governor is going to be a battle for existence for the state Arts Commission and related recipients of state funding.

Click through to Brad's page for a downloadable registration form to attend the "arts advocacy day" at the State House.

And I'll add a suggestion of my own. Given the myriad photography software packages floating around, and the myriad photographs of our illustrious governor available on the internet, those more artistic blog readers should use this challenge to arts funding from the governor to demonstrate the effectiveness of art in communicating emotion. I'm no Andy Warhol, but I pledge to do my part.

Arts Advocacy Day at the State House is February 7.

House overrides Haley's veto of arts commission funds

By a vote of 105 to eight, the House just voted to override Governor Nikki Haley's veto of funding for the South Carolina Arts Commission.

White said Haley vetoed the funding that had been negotiated by House members to move most state funding into a grant program. Up to 70 percent of the funding approved by House members pass through the state commission to local arts commissions.

Rep. Leonidas Stavrinakis reminded members that the commissions, state and local, serve all the citizens of the state, and that student scores go up when students are exposed to music and the arts.

South Carolina's children suffer Nikki Haley's wrath

The least among us -- South Carolina's children -- were ineligible to vote last election day. Governor Nikki Haley apparently interpreted that fact to mean that none of them supported her, so she owes them nothing in return. Today, she inflicted upon them the greatest pain she could muster, stripping from the 2011-2012 budget $76 million for their education in K-12 schools and $12.4 million to buy them new school buses.

It wasn't the largest of her 36 vetoes; she struck out the entire capital reserve fund, totaling $107 million, but that fund is used in many different ways across the state, according to The State's summary of Her Excellency's damage. It includes "money for economic development, tourism and millions for building maintenance, particularly on state college campuses."

That leaves the veto of $76 million for K-12 public schools as the largest single-purpose wound from her attack on the budget.

Haley proved to the arts community that their fears were founded and that she's no friend to them, erasing completely the meager $2.1 million that lawmakers set aside donated to the state Arts Commission.

The bright spot in the summary is that Haley vetoed roughly $680,000 in taxpayer funding for her party's 2012 presidential primary.

But The State's summary gave no indication that Haley struck down a single piece of corporate wealthfare, a single tax break benefiting the state's wealthiest or its business community.

Clearly, the targets of her veto pen were South Carolina's children, too young to vote for her opponent in 2014.

Haley spun her deeds differently, of course, saying that "her goal was to limit growth in state spending to the rate of inflation plus population growth." This concept has been tried and failed in other states, most notably in Colorado where its was enshrined in the state Constitution in 1992 and called the "Taxpayer Bill of Rights" or TABOR. For nearly two decades, it has so wrecked Colorado's economy that lawmakers and citizens there initiated efforts to take it back out of their Constitution.

In fact, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities uses Colorado as the model of what not to do to your state's economy with hare-brained Libertarian notions:

TABOR, a state constitutional amendment adopted in 1992 in Colorado, limits the growth of state and local revenues to a highly restrictive formula: inflation plus the annual change in population. This formula falls far short of being able to fund the ongoing cost of government. At a time when health care costs are growing much faster than inflation and the population is aging, TABOR’s inflation-plus-population formula forces annual reductions in the level of government services.

By creating what is essentially a permanent revenue shortage, TABOR pits state programs and services against each other for survival each year and virtually rules out any new initiatives to address unmet or emerging needs.

This is true even in good economic times. For example, from fiscal year (FY) 1997 through FY 2001, amidst a booming economy, Colorado refunded $3.25 billion in "excess" revenue to taxpayers as required by TABOR. (Whenever revenues for a given year exceed TABOR’s revenue limit, the extra amount must be returned to taxpayers.) Yet even as the state was giving up more than $3 billion in "excess" revenues, its services were deteriorating: average per-pupil funding for K-12 education was falling; several local public health clinics were forced to suspend prenatal services for low-income women because of insufficient program funding; and between April 2001 and October 2002 the state was forced to suspend its requirement that students be fully vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (whooping cough) because Colorado, unlike other states, could not afford to buy the vaccine.

Google "right-wing TABOR formula" and you'll find an assortment of other states that have had this silly and arbitrary straitjacket put on their economic growth.

This is, you know, another illustration that Haley's administration is little more than a third term for former Governor Mark Sanford; during her terms in the House, she "proposed a bill to limit the growth of the state budget every year to the rate of population growth in the state plus inflation, something Gov. Mark Sanford advocated."

The State also drew Sanford into its review of Haley's vetoes, and found this conclusion while searching for good news:

Haley issued 36 vetoes, a far cry from predecessor Mark Sanford who often issued more than 100 vetoes.

In Sanford's case, lawmakers made quick work of delivering override votes.

Haley's vetoes go to the House tomorrow, and I'm hopeful that that chamber can dispatch her handiwork as quickly as it handled Sanford's. A two-thirds vote is needed in the House, then the Senate, to clean up the damage.

Will Haley cut arts but pay for her party's primary?

Two considerations seem to rank very low in voters' minds when casting their ballots. One is that the president of the United States alone nominates candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court. Another is that in South Carolina, the governor has the line-item veto -- a gift included in the 1895 Constitution by another of South Carolina's corrupt old governors and senators, Pitchfork Ben Tillman.

Only after the U.S. president or the South Carolina governor have been ensconced in their respective offices does it dawn on many drowsy voters that their ballot decisions might have consequences beyond their intentions.

Some of our fellow citizens who bundled up to vote in last November's cold are facing the consequences of those decisions in searing June heat.

So reports The State:

Arts advocates fear Haley will veto $2.1 million for the state Arts Commission. In an attempt to rally legislators to override that veto, they have sent out a letter signed by leading Palmetto State artists, including author Pat Conroy and members of the Hootie and the Blowfish band.
...
“Why are the arts, of all things, considered fluff?” asked state poet laureate Marjorie Wentworth, adding, without the Arts Commission, many small towns could no longer support their arts programs. “Arts would only be available to the elite,” she said.

Wentworth said the arts are being targeted across the county. “It’s a political thing – it has nothing to do with money,” Wentworth said, noting South Carolina’s finances have improved significantly since lawmakers first started drafting a spending plan for the state’s fiscal year that starts July 1.

Wentworth did not indicate whether she supported Haley's candidacy for governor. As the state's poet-laureate-for-life, she did read a poem at Haley's inauguration. Biographical notes do not make clear whether she supported Haley:

Born in Lynn, Massachusetts and educated at Mt. Holyoke College and Oxford University, Wentworth receved her MA in English and creative writing from New York University. Wentworth was appointed Poet Laureate of South Carolina by Governor Mark Sanford in 2003.

But she is very close to former First Lady Jenny Sanford, one of the first public figures to endorse Haley.

I don't recall hearing Haley as a gubernatorial candidate talking about her position on funding for the arts. I also don't recall hearing Haley as a state representative advocating for arts funding during the years she served in the House, when arts funding was frequently subject to budget cuts proposed by former Governor Sanford, who appointed Wentworth to her lifelong post.

Certainly, I'm hopeful that a future South Carolina governor and legislature will establish support for the arts as a priority, alongside support for public education. But former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich may have greater chances of appealing his 17 convictions on corruption charges than public funding for the arts have to survive the Haley administration.

What's less clear in the anticipation of Haley's veto surprises is the future of the party-sponsored primary.

The State wonders:

She repeatedly asked lawmakers not to include any money for the 2012 Republican primary, expected to cost at least $1.5 million. With the state facing an $800 million budget shortfall at one point, Haley argued the state could not afford to host the party event.

(Unlike 2008, when they too held a much-watched S.C. primary, the cost of holding a primary is not an issue for Democrats. That’s because, with incumbent President Barack Obama unopposed, Democrats don’t plan a primary.)

Lawmakers removed money for the GOP primary that was included in early drafts of the budget, but the budget plan on Haley’s desk allows the S.C. Election Commission to spend $680,000 on the primary.

S.C. GOP chairman Connelly expects Haley to veto that budget reference to the primary.

“She’s got every right to veto anything she wants,” Connelly said, referring to Haley, who also is a Republican. “We respect that.”

But, he added, “We believe the process is in jeopardy. This isn’t about the money as much as it is about the legal issue.”

Connelly said changes to federal law mean the S.C. GOP can no longer use less-expensive paper ballots in its primary, as it has did before the state took over the primaries in 2008. Instead, S.C. GOP attorneys and others believe federal law requires the use of paid poll workers and the state’s electronic voting machines.

Connelly said he does not know if the party can contract with the State Election Commission to use its resources and oversight. The commission has asked new state Attorney General Alan Wilson, also a Republican, for an opinion about whether it can contract its services to the GOP, spokesman Chris Whitmire said.

But that is not the only issue that must be resolved, Whitmire said.

The budget that legislators passed does not compel the agency to assist with the primary; it only says it can use money left over from recent elections to do so. The Election Commission might need to use part of that $680,000 for its own operations, Whitmire said.

Which is not surprising. If the Elections Commission has suffered cuts as public schools have, it probably has holes in the roof to patch with those leftover funds.

“We have to make tough choices that won’t make everyone happy,” Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said in a statement, “but will keep us from ever ending up in this position again – that means we need to focus on core functions of government, and the presidential primary – which was until recently always paid for by the parties, not the taxpayer – simply doesn’t fall into that category.”

Connelly disagrees. Connelly said he was in contact with lawmakers about the issue during the legislative session.

But the two legislative budget chairmen, state Sen. Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, and state Rep. Dan Cooper, R-Anderson, say the S.C. GOP did not contact them about including money for the GOP primary in the state budget until the night before lawmakers reached a final spending agreement.

Katon Dawson, who was chairman of the S.C. GOP until May, said running a caucus is not an option. Dawson noted that all three candidates to succeed him as party chairman, including Connelly, promised they would find a way to pay for the primary.

“Raise the money and partner with the Election Commission,” Dawson said, when asked what the S.C. GOP should do. “They’re going to have to man up and get the thing done.”

Only a primary – not a caucus – will draw national attention to South Carolina, said Dawson, who recently quit as an adviser to former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s GOP presidential campaign, and Richard Quinn, a Columbia-based GOP operative who is advising former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s Republican presidential campaign.

“It would be the death of a tradition that began after Reagan,” Quinn said of ending the primary, which developed the reputation as “the place where presidents are chosen. It would be a tragedy,” Quinn said.