Budget crises swamp state after state

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Deficits in 48 of 50 states
Overall, 48 states faced real-time or projected funding shortages during this budget cycle, according to msnbc.com’s review of all 50 state budgets. The exceptions were Texas and North Dakota.

In an unrelentingly bleak report, the National Council of State Legislatures said potentially crippling shortages were likely to continue well into fiscal year 2011 as the nation slowly works its way out of a recession that began 17 months ago.

“The fiscal situation facing states is like a bad horror movie,” said Corina Eckl, the report’s author. “The details get more gruesome, and the story never seems to end.”

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The council said the only bright spot in many of those states was the federal stimulus program, without which “state finances would be even more dismal.” Which is what makes the budget battle in South Carolina especially striking.

Republican Gov. Mark Sanford last week vetoed most of the Legislature’s $5.7 billion budget measure because of his disagreement with lawmakers and the White House over how to spend $700 million in money from the stimulus package.

Sanford, who has contended that the stimulus will increase the national deficit and devalue the dollar, said he would be willing to accept that money only if he could use it to pay down state debt, but the federal government insisted that most of it be spent on education.

By overwhelming margins — 98-19 in the House on the main funding section of the budget — the Republican-led Legislature, in a campaign led by the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, overrode nearly all of Sanford’s vetoes.

In response, Sanford sued the Legislature in federal court, calling the overrides “an end-around maneuver” designed to force him to accept the first installment of $350 million in federal money.

All this has been going on while South Carolina suffers from the same problems as the rest of the states. According to the Rockefeller Institute of the state University of New York at Albany, which requested the figures from each of the states, South Carolina’s tax revenue fell 15 percent from January through March over the same period last year.

“This has been a crazy year,” said Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland.

Meanwhile, a new budget must be in place by July 1.

Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter, a member of both the Finance and Commerce committees, summarized South Carolina’s predicament very simply:

“We’re in a crisis,” he said.