HARRELL SAYS BUDGET CUTS WILL HURT GENERAL ASSEMBLY MOST

South Carolina House Speaker Bobby Harrell has a message for the bureaucrats in state government: The General Assembly is bearing the brunt of your waste.

“The members of the House and Senate believe that we must lead by example and are cutting our budgets more deeply than the rest of government is being cut,” Harrell said Thursday after announcing that the Board of Economic Advisors’ reduced revenue forecasts of 6 percent coupled with the General Assembly’s 14 percent targeted budget cuts would result in more than a 20 percent budget cut for the state legislature.

Harrell noted that most state agencies receive other sources of revenue such as federal funds, grants and collection of fees, while the House and Senate operate solely from state funds.

That means when the legislature chops 20 percent of the state funding from the budget, they’re hit by a 20 percent reduction in overall funding. Not so for state government.

And that means the General Assembly is much more hard-pressed to compensate for the losses.

“To make up for the 20 percent cut to our budget, we are employing a number of cost-saving measures,” Harrell said. “Even before the cuts, the House’s operations were very efficient and cost effective with little waste to cut.

“But in addressing these cuts, no cost-saving measures are off the table and we are exploring all options.”

The speaker specifically mentioned more than a half-dozen possibilities, ranging from furloughing employees to enacting a hiring freeze to reducing employee pay by 2 percent.