Erickson: State budget is a 'big, glaring, 800-pound gorilla'
The $7 billion proposed budget calls for 2.5 percent cuts to almost all state agencies.
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Budget reviews at the committee level in the Statehouse begin today, and Rep. Shannon Erickson, R-Beaufort, said she isn't looking forward to it.
"The big, glaring, 800-pound gorilla staring us in the face is the budget," the freshman legislator said at a meeting Monday of the Beaufort County Council’s Legislative Affairs Committee. "I feel like we need Solomon. … I wish I had more money to spread around."
The House Ways and Means Committee, which Erickson is not a member of, will review the budget this week, and it will go out on the House floor next week.
The $7 billion proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning in July calls for 2.5 percent cuts to almost all state agencies. The stagnating economy has led to stagnating state revenue, necessitating the cuts.
That budget outlook colors almost everything the legislature does, Erickson said.
For example, Erickson said she is OK with earmarking revenue from a proposed cigarette tax hike to medical costs, such that the need for the programs it funds would decrease as demand for cigarettes decreases. She said she is open to other proposals, barring other budget issues.
"Funny how it all keeps coming right back to that," Erickson said. "This year is going to make people tighten their belts, and I think that's a good thing."
Erickson discussed several other issues in addition to the budget, at the prodding of the committee and other local officials.
On efforts to create state laws aimed at illegal immigration, County Councilman Steve Baer, who represents mid-island Hilton Head, said many of his constituents take issue with a law that precludes local governments from enacting their own illegal immigration ordinances.
If the state law passed, it could force a roll back of the County Council's controversial Lawful Employment Ordinance, which lets county officials revoke the licenses of businesses that are located or operate in unincorporated Beaufort County and discovered with illegal workers. Mass business audits tied to the ordinance are expected to begin this month.
Erickson acknowledged Baer's concern and said the bills are only "a first stab at a huge issue" that will continue to be studied and revised.
Local officials also reiterated their opposition to the legislature's property tax reforms that it passed in 2006 — before Erickson took office. The reforms cap local governments' tax increases to the percentage of population growth and inflation. The reforms also replaced owner-occupied homeowners' school property taxes with a 1 percent sales tax.
Last year, Hilton Head Island deputy town manager Chuck Hoelle cast the property tax reform as an attack on home rule. He reiterated that position Monday, calling it "the worst thing ever."
Erickson said local leaders have hammered that point into her, and that she repeatedly voices those concerns in Columbia.
County Councilman Stu Rodman suggested a compromise would be to give local councils the ability to override the state tax cap with the vote of a supermajority, a proposal that's already in the mix, Erickson said.