General Assembly adjourned, sine die
By Bobby Harrell, Speaker of the S.C. House of Representatives
Photo by Jim Covington

Mitch Dorman, S.C. Sargeant of Arms; Patsy Knight, first term House of Representatives members; and Bakar Sellers, senior law student and first term House member relax the last day of the General Assembly.

The House of Representatives adjourned "Sine Die" June 7 at precisely 5.

Sine Die is a Latin phrase we use in the General Assembly to mark the end of our legislative session. It literally means "without day" because we are out of legislative session days. But this year it also means we adjourn with a continuing resolution instead of a budget because key legislative issues our state desperately needs were held up and did not pass.

For years now, in order to get the Senate to come to the table and agree on important issues our state needs, the House has been forced to take a strong stance when it comes to passing our state budget

That is how the LIFE and Palmetto Fellows Scholarships became law. The House had to take the bold position of refusing to adopt the state budget in order to pass this measure that has helped thousands of South Carolina students attend and graduate from college.

Last year's monumental property tax relief became a reality for homeowners only after members of the House budget conference committee told Senators there would be no budget unless we came to a compromise on property tax relief.

This year the House was again forced to walk away from budget talks so our state's citizens would have a possibility of benefiting from some much needed legislation.

Unfortunately, this year the Senate's strong unwillingness to bring accountability to a government agency that has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars, return a significant amount of a $1.7 billion surplus back to the taxpayers by cutting taxes, and bring reform to a Workers' Compensation system that is choking our state's businesses has brought us to a budget impasse our state has rarely faced before.

The opportunity to better our state by passing these key issues has come and has passed.

Our state's Department of Transportation agency has been left broken, taxpayers have been robbed of almost $200 million in tax relief, and our state's businesses have been left with an overbearing Workers' Compensation system that is holding back economic growth and job creation.

We have been left in a situation that could have been easily avoided.

But because of the lack of action on these issues by the Senate, we will be now operating under a continuing resolution instead of a new state budget.

So what does that mean?

It simply means state government will continue to operate under the same budget we adopted last year.

And it is imperative we point out that government will not shut down under this resolution.

Police officers will still patrol your streets, teachers will still be there to open our schools in the fall, government benefits will still be available, and state employees will still have their paychecks delivered. Government will continue to operate.

Actually, this could be very good for our state, and marks a turning point in our state's budget process. If we stay under this continuing resolution and do not adopt a budget in two weeks - the House and Senate have passed a special resolution allowing us to return for a special 3- day session to try one last time to work out these differences - a vast majority of this year's surplus will go unspent.

We will have effectively limited the growth of government and will have saved taxpayers over a billion dollars. Then in January, lawmakers will return to Columbia for session with over a billion dollars in surplus funds that will have been earning interest during the seven-month break.

However, these issues of reform and tax relief are extremely important for our state and I believe we should continue our push for them when the General Assembly meets again in two weeks.

The House passed DOT reform and the budget back in March, and this is the third year in a row the House has taken up and passed Workers' Comp reform. The Senate had more than enough time to study and work on these important issues. We should not let the people of our state suffer because of the inability to act.

The House and the people of our state know the importance of getting this work done this year, I hope a substantive compromise can be reached with the Senate.

That way, we may be adjourned "without day," but we will not be adjourned without progress.