SC Senators Override School Bus Fuel Money Veto And Others

The South Carolina Senate on Tuesday overrode most of the vetoes that the House had already overridden two weeks ago. One of the vetoes would have cut $900,000 from the school bus fuel and parts budget.

"I'd move to override. This affects the school buses throughout the state," said York County Republican Sen. Wes Hayes.

The Senate initially sided with the governor and sustained the veto. But then, after going through some of the other vetoes, senators reconsidered and took another vote. This time, they overrode the governor by a vote of 29 to 14.

State Department of Education spokesman Jim Foster says, "$900,000 represents less than three days of operations, fuel and parts, so it's a good thing that we got it, but we're a long way from where we need to be."

He says the entire budget for fuel and parts for the school bus fleet has been cut from $70.1 million this year to $56.6 million for the next budget year, which starts July 1. Because of that cut, the department says it won't have the money to run the buses for all 180 school days for the upcoming year.

There's no way to know how long the budget will last, he says, because it'll depend on the cost of fuel and how much money the department has left at the end of this year that it's being allowed to carry forward to next year.

But he says parents don't need to worry about their children not having school buses for part of next year.

"If we were to run a deficit, we would go to the General Assembly and we're confident that they would either: a) give us permission to run a deficit; or b) give us an emergency appropriation. We don't think the General Assembly is going to allow the buses to stop running."

The House upheld 51 of Sanford's 107 vetoes two weeks ago. That cut $48 million from the nearly $5 billion state spending plan. Items cut include university research and funding for the agency that runs much of the state's bureacracy.

Senators also overrode vetoes that would have:

--cut state film incentives. The Lifetime cable series "Army Wives" is filmed in Charleston and star Catherine Bell visited the Statehouse May 11th to lobby lawmakers, telling them the series would have to move production to another state without the incentives.

--cut money for software and technology updates at the state's Career and Technology Centers. They're currently operating with computers and software that are years outdated, hurting students' ability to get meaningful training.

--cut $500,000 for firefighters at the state Forestry Commission.

--cut $1.17 million for local county libraries.

--cut $100,000, which will be matched by $369,000 in federal money, for the Commission for the Blind.

--cut $2.6 million for Clemson PSA and $500,000 for SC State PSA.