Today, Friday, September 3, is the annual deadline for cabinet agencies to present the governor’s office with budget funding proposals for the following fiscal year, which begins in July 2011.

This year, at least two of those agencies, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the Department of Social Services (DSS), won’t make that deadline because of funding uncertainties, which may soon lead to major shortfalls, according to several state officials.

DHHS oversees Medicaid, and DSS protects vulnerable children and adults while also overseeing the food stamps program.

Health and Human Services could have a 2010-11 deficit of $200 million, agency spokesman Jeff Stensland told Statehouse Report Thursday. He said the number would have been higher if the state had not received a much-anticipated one-time infusion of $127 million in federal matching health care money. DHHS executive director Emma Forkner has been warning the legislature for more than a year that her agency was facing a “nightmare scenario.”

Further rubbing salt into the state’s budget woes, a deficit for DSS could hit $50 million, according to what House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper (R-Piedmont) said he had heard this week from state officials.

Les Boles, director of the state Office of State Budget, confirmed this morning that DHHS’ potential deficit may be in the $200 million “ballpark,” but that he was not sure what DSS’s numbers might look like.

DSS director Kathleen Hayes said her agency wouldn’t know until the next fiscal quarter whether her agency would be operating at a deficit, but if it is, she said she would inform the public immediately.

Hayes said her agency had a $15 million-plus deficit in January of this year, but working with the governor’s office, was able to do away with it before the fiscal year ran out.

There are currently no plans for the legislature to return before the session is scheduled to begin in January, according to several sources.

Cooper also said his office had not yet begun work on a supplemental funding bill for the legislature to tackle in the early weeks of the new session, “because none of the agencies have told us the actual numbers.”

What’s behind it all

There are several factors compounding the budget crisis in both agencies. The two biggest factors appear to be federal policy and the recession.

Earlier this year, Sanford vetoed a line item in one part of the DHHS state budget because it relied on $214 million in federal matching health care funds in a bill Congress had yet to pass. The legislature agreed with the governor -- that including that amount was premature -- and sustained the veto.

Recently, Congress passed a bill that would supply additional federal matching health care funds, but at a significantly lower level – approximately $127 million total.  Sanford, who opposed the first round of federal stimulus money for ideological reasons, announced this week he would write a letter seeking the money.

DSS has found itself in a similar funding lurch, according to Hayes, as it has been waiting find out whether Congress would tackle extending benefits for what had been the nation’s food stamps program before or after the November elections.

Not surprisingly, the national and state recessions have added an additional level of difficulty, as both agencies have seen a massive increase in demand for their services as families have lost jobs and health care coverage, but at the same time the funding sources for their mandated services have been cut.

Politics also a factor?

And a third factor, politics, may be playing a role, too.

A knowledgeable source in state government confirmed there has been an informal effort from the governor’s office to quell the release of some of the information regarding the shortfalls and possible deficits.

Several attempts to elicit comment from Sanford’s office were not returned.

If the governor’s office has done so, it could put the agencies in a precarious position, officials agreed. If agencies allow themselves to be pressured into underreporting their fiscal problems, they could face harsh criticism under the next governor’s tenure. But if they don’t play ball, Sanford’s cabinet leaders could then inadvertently give him more fiscal black eyes.

For the past two years, the state’s unemployment office took on a heavy load of criticism for not informing the legislature and the public about the true magnitude of its looming shortfall, which has taken hundreds of millions in federal loans to rectify.

State Rep. Tracy Edge (R-N. Myrtle Beach). who chairs the House subcommittee that crafts the DHHS budget, said he didn’t trust DHHS director Forkner’s numbers, especially after he claimed she underreported the growth in DHHS over the past two years at legislative hearings.

Edge said he believed Forkner did so at the direction of her cabinet boss, the governor.  Forkner was not available for comment.

Neither Hayes at DSS nor Stensland at DHHS would confirm their agencies had been approached in such a manner by any member of the Sanford administration.

Stensland did say Forkner and the agency were committed to working closely with the legislature and its stakeholders to ensure the agency makes it through this trying time.

Hayes added she worried the funding problems would negatively impact South Carolina’s struggling families and the work her agency is doing to shore them up.

Crystal ball:  Whoever is governor next, state Sen. Vincent Sheheen (D-Kershaw) or the front-runner Rep. Nikki Haley (R-Lexington), will have a mess on their hands. If a society or a state is judged by how it handles its most vulnerable citizens, then Sheheen or Haley may start off the new year with a real bang. Sheheen said he would make tough decisions next year if he inherited deficits. Haley’s campaign did not return calls for comment. Then again, maybe nobody has an answer. Yet.

8/27:  Looking for ways out of education backwater

8/20:  Schools struggle for success

8/13:  Health funding crisis looms

8/6:  Getting education's finances in order

The final scheduled meeting of the Taxation Realignment Commission will be held Friday in 105 Gressette at 10 a.m.  More.

For years, the Department of Corrections has been in the crosshairs of several influential members of the legislature.

Some have bristled at the political style of Corrections director Jon Ozmint. Others have extended their animus at Sanford to his political ally, Ozmint. Other legislators have raged that Corrections has routinely run a deficit, while sitting comfortably within Sanford’s purview.

Don’t look for that ill will to end, as word out of Columbia this week was that Corrections’ deficit may have increased over the last year. An exasperated Ways and Means chairman Dan Cooper (R-Piedmont) said he’d heard the Corrections deficit has grown an additional $5 million. If Cooper’s right, the department’s recurring deficit now is about $35 million.

On Thursday, the 10-person Taxation Realignment Commission voted unanimously to recommend that the state legislature increase the state’s gas tax from 16 cents per-gallon to 21 cents.   The money raised from the increase, approximately $150 million a year, would go to repair and improve the state’s transportation infrastructure.

One Republican legislator, speaking on anonymity, said the proposal had little chance, as history has shown him that South Carolinians are against raising any tax “even when it’s clearly in the best interest of the voter.”

The commission continued work on other portions of its recommendations, which the legislature would have to approve before they were instituted singularly or wholly. Criticism, as expected, has cropped up as the process has moved forward. This week the voiced concern was over reconsideration of exemptions related to  food, power and water.

Yes, plantation.

You see, the potter was named Dave. He was a slave in Edgefield County. 

During his life and well into present day, he’s become pretty famous for pots, particularly those with short verses of his poetry etched in the side.

Dave’s story, made famous a dozen years back at a major show of his work at the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, is back in the limelight thanks to a delightful new children’s book by award-winning Tennessee-born writer Laban Carrick Hill. “Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave,” published this week by Little, Brown and Company ($16.99), is in stores and available online.

“Every time I look at Dave’s poems, the deeper they become and the more affected I am by them emotionally, psychologically and intellectually,” Hill said in a telephone interview from his Vermont home. “I think he’s an important poet and I don’t think people realize it yet.”

Two of the greatest poets of the 19^th century, he pointed out, weren’t traditionally published. Walt Whitman’s first book of poetry, Hill said, was self-published in a phrenologist’s office. Emily Dickinson didn’t publish at all during her lifetime. 

Dave used the outside of his pots to publish small verses, such as this couplet from 1857: “I wonder where is all my relation | friendship to all – and, every nation.” 

Hill observed, “This could have been a reference to the loss of his family” during slave migrations from places like Edgefield County to the Mississippi Delta. 

In Dave’s lifetime of making storage pots, only about two dozen remain with verses on the side. Today, some of his pots are quite valuable with one recently selling for more than $40,000.

Jill Koverman, curator of collections at the McKissick Museum, said she was able to connect dots when working on the Dave exhibition years back to confirm that Dave the potter was named “David Drake,” according to the 1870 census. He was believed to have died during that decade as there was no mention of him in the 1880 count.

“To be a master potter within the framework of slavery is an achievement,” Koverman said, noting that Dave the potter was recognized routinely during his lifetime as an outstanding craftsman by peers and those “above him socially.  He was written about in the newspaper quite often.”

She said most people don’t think of slaves as anything more than field hands or house workers. But there were many craftsmen, brick masons and builders. What’s amazing about Dave the potter is “he had the audacity to sign his name on his pots. He left a clear record of his work.”

Koverman said Hill’s book, beautifully illustrated by highly-successful artist Bryan Collier, encourages youngsters to learn about history, art and culture. “What is nice is you have this visual connection – this smaller book – that looks at Dave’s story in different ways. “

Hill said the story of Dave still inspires him.

“He reminds me to continue to do what I care about and just hope and assume other people will find it of interest,” Hill reflected. “The books that have done the best are the books I’ve written because a deep need,” much like Dave needed to carve verses on the side of pots.

In the end, though, Hill’s book is a story for children about making pots.

“There are all sorts of exciting things that can come from the story,” he said. “Also, the poem in the book is a poem about how to make a pot.  They can learn something there.

“In a picture book, it’s the pictures, the emotion experience – the visceral experience of the book and story. That’s what’s primary. And it’s about making a pot. It’s as simple as that. That’s what Dave did.”

By Victoria Middleton
Executive Director, ACLU-SC
Special to Statehouse Report

SEPT. 3, 2010 -- The country in economic turmoil, coming off a war footing. Raids and deportations of immigrants. Women seeking greater participation in political life. Government repression of free speech. Attempts to curb sex education for young people. A justice system skewed against people of color.

The year was 1920. The French saying, “plus ça change…” comes to mind. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

When the ACLU was founded 90 years ago, our society resembled a police state. Raids and mass deportations of immigrants (mainly southern and eastern Europeans, though German and Irish immigrants were suspect as well) were conducted in the name of national security. Women were going to jail for fighting for the right to vote. Government repression of free speech was unbridled. (Upton Sinclair was arrested in 1923 for reading aloud the First amendment to protest a police crackdown.) Pioneers of sex education for young people were being prosecuted. There was wholesale denial of justice to black Americans.

From the Red Scare following WWI to the ‘War on Terror,’ the ACLU has defended our constitutional rights against government and populist majority repression. For 90 years, we have protected values enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, with a mission that one could honestly call conservative. (Remember, our plaintiffs have included Rush Limbaugh and Oliver North). The span includes tremendous victories for civil liberties, but that progress is far from secure.

Today, “not in my town” and “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” attitudes claim different victims than in 1920, but our defense of freedom of religion and belief, free speech, and the right to equal protection and due process rests on the same premise: that once the government has the power to violate one person’s rights, it can use that power against everyone.

Our ACLU-NY colleagues, who suffered firsthand through 9/11, are speaking out on the controversy about the proposed new Islamic community center, defending the right of all religious denominations — whether majority or marginalized faiths — to establish places of worship, and for Americans to pray, or not, as they choose. We can’t practice freedom of religion (or freedom from religion) with the caveat “not in my backyard.”

Real immigration reform has stalled at the federal level, while anti-immigrant prejudice is rampant and increasingly localized. Unconstitutional and divisive anti-immigrant measures such as the Summerville ordinance against ‘illegal aliens’ and S.1446, the AZ copycat measure that would turn South Carolina police into immigration agents, are proliferating.

There are renewed efforts in the Statehouse and in South Carolina schools to chip away at women’s right to make personal decisions about their reproductive health and to restrict how health educators may teach kids to make responsible decisions about sexuality.

Sex discrimination extends to LGBT relationships, too. Efforts are likely to resurface in the State legislature to deny protections to people in abusive relationships that are not heterosexual, or to limit the rights of same-sex partners.

School discipline has become a criminal matter, with minor misbehavior too often resulting in admission to South Carolina’s Department of Juvenile Justice. The social and economic cost of locking up children rather than turning them into productive adults is huge. The recently passed sentencing reform law could help remedy the crisis of over-incarceration in our state, a disproportionate share in of which is borne by minority youth and adults. But changing the organizational culture of law enforcement agencies from ‘tough on crime’ to ‘smart on crime,’ from punishment to prevention and remediation, requires real political will. It also requires vigilance on the part of civil libertarians.

From a police state to a Big Brother society where government (and the private sector) watches, records and stores personal information about our every activity, America has as much need as ever for civil liberties watchdogs like us.

Going into our centennial decade, the ACLU will do our best to remind our political leaders that adherence to the Constitution is not optional. And that rights and civil liberties don’t belong just to a privileged (and noisy) few.

Victoria Middleton is executive director of the ACLU-SC, an underwriter of Statehouse Report. 

8/27: Frederick: Stock school plans are bad idea

8/20: E. Brack:  Worrying about society's direction

8/13: Frederick: Pass capital bond bill now

8/6: Campbell: Community collaborations

To Statehouse Report:

You do such a great job of clarifying the issues and making them comprehensible to the average reader (me.)  You are so right [Commentary, 8/27] that there’s a HUGE irony in us old farts grumbling at tea parties about our taxes when all our children are footing our bills.  It’s not we who need the discounts at businesses, but our children who are struggling to get their own kids fed and clothed.  Thanks for shedding some light on a subject where heat is generally all that’s generated.

And to think of Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers funding the tea party rallies is beyond irony.   Keep up the good work.

-- Dr. Bettie Rose Horne, Greenwood, SC 

You are all wet

To Statehouse Report:

Just a note to tell you your [sic] all wet!!!! Senior citizens have to pay taxes on most of their taxable incomes! My taxable income was $28,040.00 last year. On this tremendous income, I still had to pay $665.00 income tax. I also had to pay tax on $2,265.00 of SOCIAL SECURITY!!!!!!

I don’t know where you got your figures but it must have been a dream!! Please don’t send this stuff out to misinform your few readers unless you have your figures straight!

-- Name withheld, Charleston, SC

NOTE: While the writer didn’t want to mention his name, he apparently got angry about federal income taxes, which were not the point of the column. He admitted in a follow-up email that “My income is so small, I don’t pay state taxes” – exactly the point made in the column. Interestingly, the column's headline was:  "Get the facts before getting angry."

Medical supplies, equipment not exempted

To Statehouse Report:

You may be right about Medicare & Medicaid prescription drugs BUT you are dead wrong about Medicare & Medicaid prescription home medical supplies and equipment.  The State of South Carolina is the ONLY State in the Nation that has not exempting the sales tax on these items.  Read the July 2010 article from the Myrtle Beach Sun News and then tell me why elderly citizens in South Carolina should not be angry.

-- Randy Sease, Columbia, SC

NOTE: The original column didn’t mention medical supplies and equipment.

Sanford. This latest version of the governor, the one who has been quietly effectively over the last nine months, said this week he’d swallow his ideological objections to accepting federal health care funds and write a letter to make sure the state got its share of Medicaid funds. More.