The S.C. House will not have to tighten the belt on state spending quite so much when legislators begin debating the budget next week. Congress is poised to approve $200 million more in state aid, which would reverse some proposed cuts in the $5.1 billion budget plan. And state revenues - which have been in free fall for two years - are stabilizing.
South Carolina's probation and parole department would have to shutter offices in 10 counties and reduce supervision of thousands of criminals if state lawmakers slice more money from the agency's budget, authorities said.
Columbia attorney Leighton Lord, who is seeking the Republican nomination for attorney general, has officially launched his campaign with a new television ad. Lord is the first attorney general candidate to produce a TV ad, which touts his legal experience in both the public and private sectors.
MAULDIN, N.C. — Beverly Brewer, mother of a disabled adult son, laid out a crisis situation before state lawmakers at a town hall meeting in Mauldin Tuesday night. A budget proposal by the House Ways and Means Committee to cut $47 million from the state Department of Disabilities and Special Needs had Brewer and others who care for disabled loved ones predicting dire consequences for the state's most vulnerable.
Both political parties are taking tea party activists seriously and are wary of offending them – if they are not already actively wooing them for state races this fall. Just look at the governor’s election in Ohio. Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich openly touts his tea party credentials in his bid to defeat incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland. “I think I was in the tea party before there was a tea party,” Kasich famously told a Columbus crowd earlier this year. “This is a real movement with a real message about people’s frustrations by broken promises that leaders on both sides of the aisle would be foolish to ignore,” he went on to write in a blog posting.
