Senate budget committee begins work on spending plans

By JIM DAVENPORT
Associated Press Writer

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Senate budget writers scrapped plans for college tuition caps Tuesday as they began debating the state's $6.3 billion budget and related spending bills.

The House had limited tuition increases to no more than $250 more than the higher education price index, a college cost benchmark.

But Senate Finance Committee members derided that as micromanaging colleges.

"Let's let the university presidents and boards run these universities," said Sen. John Drummond, D-Ninety Six.

But soaring college tuition has been a sore point for parents and some legislators. Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Bonneau, said the increases are putting state-funded schools out of reach. "We want South Carolinians to attend these universities," he said.

Gov. Mark Sanford also had called for a cap in his executive budget.

Two weeks ago, a coalition of student leaders gathered Wednesday at the Statehouse to urge lawmakers to let boards keep their power to set tuition.

Kely Sheldon, chairman of the South Carolina State Student Association and a Clemson University student, said that with the General Assembly cutting higher education spending in recent years, a tuition cap amounted to an "education cap."

Also on Tuesday, the panel slashed Attorney General Henry McMaster's $2.2 million plan to add criminal domestic violence prosecutors to cases handled in magistrate courts statewide.

McMaster had fought in the House to earmark money for the new program because suspects in domestic violence cases rarely face prosecutors in magistrate courts.

However, the Senate Finance Committee would only go along with a $550,000 pilot program using four prosecutor offices around the state. The move surprised McMaster, who thought the program was well received by the subcommittee that heard him testify recently, said Trey Walker, McMaster's spokesman.

"It's a waste of taxpayers' money to fund a pilot project," Walker said. "We've already had one called the attorney general's pro bono project. It's demonstrated that prosecutors in magistrate courts work."

Volunteer lawyers have been helping prosecute cases for two years and handled more than 1,500 cases, raising the conviction rate in magistrate courts from 30 percent to well over 70 percent, Walker said.