Remember Nikki Haley? The Mark Sanford acolyte that cobbled together a victory in a rather intense primary who then went on to almost lose to State Senator Vincent Sheheen last November in South Carolina? Yes, she was supposedly the next great hope for Republicans and their desperate hope that they can somehow become a big tent again. She was touted as the Palin-endorsed candidate who could bring new order to the state and finally shove Mark Sanford's slash-and-burn agenda down the throats of a surprisingly pragmatic state legislature. This week she got served a big piece of humble pie when the GOP-run state legislature rebuked most of her supposed mandate.
Nikki Haley's vetoes were nothing short of devious. Her biggest target was South Carolina's already tenuous education system.
Key line is here:
Gov. Nikki Haley vetoed $213 million in proposed state spending Tuesday, including $76 million for K-12 education and $12.4 million to buy new school buses.
In particular, she wished to kill the State Arts Commission and privatize the public-access ETV, a public channel dedicated to education. Nikki Haley also said that the veto on spending for new buses was because the state was supposedly taking bids to privatize the school bus system as well, even though such a thing would take years.
Also, remember the hullaballo over Boeing trying to move the production of their upcoming 787 Dreamliner jet from Washington state to South Carolina to escape union ire? Well, she apparently doesn't care if her populace is unprepared to actually build it. In her list of vetoes, she kills funding for technical training in addition to other investments.
The governor also vetoed $107 million in spending from a separate state reserve fund, including $10 million for economic development, $5.5 million for tourism advertising, $38 million for maintenance at state colleges, and $13 million for the state’s technical schools to train workers for Boeing’s new North Charleston aircraft plant.
And shortly afterwards, the legislature met again and rapidly overrode most of her vetoes. They key restorations included:
Lawmakers voted to spend a $107 million reserve account on economic development, tourism advertising, job training and maintenance.
They also restored $76 million in spending for K-12 education; voted to allow the State Election Commission to operate and help pay for the 2012 Republican presidential primary; and preserved the state Arts Commission’s $1.9 million budget.
They did not, however, undo all of the cuts. When all was said in done, only $507,000 in cuts remained (way down from Haley's proposed $213,000,000 in cuts) with most of that coming from education. This is, however, still a definite win for public education as the legislature understood that slash-and-burn would only dig their economic hole deeper and likely put South Carolina as 50th in the nation in everything.
You gotta give props to Nikki Haley, though. She is probably the only Republican governor who is a lame duck despite having a Republican state legislature. Kinda like how it was under the hypocritical Mark Sanford.