Governor OKs $19M for school bus fuel

COLUMBIA — Gov. Mark Sanford signed a bill Wednesday intended to set aside about $19 million to fuel school buses next spring, but a slowing economy and rising costs could leave that effort a little short.

The legislation, passed last week, sets aside the school bus fuel money and $3 million to run the state's elections in November. Both were shortchanged in the fiscal 2009 budget, which took effect Monday.

Sanford used the bill signing as an opportunity to again blast the Legislature about its spending practices that he says have ignored his repeated warnings that a weaker economy would set in.

Had legislators sustained even half of his $72 million in budget vetoes last month, special funding for buses and elections wouldn't be needed, Sanford wrote in a letter to House Speaker Bobby Harrell, a fellow Republican.

"Vetoing this bill will do nothing but put our school bus operations at further risk and further exacerbate current failures of the Legislature to provide for the critical functions of government — and as a result, I will sign this legislation," Sanford said in the letter.

The bill doesn't assure there will be enough money to keep buses rolling through the end of the 2009 school year.

At current fuel prices, the state would be about $2 million short, said John Cooley, who is in charge of budgeting at the state Education Department.

Meanwhile, legislators also have planned to use $20.8 million from a reserve fund to fuel and maintain buses. But Sanford and others expect slowing tax collections will evaporate that reserve.

The Education Department likely will ask the state's top financial officers for approval to use $10.7 million set aside to buy new school buses to instead pay to fuel the existing the fleet, Cooley said. After that, the bus fleet still might be up to $12 million short of what it needs to stay on the road.

The money is a big help, though, Cooley said. Without the bill and the other sources of money, the state would have been as much as $50 million short. Legislators put only about $28 million into Education Department's basic budget to fuel and maintain the nation's only state-run bus fleet.

Cooley's projections also are based on current diesel fuel prices of $4.08 a gallon, a bargain because the Education Department doesn't pay state or federal fuel taxes.