While Gov. Nikki Haley touted big plans for K-12 education across the state, South Carolina’s public colleges and universities went unmentioned in her 2014 State of the State address Wednesday night.
Less than 12 hours earlier, USC President Harris Pastides asked Haley and the state government for an increase in public funding in order to freeze tuition rates and make higher education more accessible.
State Rep. James Smith, who represents the district in which USC lies, delivered the South Carolina Democratic Party’s response to Haley’s address. He later said that omission indicated that higher education was not on the governor’s list of priorities.
“What she clearly does not understand is what the value of higher education means to our economy,” Smith said. “The fact that it is missing from her speech shows she’s clearly not interested.”
It was the second consecutive year that higher education was absent from the State of the State address. But also for the second year in the row, Haley celebrated South Carolina’s economic successes, pledged to keep gas taxes low and make income taxes lower and called for reform of the state’s K-12 school systems.
But she began the policy-oriented portion of her speech by praising the passage of a bill that will create a state department of administration and eliminate the state Budget and Control Board. That board, which currently oversees state agencies’ spending, almost caused a delay in the start of the year-long Women’s Quad renovation project last spring. Haley was glad to see the board go, calling it the “big, green, ugly monster.”
Haley said she sees more construction projects on the horizon for South Carolina. The governor called for more infrastructure improvements statewide while promising that the funds would not come from an increase in gas taxes, as some have proposed in the past.
“South Carolinians are about to see orange cones popping up all across our state. It’s a beautiful thing,” Haley said. “You might ask the question, ‘How do we pay for it?’ And my answer will be, ‘Not by hiking taxes.’”
Haley said she would veto any bill raising taxes on fuel. The pledge was met with strong applause.
Haley also called for the elimination of the 6 percent individual income tax bracket, citing a recent income tax reduction in North Carolina. That would save some taxpayers $29 per year.
The governor dedicated a significant portion of her speech to the disparities in K-12 education and classroom resources across South Carolina. She juxtaposed her daughter’s high school — Lexington’s newly built River Bluff High School, which is equipped with 72-inch televisions in every classroom — and her former high school in Bamberg, which did not have video equipment during a recent visit by Haley, as examples of the drastic discrepancies.
Some South Carolina schools do not even have Internet. Haley said this would be remedied with new wiring accompanied by up-to-date technological tools. She also pledged support for increased literacy, calling for a reading coach in every elementary school to ensure that “no child leaves the third grade unable to read.”
The third grade is a critical point for child literacy, Haley said, because “children who cannot read proficiently by the end of the third grade are four times more likely to not graduate high school on time.”