SC Legislature passes resolution to let state keep spending
Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years, 8 months AGO
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The South Carolina General Assembly finally passed a resolution Tuesday to allow state government to keep spending after the fiscal year ends as lawmakers try to get a handle on the damage to the economy done by the coronavirus.
The House passed a similar resolution April 8, but the Senate then passed its own proposal, changing some of the requirements put on state-owned utility Santee Cooper.
The proposal sets aside $175 million in money for emergency COVID-19 spending. That cash would go toward at least 1,000 contact tracers to find people who were in contact with an infected person and additional virus testing.
On Tuesday, the Senate agreed with the proposal despite a few senators who were concerned they should have taken more time to review the contact tracing portion.
Several of the House's more conservative Republicans also questioned hiring the people, saying they worried health workers voluntarily asking questions and encouraging people to get tested after being exposed to COVID-19 could intrude on civil liberties. Other House members from both parties said contact tracing has been done for other diseases for decades — like tuberculosis or AIDS.
It would also set aside $15 million to help with additional expenses to allow people to safely vote in the June 9 primary and $1.5 million to hire a private firm to help the state keep up with the $1.9 billion being sent from the federal government to fight the coronavirus.
Also on the agenda this week for the House and Senate is a resolution setting the parameters for a huge special session in September — hopefully when the pandemic has settled down — to write a new state budget.
The House passed a $10 billion budget before the pandemic began, but that was before the economy cratered. Economists estimate the state's planned $1.9 billion surplus in the budget year starting July 1 could be cut in half or worse.
The continuing resolution passed by the House would allow the state to keep spending at this year's budget levels even after the spending plan ends June 30.
___
Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at http//twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.
___
Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hong Kong police arrest 4 from university student union
HONG KONG (AP) — Four members of a Hong Kong university student union were arrested Wednesday for allegedly advocating terrorism by paying tribute to a person who stabbed a police officer and then killed himself, police said.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.