Riley's Plea To SC Mayors

March 13, 2009

Dear Governor Sanford and Members of the South Carolina General Assembly:

As you are well aware, we are facing an economic crisis in South Carolina as dark as we have seen in decades. Our state’s unemployment rate for January 2009, released this week, stood at 10.4%, second highest in the entire United States and the highest in nearly 26 years. Nearly 43,000 of our fellow South Carolinians lost their jobs in January, and all told, there were nearly 228,000 people without work in our state. There is no reason to believe those numbers have improved since January. In fact, our state’s Board of Economic Advisors has warned that the unemployment rate could rise to as high as 14% by summer.

The numbers are grim, but as mayors who lead South Carolina cities and towns, we see the human-scale impact of these statistics each and every day. We know the terrible cost of this economic downturn on our fellow citizens. Every day, we talk to people in our communities who have lost work to the latest layoff or downsizing, who struggle with impossible choices like buying either groceries or prescriptions for their children, or whether to pay the rising health insurance premium or this month’s rent or mortgage payment. The people represented in the unemployment statistics are not abstractions, they are our neighbors, and they are hurting.

To deal with this crisis, last month Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), designed to stabilize the economy and to preserve and create jobs, help the unemployed, invest in our nation’s infrastructure and stabilize state and local government budgets to avoid further layoffs and cuts in vital services.

This week, Governor Sanford sent the General Assembly a letter indicating that he will ask President Obama for a waiver from spending a substantial portion of the funds the way Congress intended, but rather to use it to retire state debt. If President Obama does not grant the waiver, Governor Sanford says he will reject bringing these badly needed funds to South Carolina, and the dollars that our citizens pay in taxes to the federal government will be sent to other states.

To reject this funding will mean drastic cuts in services to our citizens and be tragic to South Carolinians who badly need help in this time of crisis. We urge Governor Sanford to reconsider his position.

If Governor Sanford does not reconsider, we urge the General Assembly to override the Governor’s decision to reject the funds and apply them to help our state achieve the goals of the ARRA. This would include overriding the Governor’s position that he will reject funding for an extension of unemployment benefits to part-time workers who are searching for full-time work. The teachers, police officers, parole officers, firefighters and sanitation workers who serve in our communities and whose jobs are threatened by budget cuts deserve nothing less. The citizens in our communities who these wonderful employees serve should not have those services cut when the means exist to prevent it.

Furthermore, it is a matter of the highest urgency that our state government acts immediately to get the ARRA into our economy as fast as possible to help as many people as possible and to stop the downward economic spiral. Many states have appointed a “stimulus czar” or other official to help efficiently utilize the funds, ensure accountability for them and to maximize their state’s competitiveness when it comes to seeking discretionary funding for their states. We urge Governor Sanford to appoint an official whose job will be to challenge state agencies responsible for this funding to spend it as quickly and as wisely as possible so that it gets into the cities and towns and communities all across South Carolina and begins to relieve suffering caused by the economic distress.

As mayors, we know that people don’t eat in the long run, they eat every day. We are Republicans, Democrats and independents and our letter has little to do with our political ideology or whether we feel the stimulus package is good national public policy or not. We are writing as citizens of this great state, who as mayors, are focused on our towns and cities, but we speak for the needs of all South Carolinians, whether in our cities or not. The 228,000 South Carolinians who are out of work and the hundreds of thousands more whose jobs, homes and families are threatened by this economic crisis live in our communities, they are our neighbors, and they rightly expect leadership from us in this time of crisis. The ARRA provides our fellow citizens with the promise of jobs and relief from the pain of this terrible economic downturn. We urge you to seize the opportunity presented by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help reverse the downward spiral in our economy and to protect the vital services our state and local governments provide to our citizens.

Joseph P. Riley, Jr. O. L. “Buddy” Johnson, Jr.

Mayor, City of Charleston Mayor, Town of Little Mountain

Harold Thompson Kevin L. Johnson

Mayor, City of Union Mayor, City of Manning

Nancy G. Brigman Bobby Brock

Mayor, Town of Latta Mayor, Town of Blenheim

Thomas R. Rivers Keith Bailey

Mayor, Town of Williston Mayor, Town of Blythewood

Jeffrey Graham Minnie Blackwell

Mayor, City of Camden Mayor, City of Hanahan

Steve Carver Derek A. Hodgin

Mayor, Town of Wagener Mayor, City of Westminster