Unlike in sports, sometimes in the field of politics, a tie is as good as a win. On Wednesday afternoon as the House jumped to the task of working on Governor’s Sanford’s 47 vetoes to the state budget, one of the more interesting votes occurred on the item of the prohibition on the Highway Patrol recouping costs from game day traffic control, which is part of the nearly one million dollars it costs the Highway Patrol to provide traffic enforcement for special events around the state. Anderson County Representative Dan Cooper spoke in favor of overriding the Governor’s veto. “This has been in there for quite sometime. We view this as a public safety issue. When there is a lot of traffic for various events be it Clemson or Carolina football games or Darlington Raceway. As Mr. (Marlboro County Representative Doug) Jennings just told me, NASCAR had to start making some payments for traffic control at Darlington. We might just lose the only race we still got down there so I ask you to Override this veto.”
Richland County Representative Nathan Ballentine sided with the Governor.”I”m a big Gamecock fan and we got several tiger fans and there are several other sporting events out there. Can’t these universities cover this? Let them pay instead of using state tax dollars. think of all the people. we represent four million people. we don’t have four million people who need this service. the people at the ball games and other events might. I simply ask that we sustain this (veto).
in the end the vote was so close it nearly confused House Speaker Bobby Harrell who announced the final vote tally. “By a vote of 58-58 the House sustains, excuse me; yes, the House sustains the veto.”
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
