Rex proposes higher cigarette tax as alternative to teacher furloughs
February 2, 2010
COLUMBIA, SC – February 1, 2010 – State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex today proposed a plan that would raise South Carolina’s lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax to the national average, improve health care, increase access to smoking prevention programs and help stop looming teacher furloughs – all at the same time.
“We’re in a budgetary crisis, with no end in sight and very few good options,” Rex said. “That means we’ve got to be a lot more creative and a lot more courageous.”
Speaking to a coalition of health care organizations, Rex said that addressing the state’s cigarette tax is long overdue.
“We’ve been dilly-dallying around with this issue for nearly a decade,” he said. “Today we have an opportunity to do the right thing for public school students and the right thing for health care in general.
“What I’m proposing would help keep kids from becoming addicted, decrease the numbers of adults who smoke, save health care dollars that are currently being spent to treat smoking-related illnesses ranging from heart disease to cancer, and also provide a revenue source that we badly need in this current crisis.”
Rex called for modifying cigarette tax legislation currently under consideration by the General Assembly that would increase the state cigarette tax from 7 cents per pack to 57 cents per pack. Rex’s proposal calls for an increase of $1.27 per pack, bringing the tax to the national average of $1.34.
Under the bill currently in the General Assembly, funds raised from the 50-cent increase would go to health care and smoking prevention programs, and Rex’s plan would do nothing to change that. But the additional revenues created by going to the national average would be used to keep teachers in the classroom instead of the five-day furlough currently being debated.
In the long term, Rex said, all revenues from the increased tax would go to health care. But in the short term, the additional revenues could forestall mandatory teacher furloughs being considered by the General Assembly as a cost-saving measure.
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids estimates that raising the tax by 50 cents would bring in more than $123 million in revenues. Rex said that his proposal should bring in at least twice that amount, more than enough to offset the $100 million that would be saved from requiring teachers to take a week of unpaid leave.
Rex discussed his proposal today with representatives of the American Heart Association, American Lung Association, American Cancer Society, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the South Carolina Hospital Association. Those organizations have been working for years to raise the cigarette tax.
“Keeping our commitment to public education must be one of our top considerations,” Rex said. “Our teachers aren’t well paid, and ordering them to take a week’s pay cut at this critical time in our education reform movement would stall our progress, as well as hurt our students.”
Rex said the long-term solution is comprehensive tax and funding reform, which has been a centerpiece of his term as State Superintendent of Education. Last year the State Superintendent proposed a package of recommendations he dubbed Begin in 10 because 2010 would mark a transitional step toward a new foundation program to replace the state’s 30-year-old Education Finance Act. The recommendations were distilled from the work of two task forces appointed by Rex – one that focused on improving the school funding system and one that focused on changing how the state raises resources to meet its priorities, including education.
We can’t cut our way to success,” he said. “The only road is through reform, and that’s why I will continue to urge our legislators to embrace a radical overhaul of the way we raise revenue for our state’s most essential needs.”
