Few things are more taboo these days in polite company than lighting up a cancer stick, a coffin nail, a ciggy (and you can include the writer among those with the habit — hey, we love lung cancer and heart disease). Naturally, being that South Carolina has a low-income population and high health care costs, there has been a strong push for a raise in the nation’s lowest cigarette tax.

Last year, a tax bill failed because it increased the scope of the state’s Medicaid program, an idea that was a non-starter with Gov. Mark Sanford and among fiscal conservatives in the General Assembly.

In order to change that this year, Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell introduced a 50-cent per pack increase, which was designed not to increase government spending. On Tuesday, the bill was given approval and sent to the full House Ways and Means Committee. Since the bill is revenue neutral, it should not have a problem passing the General Assembly, and may well have a chance to get past Sanford’s fickle veto pen.

In a news release when he introduced the bill, Harrell said, “Our state’s cigarette tax, which is the lowest-in-the-nation, can be used to greatly reduce the number of uninsured people in our state. Our bill accomplishes this in a responsible manner that involves the private sector, not another expansion of government entitlements.”

As far as the Senate goes, Sen. Kevin Bryant, on “Senate Time” on Tuesday, expressed that he was in favor of some sort of new tax.

“As a pharmacist, I see problems from smoking every day,” he said. “In jest, I considered a bumper sticker, ‘Support your local pharmacist, keep smoking.’ Smokers are my best customers. They get sick all the time. Diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety. And I tell folks every day, ‘You quit smoking, you wouldn’t be coming into my store all the time. You wouldn’t have to spend your money on medication all the time. You wouldn’t be sick all the time.’ Folks get a little irritated, but it’s my responsibility as a health care provider to tell folks, ‘You’re doing this to yourself, and I really wish you would quit.’”

However, Bryant said he was more predisposed to the Governor’s proposal, which offsets a cigarette tax increase with a cut in state income taxes.

Another smoking bill, this one concerning a parent smoking in a car with a minor, was taken up on the Senate floor. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Darrell Jackson (and amended by Sens. Jackson and Jake Knotts), would make it an offense, similar to not wearing a seat belt ($25 fine). Because of a following spirited debate, the bill was carried over.

Thursday, Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell introduced a bill to up the cigarette tax in South Carolina 50 cents, to 57 cents a pack. Revenues from the tax would go to a “S.C. Healthy Families Insurance Trust Fund.” the fund would provide small businesses and lower income workers the ability to afford quality health insurance coverage.

“This plan will directly reduce the number of uninsured workers in our state,” Harrell said in a statement. “Providing obtainable access to private sector health care coverage will greatly increase the quality of life for those newly insured and create a better future for our state as a whole. Government can help provide solutions, but more government is not the answer to our problems.”

According to the plan, it would provide tax credits to individuals making 200 percent of the poverty line or less, and those credits would cover 75 percent of the health care costs. For small businesses, companies providing 75 percent coverage would be able to receive assistance for 67 percent of those costs.

The second part of the proposal is the creation of the “Palmetto Healthcare Safety Net Trust Fund,” which would address problems created by high risk patients who typically drive up coverage rates.

Last year, a cigarette tax increase passed, but its expansion of the state’s Medicaid program caused it to be vetoed by Gov. Mark Sanford, and then that veto was sustained in the legislature.

At the beginning of the session, Sanford proposed a 30 cent tax increase, offsetting it with an optional flat income tax. The Governor said he was open to other proposals, as long as they were revenue neutral.

Although there are other cigarette tax plans in the legislature, this bill seems the most likely to pass, with Harrell, Majority Leader Kenny Bingham and Ways and Means chairman Dan Cooper backing the plan.

As Gov. Mark Sanford, Sen. Tom Davis and S.C. Policy Council president Ashley Landess are set to unveil a new study on state government and spending on Tuesday, and the House Ways and Means Committee takes up the state budget, there is a report out that says Sanford’s methods for coming up with his numbers are wrong.

The state’s chief economist, Bill Gillespie, and the Board of Economic Advisers put together a study in 2004 analyzing the Governor’s numbers and how his office came about them, after testimony in front of the Senate Finance Committee that year.

The Governor’s Office pegged the cost of state and local government in South Carolina to 29 percent more than other states in the country. However, the study says that analysis is misleading because it doesn’t measure costs, measures only goods and services produced and ignores the differences in the mix of production in South Carolina as compared to the rest of the nation.

“It is not valid to argue that trade, transportation and construction, which have ratios more than 1.0, costs more in South Carolina,” the report states. “In fact, this is generally known to be untrue.

“And the same conclusion applies to state and local government. Just because the percentage share is higher in South Carolina does not mean that state and local government costs 29 percent more here than in the rest of the country.”

According to the study, the output comparison by the U.S. Bureau of the Census overstates the situation in South Carolina because of the states ownership of Santee Cooper and the ports, and most states do not have large state-owned utilities or state-run ports. Excluding the $270 million in output from those two sources, state and local government output was 5.5 percent less than the nation as a whole, not 29 percent more.

And, according to statistics cited from the Bureau of the Census, expenditures for state and local government were actually 5.7 percent less, in comparison.

The only sector where South Carolina was significantly spending more was in the area of health care, which was skewed, the report said, by abnormally high spending on Medicaid, driven by the state’s low per capita income.

The study concludes that he health care outlier should be thrown out, and that the proper calculation is that South Carolina spends 14 percent less on state and local government.

“It’s safe to say that the actual cost of state government in South Carolina is more than double the $7 billion figure that’s commonly referred to,” SCPC spokesman Bryan Cox said to FITS News. “And one of the most disturbing findings was to see the trend of the general fund as a percentage of state spending.”