The 125th regular session of the South Carolina General Assembly ended this week.
Next year’s more than $13 billion budget, which takes effect July 1, was adopted on Wednesday with a heavy emphasis on new funding for education, roads and bridges.
But lawmakers this year failed to enact two major policy initiatives pushed by Gov. Henry McMaster and the Republican leadership: bills dealing with the state’s energy future and the consolidation of the state’s health-service agencies.
One highlight for lawmakers, who are unlikely to return to Columbia until after the November elections, was passage of a bill that'll change, in part, the process of how legislators elect most judges in the state.
South Carolina is one of two states where lawmakers, not the voters, vet and elect most judges.
Under the changes, lawmakers will not be removed from the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, often referred to as the JMSC. And the 170-member Legislature will still have the final say in an election.
But the JMSC will increase its membership from 10 to 12 members, giving the governor power to appoint four people.
Under the current process, only three candidates can be nominated out of JMSC for a final vote. The bill now allows up to six candidates to be sent to the floor for a final vote.
And JMSC hearings are now required to be livestreamed.
Meanwhile, several key bills backed by the conservative majority were enacted this session.
Handguns can now be carried in public without a permit, doctors are now barred from performing gender-transition surgeries and overseeing hormone treatments for patients under 18, and the new state budget provides another cut in the state’s personal income tax rate.
House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, told reporters Wednesday that the omnibus bill aimed at ensuring the state’s future energy needs will now have to be a priority for next year’s Legislature because of its importance to the state’s rapid growing economy:
"One of those components is energy, and being able to have reliable, affordable energy and I think that's recognized by everybody in this General Assembly," Smith said. "And I have no doubt when we commit ourselves to that, (it) will eventually be reality and pass this General Assembly."
Smith also said the bill consolidating state health care agencies will remain at the top of lawmakers' to-do list.
Election year politics played a major role in this year’s session.
In the S.C. House, tensions between the majority Republican Caucus and the hardline House Freedom Caucus spilled into the Republican primaries.
Two close allies of Smith's, including veteran committee Chair Bill Sandifer of Seneca, lost their reelections this month.
In the S.C. Senate, the six-week abortion law passed by the General Assembly in 2023 had a major impact on this month’s primaries.
All three Republican female senators who opposed tighter restrictions in the abortion law lost to male primary opponents.
Among them was Sen. Katrina Shealy of Lexington, who chairs the Senate’s Family and Veterans Affairs Committee.
"I've read billboards that said I was a baby killer," an emotional Shealy said in her farewell address to colleagues Wednesday. "I would never hurt a child. I have saved more children since I have been in the South Carolina Legislature than probably anybody else I know."
Senate Republican Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, told reporters he didn’t think last year’s abortion votes were the sole cause of defeat for the GOP women. In part, because lawmakers passed new district maps.
Massey said, however, that he’s disappointed there will be no women in next year’s Republican caucus:
"I've served in the body when we didn't have any women at all, not just Republican but no Democratic women either," Massey said. "And I'll tell you, I think we get different perspectives when you have people with different backgrounds in the body. So, yeah I think we're gonna ... miss that, no question."
While Democrats have been in the minority in the Senate for more than 20 years, one Democratic senator has maintained immense influence in the body.
Lexington Sen. Nikki Setzler spent his final day in the chamber on Wednesday concluding 48 years in office.
He’s the longest-serving member of the Senate ever, and, currently, the longest-serving state legislator in the country.
"I absolutely love the South Carolina Senate, probably as much or more than anybody has ever served in this body," Setzler said on the floor.
In his farewell remarks, Setzler urged his colleagues to work for the people they represent — not for their party.
