state budget

The state’s booming economy has allowed its’ budget writers this year to come through on some long standing promises. To significantly increase public education funding including teacher pay, and reducing personal income taxes. This week the House Ways and Means Committee reported out the first draft of next year’s record-setting $11 state budget. Also this week, the House of Representatives by a vote of 110-0 approved a bill that would lower the state's personal income tax rates.

South Carolina House budget writers want to send raises to teachers, state employees and law enforcement, build new schools and a state health lab and buy more body cameras and bulletproof vests for police officers. The House Ways and Means Committee approved the state's $14 billion spending plan Thursday, sending the plan to the House floor where it will be debated in mid-March. The House budget includes a $4,000 raise for teachers, a 3% raise for state employees and extra pay for law enforcement officers. It also includes a $600 million income tax cut and $1 billion on roads from accelerating the widening of clogged interstates to repaving and improving safety on rural highways.

South Carolina senators have spent less than two hours deciding how to spend more than $2 billion in federal money coming to the state. About $1.7 billion is in COVID-19 relief money and an additional $525 million are fines paid by the federal government in a settlement after a plan to convert plutonium from nuclear bombs into nuclear reactor fuel was abandoned at the Savannah River Site near Aiken. Senators want to spend COVID relief money on roads, rural broadband and sewage and water plant improvements. The plan for plutonium spending would give Allendale, Barnwell and Aiken counties nearest the site $341 million and spread the rest of the money around the state. The plan now goes to the House.

South Carolina lawmakers are opening their 2022 session with the familiar problem of the COVID-19 pandemic and a more unfamiliar problem of bank accounts bursting with money. The House spent an hour reading bills while the Senate set for priority debate a bill to overhaul the certificate of need program that regulates health care in the state. The General Assembly will meet for 18 weeks through mid-May in the second year of their two-year session Even with the omicron variant spreading, the House and Senate are meeting in person. Staff must wear masks, but members can choose and public viewing balconies in both chambers remain closed.

Gov. Henry McMaster's suggestion for how South Carolina spends billions of extra dollars contains some familiar requests he hasn't got in his five years in office — like cutting income taxes. But the governor is sprinkling in some new proposals, such as $2,000 bonuses for school bus drivers, $3 million to expand election audits and $100 million to South Carolina's aging health lab. McMaster released his budget request Monday. The General Assembly controls what gets spent, but lawmakers have had a good relationship with the governor. At the top of McMaster's budget is cutting the income tax rate from 7% to 6% over five years, costing $177 million a year.

South Carolina lawmakers wasted little time returning more than $150 million in local projects into the state budget after the governor removed the items through his vetoes last week.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster wants lawmakers to cut more than $150 million in spending on local projects out of the state budget, even choosing some of his own priorities to make a point.

On this episode of the South Carolina Lede for June 22, 2021, we dig into the $11 billion state budget heading to Gov. Henry McMaster's desk this week, speak with state Rep. Katrina Shealy (R-Lexington) about the problems facing the SC Department of Juvenile Justice, learn about getting vaccinated while pregnant, and much more.

South Carolina's nearly $11 billion budget was sent to Gov. Henry McMaster's desk on Monday as lawmakers cut close the deadline to get the spending plan in place before it begins July 1.

On this episode of the South Carolina Lede for June 19, 2021, we look at the finalized state budget SC lawmakers agreed to this week, take the pulse of the Palmetto State's economic recovery, hear the latest on the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19, and more.