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Examining South Carolina’s massive proposed budget
While the 2021 regular legislative session ends this week, lawmakers are set to return to Columbia in June – possibly on three separate occasions – to address a number of…
Bills filed during 5/4/21 – 5/6/21
Regulations H.4324 – Proposing a state constitutional amendment to lift the sales restriction on liquor between 7pm and 9am H.4318 – Cable service providers must provide refunds for interruptions in…
Bills filed during 4/27/21 – 4/29/21
Government Structure H.4283 – Allowing the S.C. Supreme Court to declare a “Judicial Emergency”, which would let it delay hearings and deadlines, relocate court operations, and would overall broadly expand…
What’s going on with Santee Cooper?
UPDATE as of 5/7/21: This week, the House voted to keep the option to explore selling Santee Cooper in H.3194, while adopting some of the Senate’s “reform” measures, including those…
Bills filed during 4/20/21 – 4/22/21
Elections H.4255 – Numerous voting law changes: 1) requiring poll workers wear body cameras; 2) journalists may not come within 200 yards of entrance of a voting place unless coming…
Bills filed during 4/13/21 – 4/15/21
Criminal Justice H.4210 – Making it a felony to give out the private address, phone number or email of an elected official or government employee with the intent to intimidate,…
Requiring businesses serving liquor to earn majority of their revenue from food, non-alcoholic drinks
S.536, which received a committee hearing Wednesday, would require businesses serving liquor-based drinks to earn at least 51% of their total revenue from food and non-alcoholic beverages. The bill would…
Bills filed during 4/6/21 – 4/8/21
Criminal Justice H.4149 – Limiting the amount of monetary compensation a whistleblower on public utilities can recover from litigation and allowing the utility to fire the whistleblower if it is…
Bills update 2021: what passed and what to watch
Last week (Saturday, April 10) was the 2021 crossover deadline, which means bills that failed to pass one chamber (House or Senate) and cross to the other by this date…
Bills filed during 3/30/21 – 3/31/21
Taxation/Spending S.710 – Allowing municipalities that don’t have operating property taxes to impose one (capped at a rate sufficient to generate one-third of the previous year’s general fund expenses). Any…
S.499 – Election law challenges & appointments
This bill (S.499) would establish that the House speaker and Senate president, on behalf of their respective bodies, have an “unconditional right” to intervene in a state court action that…
Bills filed during 3/23/21 – 3/25/21
Medical/Covid S.687 – Upon request by customers, a business must disclose the percentage of its employees who have been vaccinated for covid. Failure to do so, or a willful misrepresentation…
Lawmakers want fewer checks on higher education spending
Update: House lawmakers inserted language from the bill as a proviso in the state budget, which passed the chamber Wednesday. The budget bill now heads to the Senate. Under S.376,…
Bills filed during 3/16/21 – 3/18/21
Taxation/Spending H.4092 – Repealing the gas tax (including the incremental 2 cent hike every year), road tax, and the effect of other motor carrier taxes H.4100 – Annual appropriations bill…
Bills filed during 3/9/21 – 3/11/21
Government Structure S.647 – To direct the State Division of Aeronautics to sell all state airplanes that are used to transport the governor, legislators, and their invitees H.4061 – Amending…
Diverting gas tax dollars to pay local officials?
On Tuesday, the South Carolina Senate passed a bill that would pay certain transportation officials (appointed by lawmakers) using their county’s local share of gas tax revenue. S.447 would pay…
Bills filed during 3/2/21 – 3/4/21
Government Structure S.635 – Adding 2 members to the Executive Committee of the (SCRA) SC Research Authority, allowing them to purchase private companies’ debt, and increasing the amount a tax…
Bills filed during 2/23/21 – 2/25/21
Government Structure S.592 – Once a a judge retires, he or she cannot return to work as a judge again S.594 – Increasing the Judicial Merit Selection Commission (JMSC) membership…
Bills filed during 2/16/21 – 2/18/21
Criminal Justice S.581 – Wireless phone companies must provide personal location data upon request by law enforcement if they believe there is risk of serious harm; shields a company from…
Bills filed during 2/9/21 – 2/11/21
Government Structure H.3856 – Adding two members to the Executive Committee of the (SCRA) SC Research Authority, allowing them to purchase private companies’ debt, and increasing the amount of a…
Bills filed during 2/2/21 – 2/4/21
. Taxation/ Spending H.3790 – Appropriating an additional 4% of the funds received by the General Fund from admission taxes to the Dept. of Parks, Recreation and Tourism for exclusive…
Bills filed during 1/25/21 – 1/28/21
. Spending S.491 – Issuance of $550 million in General Obligation bonds (backed by every taxpayer in the state) for a Charleston Port expansion project H.3707 – Appropriating $45,000,000 to…
Bills filed during 1/12/21 – 1/21/21
Education H.3611 – Creating a massive data collecting system that tracks children from preschool through the workforce (the data warehouse) the bill is nearly identical to what lawmakers introduced in…
Bills to watch in 2021
Before convening the 2021 legislative session (which began earlier this month) lawmakers filed roughly one thousand bills in advance of the New Year, known as “prefiles”. These bills can offer…
Rate hike would let Dominion cut customers’ power over “implied” threats
In August, Dominion Energy proposed a rate increase of almost 8 percent through an application to the SC Public Service Commission (PSC). The PSC waited almost two months to schedule…
Dominion seeking nearly 8% rate hike, more control over customer property & power
In 2018, S.C. legislators cut a deal with Dominion Energy to buy SCANA (with approval from the Public Service Commission, or “PSC”) in which customers were promised a 15 percent…
Leftover bills could pass as legislature returns for special session
South Carolina lawmakers return for a special session this week, primarily with the goal of passing a new state budget and allocating the remaining federal COVID-19 aid – along with…
Weekly Legislative Update – March 17 – 19, 2020
What they did: This week, the General Assembly reconvened briefly to pass H.4014, which appropriates $45 million of surplus dollars to the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) to address…
Bills filed during 6/23/20 – 6/24/20
Government Structure S.1234 – Situations in which the Governor may declare a state of emergency, but the reasons are left blank S.1235 – Creating the Office of Broadband Development within…