Tax cuts, prisons, employee raises: How SC Gov. McMaster want to spend $10.2B in 2020
Gov. Henry McMaster on Monday said he would like lawmakers to make tax cuts, state employee pay raises, upgrades to state-owned buildings and education top priorities as they decide how to spend the $10.2 billion state budget that begins July 1.
The stakes are high as lawmakers return to work Tuesday to start debating their own plans for spending that money — the largest state budget ever, one that includes roughly $1.8 billion in new money to spend which is almost twice what they had extra to spend in this year’s budget.
On Monday, McMaster released his executive budget, a spending wish list sent to both S.C. House and Senate budget leaders who ultimately get to decide what to include or exclude.
But McMaster told reporters on Monday the General Assembly should stop short of spending all of that money in one year.
“We need to give as much of that money back to the taxpayers as we can,” McMaster said.
Here are some of the governor’s top priorities:
Another refund check
The governor, again, wants to return more money back to the taxpayer this year.
Instead of the flat $50 check taxpayers received last year at his insistence, McMaster wants to spend $250 million on another one-time check for South Carolinians that would be paid out depending on how much a filer puts in. Last year, he requested $200 million for rebate checks.
If the General Assembly agrees, roughly 1.2 million taxpayers would get a check mailed out by Dec. 20.
That proposal, however, does not have the backing of the state’s powerful Chamber of Commerce, which instead wants lawmakers to consider longer term tax reforms.
“The S.C. Chamber is calling for legislators to use this year’s surplus for sustainable tax reform that benefits taxpayers in the long run rather than another onetime rebate check,” chamber president and CEO Ted Pitts said Monday.
A push for tax cuts
McMaster also supports tax reform, and has asked lawmakers again to send more money back to South Carolinians in the form of tax cuts, beginning with a $160 million expense to help reduce personal income tax brackets by 1% over the next five years — an overall goal that Pitts said the chamber supports.
Should state revenue fail to grow by 5% in a year, the cuts would be suspended that year.
McMaster, again, also has proposed spending a combined $18.2 billion to eliminate retirement taxes for the state’s military veterans and first responders. Under the governor’s plan, a veteran younger than 65 years old could save an average $402 a year and a veteran 65 years and older would save $68, according to figures analyzed by the S.C. Fiscal and Revenue Affairs Office.
First responders under 65 could save an average $734 a year and first responders older than 65 would save about $117.
“These citizens, through their commitment, discipline, talent and service, form the backbone of our peace and prosperity,” McMaster said. “We must ensure their success.”
State employee pay raises
As the state continues to deal with a shortage of classroom teachers, McMaster plans to again reiterate calls to raise the pay of the state’s more than 52,000 classroom teachers by $3,000 across the board — all of it paid for by the state, not school districts.
The raise would cost about $213 million, which also would raise the state’s starting teacher pay to $38,000, up from about $35,000.
McMaster also wants lawmakers to spend more than $45 million to raise the amount of money school districts receive based on enrollment. But to get that money, districts would be required to craft a policy prohibiting cell phone use during instructional periods.
It is not just teachers McMaster wants lawmakers to spend more money on.
Many of the state’s agencies also deal with staffing recruitment and retention problems.
Instead of an across-the-board raise like last year, McMaster wants the state to spread $33 million across state agencies for merit-based and retention pay raises, equal to almost a 2% pay raise.
And to cut down on vacancies at some of the state’s largest departments, McMaster said lawmakers should agree to spending $38 million on pay raises for seven state agencies, including nearly $14.6 million for the S.C. Department of Corrections, $8.5 million for the S.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and $5 million for the S.C. Highway Patrol, which has 130 sworn trooper vacancies.
The Governor’s Office said McMaster’s appointee to direct the state’s Highway Patrol Reggie Burgess hopes to fill 100 of those positions by the year’s end.
Prison, building upgrades
Historically underfunded for decades, McMaster called on lawmakers to spend $100 million this year to fix structural problems and enhance security at South Carolina’s prisons — roughly half of the department’s request for capital and one-time spending needs.
State lawmakers have put an emphasis on corrections after seven inmates were killed last spring in what was named the most deadly prison riot in the U.S. in 25 years.
The state’s prisons director Bryan Stirling has told lawmakers security upgrades are needed to keep both inmates and officers safe.
Prisons aren’t the only state-owned buildings needing repair.
McMaster also proposed spending $162 million of the state capital reserve fund — reserved for one-time spending only — to pay for years of deferred maintenance at state colleges and universities, rather than borrow money. The Governor’s Office said the amount of money a college gets would be dependent on how many in-state students attend each school.
The University of South Carolina, for example, would get more than $21 million if McMaster’s proposal passed.
Clemson University would get another $15.9 million, and S.C. State University — the state’s only publicly-funded historically black four-year college — would get nearly $2.8 million.
What else does the budget include?
Building upgrades, keeping the cost of tuition low and spending money on roads weren’t the only requests McMaster suggested.
The governor’s executive budget also includes:
▪ $69 million — for the S.C. Department of Social Services to recruit and retain caseworkers and provide better prevention services for children and families
▪ $10 million — to fix up the state’s rest stops
▪ $5.8 million — to hire contractors to help with litter cleanup on the state’s more than 41,000 miles of state-owned roads; and
▪ $9 million — to give anyone and their dependents on the state health plan one free wellness visit a year.
McMaster’s budget also mentions the need to take action to deal with flooding and hire a “resilience officer.’‘ Such jobs help coordinate how a state responds over the long term to climate-change related disasters.
The governor wants to spend $10 million to resolve flooding around the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. The university faces regular flooding from rains, storms and rising sea levels.
“I want this year to be another great year for collaboration, cooperation and communication,” McMaster said. “Let us be bold. Let us act on behalf of the sons and daughters of South Carolina, so that they may receive a state as bright with promise as that which we were blessed to inherit.”
Sammy Fretwell contributed to this report.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect that the money the governor wants to spend on the S.C. Department of Corrections is roughly half of the agency’s budget request for one-time and capital needs.
This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 2:27 PM.
