South Carolina House begins debate over $10.2B budget this week. What it includes
The South Carolina House will start debate over the state’s roughly $10.2 billion general fund spending plan on Monday, kicking off potential legislative fights over whether the state should be spend more money in school classrooms, raise pay even more for state employees or return tax dollars to taxpayers.
The debate is expected to take a few days, after which House leaders expect the chamber to adopt and send their version of the state budget over to the Senate.
As of Friday, it was unclear how many amendments lawmakers are expected to tack onto the budget, but if past debates indicate anything, expect at least 100 amendments to be brought up and many to be shot down.
House budget chairman Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, said the budget hits on four “prevailing themes”: raising teacher pay, cutting taxes, ensuring the state’s reserves are well funded and fixing the state’s rural, secondary roads, which are among the most dangerous in the state.
Here are areas where your tax dollars could, and are likely, to be spent:
Teachers, education
Public education advocates are calling on colleagues to spend even more money on education.
The 124 members of the S.C. House will debate this week whether to spend $213 million — more than the state spent on teacher raises last year — to give every public school teacher a $3,000 pay raise.
Gov. Henry McMaster first announced the $3,000 raise in December, urging House budget writers to follow through with that commitment to the state’s more than 50,000 teachers. McMaster also called for raising the state’s starting salary to $38,000, up from $32,000, a proposal that was also included in the House budget.
That raise would bring the state’s average teacher salary to more than $56,000 — up from about $50,000 — putting the state’s pay in the middle of the pack just under states that include Minnesota and Wyoming, according to the National Education Association’s state pay comparison.
“South Carolina will now be in the top half of the nation for average teacher salary,” Smith said, adding, “so we’re making great strides.”
The House budget debate also follows the Senate’s adoption of its version of education reform on Thursday. Opposing that effort was SC for Ed, a grassroots teachers group that has announced plans for an event at the State House on March 24 to demand even more from lawmakers.
Last year, the group organized a similar demonstration, when 10,000 teachers and supporters marched on the state capitol to call on lawmakers to move legislation that would improve their working conditions by reducing testing, increasing pay and planning time and other demands.
In addition to teacher salary increases, House budget writers have proposed to spend millions more on other education priorities, including:
▪ $76 million to update textbooks and other teaching materials;
▪ $53 million to expand statewide the state’s free, 4-year-old kindergarten for low-income students, a piece of the Senate’s education legislation that Smith said would include 17 school districts and add at least 13,000 new students;
▪ $26 million to increase the amount of money the state sends back to school districts based on the number of students enrolled, raising the so-called “base student cost” to $2,500 from $2,489 this year. Critics say that amount is a drop in the bucket compared to the $652 million needed to raise the base student cost to $3,164 per student, the amount recommended by a funding formula set by state law.
“I would prefer it higher,” Rep. Bill Whitmire, R-Oconee, who chairs House Ways and Means’ education subcommittee, said of the amount the House budget-writing committee spent per student. “We don’t have the money.”
▪ $25.5 million to lease or buy new school buses; and
▪ $10 million on school resource officers for school districts that are unable to cover the costs themselves.
Tuition free in higher ed
Lawmakers will debate higher education spending, too.
For another year, lawmakers want to spend more than $47 million — higher than last year — to help freeze tuition in South Carolina for in-state students.
They also want to spend $160 million in one-time dollars to fix up years of costly maintenance and renovations at colleges.
“We do need to make sure we’re continuing to put higher education in South Carolina at a top level for funding,” said House Majority Leader Gary Simrill, R-York, who chairs Ways and Means’ higher education subcommittee.
Fixing roads
The General Assembly could be poised to spend big on dangerous roadways.
House members will debate whether to spend $100 million on roads: $77 million to repave 240 miles or 3% of what’s known as “farm to market” roads, which are considered some of the state’s most deadly. The money would not go toward major interstate projects, including, for example, the “Malfunction Junction” interchange which connects Interstates 26 and 20 just northwest of I-126 in Columbia.
Lawmakers were told this week those projects would be put on a special bidding schedule in September, with work expected to be completed by the end of November 2021. On top of that money, lawmakers could spend another $23 million to send $500,000 to each of the state’s 46 county transportation committees to help them repair secondary roads in those areas.
Upgrading SC prisons
South Carolina’s prisons can expect a big cut in the state’s upcoming spending plan.
House budget writers agreed last month to spend $100 million on security and safety upgrades at the S.C. Department of Corrections.
The millions would help the agency address problems tied to years of underfunding the state agency, thrust into the light by a deadly prison riot that broke out at a Lee County prison in 2018.
Among the priorities the agency plans to address with the money, prison officials plan to fix cell door locks, buy new safety equipment and deter inmates’ use of contraband cell phones in the state’s prisons.
More money for state workers
Year after year, lawmakers debate whether state employees should be paid more as a way to retain talented staff members and prevent them from seeking more lucrative work in the private sector. They also push for raises to bump up employees who are lower on the pay scale.
Again this year, some House members will attempt to raise pay for state employees even higher than what is currently being proposed in the budget approved by the House Ways and Means Committee.
The current House budget includes $42 million for merit-based raises for employees — equivalent to a roughly 2% raise — leaving it up to directors to decide how to dole it out, said budget chairman Smith.
House Ways and Means member Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, also plans to ask during the budget debate to raise employee pay by either 2.5% or 5%. Past efforts to do so have been unsuccessful.
But Carlton Washington, who heads the South Carolina State Employees Association, said he is hopeful.
“In a perfect world, employees would be paid a competitive wage, then overlay that with a merit increase. That would be great,” Washington said. “The difference this year, there is a lot more money available and there is new leadership in the committee, who have so far demonstrated sensitivity to state employees.”
Other budget items
Of course, there’s millions more the General Assembly could spend.
The budget up for debate in the House includes:
▪ $128 million for a one-time, $100 tax credit for every tax return filed with at least $100 in income tax liability, different from the rebate checks that were mailed to S.C. taxpayers last year;
▪ $10 million for rest area renovations; and
▪ $2 million, for improvements at local airports.
And as the state of South Carolina’s population continues to get older, House budget writers included a new position in the state budget this year to help combat problems that arise with dementia and Alzheimer’s — which killed more than 2,500 S.C. adults in 2017.
The House’s budget-writing committee included $100,000 for a new dementia coordinator at the Department on Aging who would seek federal funding for services.
“It’s such a devastating thing for so many families, and we see more and more of it as the population in South Carolina ages,” said Rep. Bill Herbkersman, a Beaufort Republican who chairs the Ways and Means’ health care subcommittee.
More than 5.8 million people in the United States live with Alzheimer’s and dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Of that number, roughly 92,000 live in South Carolina and that number is projected to grow to at least 120,000 by 2025.
“This position would be someone, just one person, who would keep their finger on the pulse of dementia in South Carolina,” said Taylor Wilson, director of state policy for the Alzheimer’s Association South Carolina chapter. “No other state agency has a specific focus on dementia.”
