A one-time $1,000 bonus for these SC workers? Senate will debate it next week
South Carolina Senate budget writers gave final approval on Wednesday to a slimmed down spending plan that would offer a one-time bonus to about 30% of state employees, specifically those deemed essential during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Senators next week will debate the proposed budget that includes $20 million to help cover a $1,000 bonus for more than 14,000 front line state employees who earn $50,000 or less as of Sept. 1 and had to physically report to work most if not all days of the week during the virus pandemic.
Gov. Henry McMaster ordered all non-essential state employees to work from home back in March as the virus started to spread across the state, telling agency heads to determine which employees could work from home.
Originally, Senate Finance Committee staff proposed money for the bonus to come out of a one-time COVID-19 relief account, a separate spending plan made up of money from the federal CARES Act. But that plan was not cleared by the state’s third-party vetting firm for COVID-19 aid, and the Senate’s budget director Mike Shealy told senators Wednesday it would have been a “mammoth task” to go through the vetting process for COVID-19 money.
The new spending plan will not take effect this year without the backing of the S.C. House and McMaster. And neither is guaranteed to support the proposal. McMaster told lawmakers last month he would prefer they delay passing a new budget and instead stick with using current spending levels when South Carolina’s economic future is still unknown.
“I am very concerned about hazard pay for essential state employees,” said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, who said Wednesday she plans to bring up the issue Friday at the next House Ways and Means Committee meeting. “(The) House needs to do something for essential employees.”
And it’s also unclear whether the plan has the support of the entire Senate Republican Caucus.
“Surely there’s a better way to skin this cat rather than appropriating the money and then having to cut it, appropriating one month and then having to cut it the next,” Senate President Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, told senators Tuesday. “There’s a concern with members of the Senate, and also we’re hearing from the House of Representatives that they may not even take up the budget if we send it over there.”
But state Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, stressed Wednesday it’s more important now than ever that those workers get the money.
“If they (the House) refuse to do a budget, what they’re saying to those essential employees who work so hard is that they won’t get this bonus.”
On top of the bonus, the Senate’s proposed budget also includes a measure that would unfreeze a temporary pause on an additional salary bump teachers get included in their pay based on years of classroom experience and educational attainment. And they added $50 million to help school districts cover the retroactive costs of the pay increase for teachers whose school year has already begun.
School districts would have discretion over how to provide those payments to teachers should the budget become law, according to the state’s Department of Education.
“If they (the House) choose not to do a budget, not only (do they) put this hazard bonus pay in jeopardy, but it also would put the money for the step increase in jeopardy,” said Senate Finance chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence. “The money we’re putting in there for school nurses would be in jeopardy, would it not?”
“The House will do what they want to do. They’re a separate body from us,” he added. “That’s their choice. Not ours.”
