SC Senate approves raises for teachers, state employees in $10.6B spending plan
Teachers and state employees are among the winners in the state Senate’s version of a spending plan for the 2021-22 fiscal year.
The state Senate last week, in a 43-3 vote, adopted a $10.6 billion spending plan which calls for pay raises for teachers and — in a new proposal senators are adding to the budget negotiations — 2% raises for state employees.
Now House members are preparing for their second swing through the budget. On Wednesday, the House sent the spending plan back to the Ways and Means Committee for further consideration.
“We’ve got a good budget, one the best budgets I’ve seen in 41 years in South Carolina,” said Sen. Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, who also chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
The Senate spending plan also includes $200 million for the state Ports Authority to expand operations at the Port of Charleston. Earlier this year the Senate approved borrowing up to $550 million to expand rail operations and create barge operations at the port. The $200 million appropriation would reduce the bond issue to $350 million. The proposed borrowing plan, which has now passed both chambers, has been sent back to the House Ways and Means Committee for its consideration.
The spending plan also allows the Department of Corrections to spend $90 million to make security upgrades to its facilities which are needed following a deadly riot at the Lee Correctional Facility.
More than $18 million also has been included for raises to help retain state law enforcement officers and correctional officers.
The Senate plan also sets aside $254 million into a rainy day fund in case the state sees an economic downturn. The rainy day fund would be used to prevent midyear budget cuts.
Raises for state employees
Senate budget writers included a 2% across the board raise for state employees, news that likely will go over well with the state’s roughly 32,000 workers after having received no raises since the 2019-20 budget.
State workers who earn less than $70,000 a year got a one-time bonus of $600 about two years ago.
The Senate also included a $1,000 raise for all public school teachers in the state, including raising the minimum teacher salary to $36,000 from $35,000. The raise for teachers is in addition to annual pay bumps teachers receive based on experience and education.
Raising teacher pay has been a goal among state lawmakers and the governor, who say they want to reduce teacher vacancies in the state and keep educators in the profession.
Lawmakers are adopting a budget for the 2021-22 fiscal year after keeping spending levels the same for the fiscal year which ends on June 30 to deal with pandemic related losses in state revenue.
Earmark requests
With the ability to spend an additional $1.7 billion in the 2021-22 fiscal year compared to the 2020-21 fiscal year, the Senate included $107 million in lawmaker initiated projects traditionally called earmarks.
The earmarks range from $8,000 to $19 million in value, with money being sent to nonprofits, local governments and universities at the request of 31 of the state’s 46 senators. But the existence of the earmarks — directed by lawmakers to projects of their choice without any discussion — in the budget still irked members in the body.
“I don’t like the earmark process,” said Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield. “I think it’s a dirty process.”
Massey argued for more funding for other statewide priorities such as replacing enough school buses on the mandated 15-year cycle.
“We have prioritized non-statewide obligations over things that are statewide obligations,” Massey said.
One earmark Massey pointed to is a $1 million earmark for the Florence County Sheriff’s Office while other police departments have to split the remainder of the $2 million pot.
“I like that we have a body camera program,” Massey said. “I don’t like like that one county gets a million, and the other counties have to live off $1 million.”
Details of the earmarks were released prior to the budget debate under a new Senate rule put in place in January requiring documentation showing which senator requested the earmark, the amount of money for the project and the recipient.
Critics say the earmarks process is secretive and subject to abuse. State Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, raised questions about that process after learning he’d received a check for an earmark for a project he’d floated to leadership as wanting help on.
“I have never indicated I was against earmarks. I was against secret earmarks,” Harpootlian, D-Richland, said. “I think many of them merit funding.”
Leatherman defended the expenditures saying they are “absolutely needed by those areas.”
The House last month adopted a $9.8 billion budget, but House budget writers expected to return to the appropriations process including work in committees, in order to take into account for higher revenue figures.
This story was originally published April 29, 2021 at 4:50 PM.
CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to reflect that the last time state employees received a pay raise was in the 2019-20 budget.
