SC lawmakers kick off 2022 session Tuesday. Here are the priorities, starting with money
South Carolina legislators will cram major spending and policy priorities into roughly five months of work before the close of the General Assembly’s two-year session.
As COVID-19 was a central focus for legislators’ work last year — much of it focused on the economy and ensuring the virus didn’t throw off lawmakers’ work schedules again — the main theme this year when lawmakers return to work Tuesday will be money, and lots of it.
South Carolina has billions of dollars in state and federal cash to figure out how to spend, and leaders already have sketched out a priority list.
Spending money isn’t the only priority for lawmakers, however.
Medical marijuana, hate crimes, tax policy and election-related legislation are also all on the table this year with a major caveat: If the Legislature does not pass any of these pieces of legislation this time around, they will die, with their only hope being for a lawmaker to refile a bill next session.
The Legislature kicks off session Tuesday with shake-ups in both chambers.
Last month, Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, resigned his presidential role to become the new Senate Finance Committee chairman, succeeding longtime Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, who died in November. Next in line, Sen. Thomas Alexander, R-Oconee, donned the purple robe to become the next Senate president, giving him power over the upper chamber.
The House’s leadership has stayed mostly intact but will return to session with two vacancies and one lawmaker suspended, all Republicans. State Reps. Mandy Kimmons, of Dorchester County, and Tommy Stringer, of Greenville County, who has Parkinson’s disease, both resigned their seats before session started. State Rep. Rick Martin, R-Newberry, remains suspended after he was indicted on multiple charges.
The short calendar will put legislators on a tight schedule to get things done.
House Majority Leader Gary Simrill, R-York, told The State the 2022 legislative session will be about transformative issues.
“This is the second year of a two-year session, so the bandwidth is there to tackle issues, but the focus this year is going to be on transformative issues, especially as it relates to the budget, to broadband, to water and sewer, to roads, to lower taxes,” Simrill said. “So the overarching theme is confined.”
Money
State lawmakers might not always agree on how to spend money, but they usually agree on one thing: There’s a lot of need.
State economists projected lawmakers this year will have roughly $3 billion extra — nearly $2.2 billion in one-time cash and $897 million in new annual money — available to spend in the $11 billion budget.
And, separately from state dollars, legislators have another $2.5 billion in federal COVID-19 aid and $525 million from the Savannah River Site settlement to spend.
Gov. Henry McMaster rolled out his budget priorities Monday that included reducing the state’s top income tax rate over the course of five years. He also made about $1 billion worth of recommendations last year, including spending money to widen Interstate 26 between Columbia and Charleston, expand workforce training and improve water and sewer infrastructure.
Lawmakers may also look at sending dollars to the Port of Charleston to avoid borrowing any money to expand rail access and improve barge operations at the facility.
They’ll be plenty of other asks, including increasing pay for teachers, state employees and law enforcement officers.
Redistricting
Lawmakers last month approved new state House and Senate district maps but punted on redrawing congressional lines until January following pushback over what was then the lone congressional proposal.
The House has since released two additional — albeit quite different — congressional proposals, and the chamber’s redistricting subcommittee was expected to advance one of them Monday.
The future representation of South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, the state’s lone competitive U.S. House seat, could depend on which plan they choose.
In the House’s original plan, the coastal district represented by U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-Daniel Island, remains a highly competitive seat. The alternative proposal, however, is strikingly similar to a Senate plan that came under fire from Democrats and good government groups for transforming the 1st District into a safe Republican seat.
It appeared the Senate redistricting committee would scrap the controversial proposal after its chairman, Sen. Luke Rankin, R-Horry, acknowledged it needed significant work, but the panel has yet to release an alternative map, and it’s unclear when or if they will.
Ultimately, the House and Senate are expected to approve separate plans and then come together sometime later this month to convert their proposals into a single congressional map.
A federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state House map and the yet-to-be finalized congressional map already has been filed. The suit, filed on behalf of the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP, asks the court to enjoin state lawmakers from holding 2022 elections until a constitutionally compliant plan is adopted.
Medical marijuana
Senate leadership struck a deal with Sen. Tom Davis to make sure his medical marijuana bill comes up first on the calendar in 2022.
For years, Davis, R-Beaufort, has been struggling to bring a medical cannabis bill to the floor. This time around, Davis said he’s confident South Carolina will join at least 36 other states that have so far legalized it.
“This part bill has undergone seven years worth of scrutiny,” Davis told The State last week. “It’s a very good bill in that I was able to borrow what’s worked really well in the 36 states that have legalized it.”
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, predicted the debate would happen this month.
Davis said he expects debate likely next week and that it will pass.
“I suspect that most people have an understanding to the general issue, but most of the Senate has not been privy to the specific details of the proposal because that’s been limited to subcommittee and committee over the last few years,” Massey said of the legislation.
Across the State House, House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford said he’s confident House Democrats will support the medical marijuana legislation.
“It needs to pass,” Rutherford, D-Richland, said. “Period.”
Some in law enforcement, particularly State Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel, oppose it.
Election reform
State lawmakers are likely to revisit election-related legislation in the 2022 session — a particular Republican-led priority that was put on hold last year.
That could include taking a look at the timeline for early voting and restricting how someone can cast an absentee ballot.
On the priority list is a House-sponsored bill to give the state’s elections director more power and supervision to make sure county boards are complying with federal state state election laws, and it would create uniformity among all 46-county election offices.
The bill was sponsored House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington.
Conservative priorities
Legislation relating to masks, COVID-19 vaccines and other requirements are likely to reappear this session.
Massey said he expects the Senate to take up certain issues based on what lawmakers are hearing from constituents, and likely the same for the House, whose members are all up for reelection in November.
Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, said he expected Republicans to bring up issues such as mask requirements, critical race theory or looser gun relations after passing an expanded open-carry firearm law last year. Members of the House have already filed several bills to tackle those issues.
Last year, McMaster signed a bill into law that allows those with concealed carry permits to openly carry handguns. The House passed a bill that goes one step further to allow open carry regardless of whether someone has a permit. The Senate will have the opportunity to take up that bill this year.
In the House, a bill has already been filed that could, among other things, address critical race theory in K-12 classrooms. The bill, filed by state Rep. Lin Bennett, R-Charleston, seeks to curb “ideological slant” in the classroom, which the head of a teaching group called a “nonissue.”
A bevy of bills were also filed in the House aimed at stopping COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates.
One of those bills, a proposal that would stop public employers for firing someone because they weren’t vaccinated, already has a head start after the House passed it in December.
Lawmakers might also revisit banning transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports, an initiative that failed several times in the House last year.
Senior Editor Maayan Schechter contributed to this report.
