SC lawmakers’ pay raise became a pay cut and they can only blame themselves | Opinion
The South Carolina Supreme Court has paused a controversial pay raise for state lawmakers a week before it was to take effect, indicating a constitutional challenge could nullify it and asking lawyers on either side of the dispute to submit more detailed arguments in writing this summer.
In plain English, state lawmakers got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Too bad. So sad.
I’ve criticized the cash grab for weeks since legislators first slipped it into the state budget with almost no conversation, kept it with even less talk at a committee hearing and then gave it final approval with up-or-down budget votes in the state House of Representatives and state Senate.
Wonder if the governor wishes he’d done as I and others asked and vetoed this self-dealing?
The justices, of course, may ultimately side with the lawmakers, and I’d live with that decision. If that happens, at least the raises will have received more scrutiny than lawmakers gave them.
There is a way to consider pay raises for state legislators who have not received one for a while. That’s to hold real hearings with actual public input at the State House, to present detailed reports on how lawmaker compensation would compare to that in other states and how it would impact lawmakers’ pensions for life — and then to have raises take effect after the next election so legislators can’t line their own pockets as they ban city and county council members from doing.
Instead, lawmakers overwhelmingly voted themselves 80% raises to take effect July 1 with the new state budget. Then a curious thing happened. As the days passed after the vote, 36 of 124 state representatives and seven of 46 state senators declined the raise. An eighth senator declined it unless the court rules it constitutional.
That means a quarter of the lawmakers view the pay raise shenanigans as political Kryptonite.
Yes, state lawmakers got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
One in four have shown that with their decision to decline the raise.
And now the state Supreme Court could rule it unconstitutional after a summer of costly work by outside lawyers retained to argue the legislators’ questionable case at taxpayer expense.
An unintended pay cut
Instead of going through the standard process of introducing and allowing public input on and approving legislation that would have raised their pay, lawmakers slipped what’s called a proviso into the state budget late in the process of locking down the annual spending plan. A proviso is a one-year addition to the budget that often gets quietly carried over to subsequent budgets.
This proviso increased the portion of lawmakers’ salary they call “in-district compensation” from $1,000 a month — or $12,000 a year — to $2,500 a month — or $30,000 a year. Factor in their $10,400 salary, and the part-time lawmakers suddenly were getting 80% more taxable income.
Gov. Henry McMaster could have vetoed the provision, as I advocated. He did not. He let it stand, unlike his predecessor, Gov. Nikki Haley, who vetoed a similar legislative pay increase while blasting the process by which lawmakers sought to vote themselves more money.
What’s worth noting is that lawmakers will now not receive any of their in-district compensation until and unless the court orders it reinstated. With their injunction, the justices have temporarily halted the state auditor from paying any in-district compensation at all. That means effective July 1 for the duration of the case, lawmakers won’t even get the $1,000 a month they’ve received as part of their pay for years.
Lawmakers have no one to blame but themselves. They tried to game the system to give themselves a raise slyly instead of being more upfront about it and now they’ll actually get less money. It’s funny but not at the same time.
Now, no one is arguing South Carolina state lawmakers deserve a pay cut. I hope reasonable minds will figure out how to make them retroactively whole on the $1,000-a-month payment in the future.
I also hope the Supreme Court stays the course and finds the $1,500-a-month raise improper.
Because it is.
A likelihood of success
Lawmakers used more words to defend the raise’s reasonableness in their legal briefs when asking the Supreme Court to deny the petitioners’ request for an injunction than in a series of rushed hearings with no public comment while adding the increase to the state budget.
Lawyer Mark Moore argued on behalf of House Speaker Murrell Smith that the raise was “reasonable, and frankly, long overdue” because of the “drastic inflation” since the in-district expense amount was set in 1994. “The increase,” he wrote, “provides members of the General Assembly with an allowance imminently needed to support members’ engagement in in-district legislative activities for the remainder of 2025 and into 2026 for the benefit of their constituents.”
At issue in this case is whether the in-district compensation is considered a per diem. Also germane to the discussion is the detail that legislative bodies technically meet for two-year stints and the current one is in office through 2026 though it’s on a break until reconvening in January.
Lawyers Phillip Barber and Dick Harpootlian, a former state senator, working pro bono on behalf of clients Carol Herring and state Sen. Wes Climer, argued the state constitution says state lawmakers can only boost per diem pay for future General Assemblies, not the current body.
In granting a preliminary injunction, the justices said Barber and Harpootlian had met three requirements, showing that there would be “immediate, irreparable harm” without the injunction, “a likelihood of success on the merits,” and that there was “no adequate remedy at law.”
It’s a lot to sort through for the justices, and a lot to think through for the lawmakers.
Maybe next time the legislators will follow the justices’ lead and talk out any raise more fully, as should have been done from the start at the State House.
What’s the likelihood of that?
This story was originally published June 27, 2025 at 5:00 AM.