- BIG STORY: Legislature goes ‘cold turkey’ on earmarks, but at what cost?
- MORE NEWS: S.C. justices uphold abortion law, weigh in on Amazon
- LOWCOUNTRY, Ariail: Not even trying to hide it
- BRACK: New documentary digs into American Revolution
- MYSTERY PHOTO: Red, white and blue
- FEEDBACK: Send us your thoughts
What’s cost of going ‘cold turkey’ on earmarks?
By Jack O’Toole, Capital Bureau | For perhaps the first time in South Carolina history, members of the General Assembly will soon reconvene to pass a $14.4 billion state budget that’s more likely to be remembered for what’s not in it than what is.
In a word, earmarks. Or as most lawmakers refer to them, local investments.
Long controversial, this legislator-directed spending on special in-district projects — think everything from critical sewer system upgrades to local arts festivals — has skyrocketed in recent years, rising from a reported $30 million in 2019 to more than $700 million in 2023 and $400 million in 2024.
The timing of that explosion was no accident, budget experts say. Flush with federal Covid aid but facing conservative revenue projections due to pandemic job losses, lawmakers opted to spend its annual surpluses on one-time local projects rather than committing the money to long-term, year-over-year investments.
Over the same period, in response to Gov. Henry McMaster’s calls for greater transparency, lawmakers brought the once-secretive earmark process out in the open for the first time, requiring legislators to file their requests in writing and debate them openly on the floor.
But this March as lawmakers searched for money to cut the state’s top income tax rate from 6.2% to 6.0%, Senate Budget Chairman Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, and House Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister, R-Greenville, announced there would be no legislator-directed local investments in the 2025-26 budget.
Or as Peeler put it, the legislature was going “cold turkey” on earmarks often called legislative pork.
But in a series of interviews with the Charleston City Paper, policy experts and lawmakers of both parties made it clear that at least some of that spending is necessary for the health and welfare of state residents and will have to return in one form or another in 2026. The only questions, they agreed, were how much and under what rules and procedures.
Earmarks under fire
Sam Aaron, research director for the conservative-leaning S.C. Policy Council, says he’s “skeptical” of earmarks and the legislative process from which they spawn.
“Earmarks aren’t inherently bad, but a lot of them are,” Aaron said, noting that some have proven embarrassing to legislators and recipients over the years. “So, I’d say the pause this year is probably the right move.”
Greenville Republican Rep. Stephen Frank, creator of the S.C. Pork Project website and a member of the hardline S.C. Freedom Caucus, takes that criticism further.
“I don’t think every earmark is problematic,” Frank said, adding that he generally supports spending for critical items like local police and fire departments. “But I think it’s a bad system overall that creates more room, more opportunity, for waste.”
What’s worse, he argues, earmarks breed a culture of favor-trading among legislators that calls “corrupt.”
“It creates an environment where maybe I need $500,000 for my police department, but you have a project that’s near and dear to your heart that might not be as virtuous,” Frank said. “Then, to get what I want, I might feel pressured to vote for what you want. And that’s just a bad way to fund core functions of government.”
Old infrastructure, new challenges
Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, says he supports further reform of spending for local projects, such as the establishment of a competitive local grants process. But he opposes this year’s decision to zero out assistance for poor rural communities like the areas he represents.
“Anytime you’re dealing with public dollars, there should be transparency and vetting and accountability,” Hutto said. “But there’s a way to deal with that without just saying we’re not doing it anymore.”
What some urban senators and representatives don’t understand, he argues, is most of the rural infrastructure that his constituents rely on was put in the ground almost a hundred years ago with federal dollars that flowed to S.C. as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
And that infrastructure — which small counties and towns could never tax themselves enough to replace — is starting to fall apart.
“It can’t be overstated,” Hutto said. “The time to upgrade that infrastructure is now and they just don’t have the money to do it.”
Moreover, he notes, these smaller communities typically depend on small, cash-strapped nonprofits to deliver basic services. That’s why a small state investment — to repair, say, a church kitchen — isn’t the kind of political payoff some city-based lawmakers might assume. Instead, to that small community, it’s often an essential anti-poverty program.
“That’s a way we feed meals to people very much in need,” Hutto said.
The answer: Disclosure, debate and democracy?
Current Camden Mayor and former state legislator Vincent Sheheen has seen the earmark issue from every side during his years in public service. And perhaps befitting a man who just finished writing a book to be published in December about the workings of S.C. government, he talks about it like someone who’s given the matter some serious thought.
First, he says spending money for local projects is just unavoidable in a rural state like South Carolina, where most counties and towns are too small to fully support their own infrastructure.
“With the way our state government is structured, it’s absolutely vital that the state invest in local communities,” Sheheen said. “If you don’t have that, our communities, particularly small communities, will wither and die away.”
So the issue, he says, is how you’re going to make those dollars available at the state level. Unlike some, he believes that the current system, strengthened by further accountability and transparency, is probably the best option available.
“I’m a big believer in democracy and having fights on the floor with open debates and vetoes,” Sheheen said. “That’s the way our government was set up, and I don’t know why some people want to sidetrack it by shoving money into agencies or programs.”
In fact, he says, the greater danger would be if those dollars were quietly spent outside of public view by vast state agencies.
“The giant programmatic bureaucracies are a relatively recent phenomenon,” he said. “We don’t need to just give some agency a billion dollars and tell them to spend it. That’s not how our democracy was supposed to work.”
- Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
S.C. justices uphold abortion law, weigh in on Amazon
By Jack O’Toole, Capitol bureau | With the South Carolina General Assembly out of session, the state Supreme Court took center stage this week, handing down a major abortion ruling and hearing arguments over whether online retailer Amazon owes S.C. taxpayers $277 million in back taxes.
On Wednesday, the court ruled 5-0 that the state’s so-called “fetal heartbeat” law bans abortion six weeks after conception — often before many women know they’re pregnant.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic argued that, based on the law’s precise wording, the ban shouldn’t take effect until around the ninth week of pregnancy.
But Associate Justice John Few, writing for the court, said any ambiguity was resolved by lawmakers’ repeated statements that they were passing a six-week ban.
“The General Assembly itself debated and discussed the 2023 Act exclusively in terms of a six-week threshold beyond which most abortions may not occur,” Few wrote. “This extensive 2023 legislative history … is decisive.”
Also Wednesday, the justices heard arguments from attorneys for the state and Amazon in a case that could determine whether the retail giant owes $277 million in back taxes and interest on sales made by third-party sellers through its website between April 1, 2016, and Dec. 31, 2019. Amazon has collected and paid S.C. sales taxes on all transactions since a 2020 amendment to state law made the requirement clear.
But the state argued the change simply clarified an existing obligation, rather than imposing a new one — and that the company should have been collecting those taxes from the start.
The case is expected to turn on exactly what role Amazon plays in those transactions: Is it merely an online mall hosting outside businesses, or is it effectively selling the products itself?
Lawyers for Amazon say the nature of the transactions from third-party sellers to individual consumers speak for themselves, while state attorneys say Amazon ultimately controls every aspect of the sale — from product searches and comparisons to purchases, shipping and even refunds.
A ruling is expected later this year.
In other recent news
Lawmakers seek investigation into S.C.’s latest firing squad execution. Two South Carolina legislators have requested an investigation into the state’s firing squad execution last month after lawyers for the inmate said his autopsy showed the shots nearly missed his heart.
Democratic businessman announces campaign to unseat Graham. Greenville businessman Lee Johnson will seek the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate next year, setting up a partisan contest with incumbent GOP U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham. “Lindsey Graham built a career for himself,” Johnson says. “I’ve spent my life building for others.”
5 new state laws you need to know about. Gov. Henry McMaster has signed five bills into law since the legislative session ended on May 8. Here’s what you need to know about each of them.
- McMaster signs law expanding red snapper-grouper fishing off S.C. coast.
- Governor vetoes bill regulating food delivery robots in Columbia
S.C. legislations aims to make it easier to crack down those who download child porn. Finding and convicting people downloading child pornography could become easier in South Carolina thanks to a bill that allows the state Attorney General’s Office to subpoena websites and internet providers to locate people suspected of accessing child pornography.
- Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Not even trying to hide it
Award-winning cartoonist Robert Ariail has a special knack for poking a little fun in just the right way. This week, he takes on how President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be even trying to hide the taking of gifts that in the past would have been criticized for being highly unethical.
- Love this week’s cartoon or hate it? Did he go too far, or not far enough? Send your thoughts to feedback@statehousereport.com.
New documentary digs into American Revolution
By Andy Brack | Legendary documentary film director Ken Burns this week said South Carolina was one of two violent colonies where it would have been really hard to have lived during America’s war for independence. The other was New Jersey.
Both states saw a lot of bloodshed. In fact, Burns said one in five Revolutionary War battlefield deaths as a whole occurred here in the Palmetto State, which had more battles and skirmishes than any other state.
Too many people don’t realize how pivotal South Carolina was in the nation’s struggle for freedom from autocratic British rule. South Carolina’s location caused the British to stretch supply lines on a continent much bigger than most thought then. Charleston’s wealth was attractive to the British, which captured it in 1780 after shelling the city for a month. More than 5,000 colonial soldiers – a Southern army – surrendered, leading the British to think the tide shifted toward them. But then came pesky backcountry fighters like Daniel Morgan, Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion.
Burns, in Charleston for a preview of this team’s new “The American Revolution” documentary that comes out in six months, said South Carolinians of 250 years ago faced a gruesome civil war inside a war for independence. Neighbors took revenge on neighbors. Loyalists killed patriots, who killed Loyalists and British soldiers who sacked the state.
“It’s an eight-year story of how the United States came into being,” he said during a press conference at the College of Charleston with SCETV, which will present the six-part, 12-hour series. “It’s not always a pretty story, but it’s a complicated and interesting one.”
Burns and his team say they hope the film helps Americans reconnect with their history.
“We think that understanding where you’ve been, particularly this most important of stories, helps you understand where you are and where you’re going,” he said. “Too often, we have told only a top-down version of our past. And what we have tried to do in all of our films for the last nearly 50 years of filmmaking in public media is to tell a bottom-up story as well – one that is not an unforgiving revisionism that throws out those top-down figures, but merges the two together.
He said he believes the new film is the most important in his career.
“The American Revolution is the most important event in human history, since the birth of Christ.”
People are often fond of thinking there’s not really much new that happens – that history repeats itself.
But the birth of the United States, where people chose rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness over an autocratic monarch, was new and different. No nation up until that time had been built on principles. Instead, they were based on inheritance, conquest or tyranny.
“There was something new under the sun that began here in these 13 former colonies that has been a beacon for the entire world,” Burns said. “And our film is an attempt to understand how it started, what its antecedents were and what took place during the revolution.”
Burns dodged a question about what Revolutionary War leaders like John Laurens and Christopher Gadsden, both of Charleston, would think about some leaders today who are turning to authoritarianism – particularly since patriots fought and died to shrug off the cloak of autocracy.
“What is so surprising to me is just how much people [back then] were willing to risk everything for this concept, a brand new concept of liberty and freedom of representation in a real sense. … We’re the first anti-colonial movement and we were rebelling against the arbitrary power and authoritarian aspects of the British government over us.”
“The American Revolution” premieres nationwide on public television on Nov. 16.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of the Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Red, white and blue
Here’s a mystery flag somewhere in South Carolina. Tell us where you think it is. Make sure to add your name and hometown to your guess and send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Our most recent mystery, “Boxy building,” shows the historic post office in Conway that’s now being used as a visitors center.
Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas, shared the building was erected in the mid-1930s and served as a post office until 1977. Four years later it became a museum. And in 2017 it became the visitors center.
Others who correctly identified the building were: Jay Altman of Columbia; Bill Segars of Hartsville; Truett Jones of Summerton; Grace Gifford of Horry County; David Lupo of Mount Pleasant; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; and Frank Bouknight of Summerville.
- Send us a mystery picture. If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com and mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
Send us your thoughts
We’ve been getting a few good letters and would like to share them, but writers aren’t leaving phone numbers and hometowns to help us verify them for publication. We encourage you to send in your thoughts about policy and politics impacting South Carolina. We print non-defamatory comments, but unless you provide your contact information – name and hometown, plus a phone number used only by us for verification – we can’t publish your thoughts.
- Have a comment? Send your letters or comments to: feedback@statehousereport.com. Make sure to provide your contact details (name, hometown and phone number for verification. Letters are limited to 150 words.
Statehouse Report, founded in 2001 as a weekly legislative forecast that informs readers about what is going to happen in South Carolina politics and policy, is provided by email to you at no charge every Friday.
- Editor and publisher: Andy Brack, 843.670.3996
- Statehouse bureau chief: Jack O’Toole
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