S.C. governor keeps veto pen mostly capped for budget
COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster announced highlights of this year’s state budget on Wednesday.
A deal for the $14.7 billion budget was finalized and ed the General Assembly in May.
McMaster’s office said the final budget included 80% of the governor’s proposals, including a cut to income tax, pay raises for teachers and law enforcement as well as funding for armed, certified full-time school resource officers at every public school in the state.
The office added that other highlights of the budget include a freeze on college tuition along with investments in infrastructure, conservation and workforce development. The governor also noted 11 vetoes were issued as part of the budget.
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McMaster’s office also announced Wednesday plans for an executive order requiring “all cabinet agencies and departments to request detailed information before distributing or istering appropriations if they lack sufficient or specific direction on how to do so in the budget.”
The budget does not include money for earmarks – annual allocations that legislators request for “community investments,” or local pet projects, and they usually add up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
When fully approved, the budget is set to go into effect when the new fiscal year begins on July 1.
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McMaster differs from his Republican predecessors, governors who relished fighting lawmakers, then often ripped into them or ignored their ideas on how to spend the state’s billions of dollars.
“Back in the old days, nobody was talking to anybody,” McMaster said, repeating his favorite tagline of “communication, collaboration and cooperation.”
Ten years ago, Gov. Nikki Haley struck 87 items from the $7 billion budget totaling more than $18 million. And in 2005, Gov. Mark Sanford vetoed 163 items worth $96 million from the $5.8 billion spending plan. A year later, an exasperated Sanford vetoed the entire budget and lawmakers quickly overrode him by wide margins.
McMaster issued so few vetoes that lawmakers don’t expect to return to the State House to try to override them.
McMaster kept what is effectively an $18,000 per year raise for the General Assembly in the budget.
Lawmakers will see their “in-district compensation” — money set aside for legislative duties that has few limits on how it can be spent — increase from $1,000 a month to $2,500 a month for all 46 senators and 124 House .
The monthly stipend for lawmakers has not been increased in about 30 years. Their in-district compensation would increase from $12,000 a year to $30,000.
Lawmakers also get an annual salary of $10,400 that has not changed since 1990. In addition, they get money for meals, mileage to drive to Columbia and hotel rooms while in session.
The rest of the spending plan was much less controversial. There are pay raises for teachers, and the state’s highest income tax rate will be cut from 6.2% to 6%.
There is $200 million to fix bridges, $35 million to pay for cleanup from Hurricane Helene last year and $50 million for a program to let parents use tax money to pay private school tuition that will undergo court scrutiny.
About 80% of the more than $14 billion the state will spend next year is what the governor asked for back in January when he suggested a spending plan to lawmakers, a relationship he has carefully cultivated since 2017.
“Many of us are like a family. We go back a long way,” McMaster said. “You try to understand the other fellow’s point of view. sometimes he’s right and I’m wrong. sometimes it’s the other way. Sometimes we’re talking about the same things but using different words.”
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