♪ [opening music] ♪ <Gavin> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week lawmakers returned to Columbia to begin their new legislative session.

We talked with two reporters about what their legislative priorities are for the session and what the governor said during his State of the State address.

And in Congress, House members voted to impeach President Donald Trump again.

We speak with Congressman Tom Rice, a Republican who voted to impeach the president.

Now, the latest from this week.

124 House members and 46 Senate members returned to Columbia this week to start the new two year legislative session.

Lawmakers are in session Tuesday through Thursday up until early May and have a lot of work to catch up on after their shortened session last year due to COVID-19.

Senators are required to wear masks in the Chamber and security is tight, as threats against all 50 state capitols have emerged following the capitol siege.

But despite COVID-19 concerns, some traditions continued, including the governor delivering his State of the State address in person, where he laid out his legislative agenda and budget priorities for the year and also had words of unity for the state.

<Henry McMaster> We are not competitors.

We are all on the same team, a team with different jerseys representing different ideas philosophies, perspectives and experiences but a team none the less, committed to doing what we think is best for the future prosperity, success, health and happiness of over five million South Carolinians.

<Gavin> The governor gave his speech just a few short hours after House members in Washington voted to impeach President Donald Trump for a second time.

Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who heavily criticized the president for the January 6th insurrection, voted along with a 196 other Republicans against impeachment.

<Nancy Mace> ...but what we're doing today rushing this impeachment in an hour or two hour long debate on the floor of this Chamber, bypassing judiciary, poses great questions about the constitutionality of this process.

I believe we need to hold the president accountable.

I hold him accountable for the events that transpired, for the attack on our Capitol last Wednesday.

<Gavin> However 10 Republicans joined the Democrats to pass the inciting an insurrection article of impeachment, including Congressman Tom Rice.

And while all this is taking place, COVID-19 continues to rage in the state, but more South Carolinians are eligible to get the vaccine.

The Governor and DHEC said this week that those 70 and over are eligible to sign up for vaccine appointments.

The news came as the state begins to transition into phase 1-B of the vaccine rollout.

<Linda Bell> ...this vaccine in particular is our greatest tool to get this pandemic under control.

We, in public health have been working with all the tools available for going on a year now to control the disease spread, but it's this vaccine that's going to get us out of this pandemic.

It's been a month since vaccinations started in the state and we received more than 313 thousand doses.

But only 101 thousand medical professionals and long term care residents have received their first dose.

Joining me now to discuss the second impeachment of President Donald Trump is 7th Congressional District Republican Tom Rice.

Congressman thanks for making time for us.

We understand you just got off a plane from DC.

You're coming to us from your car.

We appreciate your time.

< Tom Rice> My great pleasure.

I always enjoyed being with you and thank you for allowing me to speak with my constituents.

<Gavin> Congressman tells us about your vote for impeachment on Wednesday.

I understand that you were against impeaching the president a few days before but then you're one of ten Republicans who ultimately decided to vote to impeach the president on an insurrection.

<Rice> I was against impeachment.

I was against them bringing up impeachment.

What I want to do is try to bind the wounds of the country.

And I would have preferred if they had allowed his last few days to run out without continuing this controversy.

but if I have to vote yes or no, if they put the vote in front of me, the events of last Wednesday and his behavior in the week leading since, in my mind its completely inexcusable and a complete abdication of leadership.

<Gavin> Tell me more about this.

Did you discuss this decision with any of your colleagues in the delegation?

One of your new colleagues Nancy Mace, she was blistering her attacks with President Donald Trump, but said this was to rushed so she voted against impeachment, other congressmen, other Republicans in the delegation voted against it as well.

What are your thoughts on how they voted and how you came to this conclusion to vote for impeachment?

<Rice> I don't like the process either.

I would have preferred that we had hearings and gathered more evidence and such, but that being said, I don't know if the speech that he gave on Wednesday morning amounted to the legal definition of incitement of a riot.

But I do know this.

Once the rioters got into the Capitol, they were ransacking the place and were beating Capitol Police Officers and ultimately killing them and heading through the door of the House and the Senate Chamber, the President tweeted that the Vice President lacked courage.

And the Vice President was in that building.

And I don't know if you have seen the videos of the mob beating the Capitol Police Officers, but I cannot imagine what would have happened had they gotten their hands on the Vice President.

So in my opinion, even without any additional evidence his conduct was completely inexcusable.

And our job in the House is not to try the president.

The trial will be at the Senate.

What we have to do is decide whether there is a case to put to the Senate.

In my opinion, the evidence that I can see on video and in the time line when I took the time to look at the last few days it's overwhelming.

<Gavin> And Congressman, are you surprised that more of your Republican colleagues in the House did not vote to impeach the President, citing some of the things you just said?

<Rice> Everybody has to make their own decision and I understand the arguments about the process and they're valid, but from a perspective of protecting our constitutional system and the separation of powers, where the president sends a mob to Capitol to confront Congress I think that it's an easy vote for me in terms of protecting our system of government.

And then from a human perspective to see what happens to the Capitol Police and to know that six people died and hundreds injured, it could have been much, much worse if those folks had gotten into the Senate Chamber or the House Chamber just a minute sooner.

We would have seen perhaps hundreds of deaths.

And the President did nothing to stop it.

He was watching it on TV in the White House and he did an occasional tweet about the election was stolen and how you feel but let's don't be violent.

It was a very tepid attempt.

He had communicated only on Twitter.

I can't imagine any president in my lifetime would not have called a press conference, done a statement to the country, you know, would have had a live televised presidential presentation that evening to try to calm the waters and to console the people who were injured and killed.

<Gavin> Congressman, can you contrast this vote that you took for impeachment with the votes that you took moments after that insurrection when you returned to the Capitol to take up the Electoral College certification?

You still voted.

You objected to Arizona and Pennsylvania.

You can make the argument that obviously that was the reason this whole mob was incited in the first place because of baseless voter fraud claims of widespread voter fraud.

But you still voted to object to those two swing state vote certifications.

Can you tell us how that contrasts with what you did with the impeachment vote?

<Rice> It's two completely different things.

On the one hand we're talking about election security and validity.

And we had - I studied on that vote and struggled with it for a long time.

I made up my mind that I would not finalize my opinion until I heard all the debates and seen all the evidence.

And what finally pushed me over the boundary was we got a letter the night before from this President of the State Senate in Pennsylvania with 30 of his fellow senators asking us not to certify Pennsylvania's electoral college votes until the US Supreme Court had reviewed it and letting out all the problems with the Pennsylvania vote.

I felt like there were legitimate problems with the election number one and number two, that Congress had a role.

There's a procedure for objecting.

If there's no role for Congress, why is there a procedure for objecting.

So that's why I did it.

I decided we'd have a debate.

I knew we would lose because there's more Democrats in the House than there are Republicans.

I was angry that the President was presenting it as a possibility that if Republicans only fought hard enough, that he would get four more years in the White House, which was never going to happen.

He was creating all these unreachable goals that could not possibly have been met.

<Gavin> And Congressman.

<Rice> And then he said Republicans in Congress are weak and then he sent that mob down to confront us.

<Gavin> I want to ask you really quickly how you feel this vote will play out, the vote you took and how we move forward as a country and your party to heal with about 30 seconds here.

<Rice> Listen.

I know there's a lot of people who are upset with me.

I know there's a lot of people happy with me.

I'm hearing a lot from them.

And I know the President won my district If this costs me my job, I hope it doesn't but I love the job, I'm honored to represent.

But if it costs my job, it was the right vote and I would do it again today.

<Gavin> Again some haunting images.

we saw coming out of the Capitol that I don't think are going to age well going to a very historic - <Rice> Imagine if those police officers being beaten on by that crowd and dragged down those stairs would have been Mike Pence.

Imagine what would have happened, while the President was tweeting that Mike Pence doesn't have courage.

<Gavin> Some horrifying thoughts, Sir.

We thank you for your time Congressman Tom Rice joining us after just coming back from Washington.

Thank you, Sir.

<Rice> Thank you.

<Gavin> Joining me now to recap the governor's State of the State address and to look at the legislative session is Associated Press Reporter, Jeffrey Collins and the State Newspaper's Maayan Schechter.

Thank you both for joining me.

<Jeffrey Collins> Hello, Gavin.

Thanks for having me.

<Gavin> Great to see you guys again.

We got a new session going.

Let's get into it.

Jeffrey, I see you're at the State House.

Wednesday night the governor gave his fourth State of the State address.

I want to ask you about what we heard in that address.

It was about 45 minutes long.

They do this every year.

They lay out their legislative agenda, budget priorities.

Tell me what you heard.

What stood out to you?

<Collins> Henry McMaster when he does the State of the State usually mentions the things he mentioned the week before in his budget request.

That's been his thing.

The thing that stuck out to me yesterday as I was listening is that almost everything he mentions has a pretty good chance of passing, which is pretty unusual in the past 30 years with the Governor - Legislature relationship.

He's got the rainy day fund that is 500 million dollars, He wants to save that money.

He's got step increases for teachers he wants to put in.

He's got helping out colleges and armory buildings.

He's got some law enforcement help money, but it's all stuff if I was putting money on it's got a pretty good chance of passing.

<Gavin> Yeah.

Maayan, we've seen that over the past couple years with the governor.

He has that good relationship with lawmakers unlike his predecessors.

He doesn't but heads.

He goes along to get along.

He doesn't get everything that he wants but he does get some things and that's a legislative victory in his book because that's how things work out there.

You got to go along get along.

Tell me what you're hearing from lawmakers.

We've seen about a thousand bills already pre-filed.

They're in the system now, working through the system.

Obviously we only see about a hundred of them make it into law.

What are the top priorities right now we're seeing emerge?

It's only been the first week but maybe what you're hearing, what we're seeing now for priorities.

<Maayan Schechter> Well typing off what Jeffrey said, I definitely think the budget is obviously a huge priority of the legislature this year.

They didn't get to pass the new one due to COVID, last year.

I would imagine there's going to be a lot of work being done to do something this year.

I know that there's an emphasis obviously always every single year on education.

I don't think we're going to see a large 84 page Omnibus Education Bill Representative Rita Allison told me a couple weeks ago, she chairs the House Education Committee that we'll see probably individual pieces, things that have a better chance of passage that could include testing for example.

A lot of that is going to be solved through the budget.

We know that there's going to be an emphasis on abortion this year.

There is one in about 30 minutes or so from while we're speaking there's going to be a Senate Medical Affairs Committee holding the first hearing on the Fetal Heartbeat Bill, which we heard the Governor obviously mentioned in his State of the State address that if you slide it over to his desk he will sign it.

We know that's going to be a priority.

That's something that Republican leaders have stressed in the off season.

We know Santee Cooper may come up.

There's some hope from some lawmakers that medical marijuana has a chance.

But what has kind of been more interesting to see the greater sort of emphasis on especially in the House is this equitable law enforcement criminal justice reform package of bills that the speaker has been pushing, that leaders in the House have been pushing that seem to have a really great chance of passage.

At least if not this year, next year before the session ends.

And the redistricting.

I don't want to forget about that.

<Gavin> We can jump into all those in a moment too.

I want to talk about the budget.

We heard the governor talk about it last night.

Again, that's the top priority like Maayan was saying of these lawmakers there.

It's the number one issue they're charged with actually doing by law but it sounds like we're in a pretty good position compared to other states especially after COVID just wreak havoc on state revenues last year.

Give us an overview of how things are shaking out and where we stand as a state right now.

<Collins> Taking you back a year ago before COVID made it's appearance, we had almost two billion dollars worth of extra money to spend.

So that provided a cushion that allowed South Carolina to not have to cut its budget.

They're expecting a little additional revenue that allows for a few of those things the Governor wants to do.

That will probably happen, but in the end it's going to be a status quo budget year.

You're not going to get your extra car if you're an agency or your extra stuff you want but the good news is you're not going to cut employees or anything like that.

<Gavin> It sounds like we're not looking for those big pay raises because like you're saying.

The recurring money is not really there.

There is an excess of one time money, the surplus money, almost a billion dollars extra they can use to plug these gaps like we're talking about in these state agencies.

<Rice> Right.

Nobody's going to fight over that.

I think the governor's 500 million dollar rainy day fund is what he wants to do the most with that money.

That may be the thing the place where everybody clashes a little bit.

There's going to be some COVID relief things that are done and things like that.

So, if there is a big fight over the budget It will be over that bit of money, that one time bit of money that doesn't come up every year.

<Gavin> They always talk about pay raises.

It looks like the only pay raises the governor's proposing that could be mirrored in the budget and the State House going forward is looking for step increases for teachers and maybe law enforcement.

Is that where the likelihood it will be at this point?

<Rice> Yes.

The House Budget Committee is going to take up later today, we're talking on Thursday, a bill that would reinstate the step increases, which are just annual increases teachers get based on their years of experience.

That got postponed because of the uncertainty of the budget when the pandemic started.

So, the Senate already approved it.

So, that would seem like it's going to happen probably fairly quickly, like by February.

The law enforcement, there is a small amount of money for law enforcement raises that would go to the agencies themselves to determine on merit.

But as far as like broad across the board raises, it does not look like it's going to happen.

<Gavin> Then, because money is tight but we're not cutting so that's a pretty good position to be in.

Maayan, let's go back to what we're talking about when we talked about race related issues, criminal justice reform issues.

You're talking about that House Committee that was formed last Summer in light of the wake of all the turmoil we saw in the country.

House leaders looking to make some changes there.

Some overdue changes, some would say, a Hate Crimes bill because we are one of three states that does not have one on our books.

Tell me about that and we have seen pressure from big outside groups pushing lawmakers to see one as well.

What's the state of play there?

What's the likelihood of that happening?

<Schechter> Yeah I mean it seems to have a pretty big chance at least in the House.

We saw the Speaker after that bill package came out of that full committee, put out a press release, basically announcing this package of bills.

We've also seen the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce wrap it's arms around a Hate Crime bill.

I think there's going to be a big push in the House and a really significant chance that passes.

Now the big question is in the Senate.

Some of us of course asked Senate Majority Leader, Shane Massey, what his thoughts were on a Hate Crime bill.

He said he hadn't seen it, wants to see how what would be implemented, but Massey who is an attorney said he wasn't completely comfortable personally of passing something like this.

He doesn't want a situation where he gave the example of high school kids getting in trouble for just stupid things they say potentially.

But he said TBD.

He wants to see it.

He wants to see how it will roll out.

The Governor has not said how he if he would sign it or support it.

He did not mention it in his State of the State address, so that is also TBD.

We don't know where he stands.

I would say a bare minimum, it looks like it'll have a great chance to pass in the House.

<Gavin> Yeah.

I did hear you talked of the Chamber of Commerce.

They're fully supporting that too.

A lot of businesses going forward.

Then also when you look at tourism, they made a good point.

I was listening to one of the speakers talking about tourism, If someone wants to vacation in our state, the likelihood of potential some sort of issue.

A state doesn't have a hate crimes bill, a hate crimes law versus all our neighboring states do, recently Georgia.

So, something that some people might consider before they spend their money in South Carolina.

<Schechter> I think this is something that the business community has also been pushing a lot.

In the wake of what happened last year after at deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others we saw businesses, major companies pushing for change as well.

That was part of it.

People were calling on these companies to do something more to be part of the conversation.

So I think this is kind of an example of that we're seeing.

And also again you mentioned that we're one of three, it looks odd when South Carolina is by itself on this on this issue, especially after Georgia passed it not that long ago.

<Gavin> Jeffrey moving forward talking on some issues we have seen stuck.

Santee Cooper being one of them, one of the biggest elephants in the room at the State House Tell us what's going on that we see the House pushing forward with reform legislation.

They want to see it sold, the state owned utility there, but the Senate not so big on that matter.

Where do you see things going?

How big of a priority will Santee Cooper be this session?

<Collins> Santee Cooper's going to be a bit of everywhere I think.

Currently, we have you know two Chambers.

There are three special committees looking into Santee Cooper.

That's a little bit of legislative magic there.

But it actually tells you is there's three different directions everybody's going.

The question is do you want to sell Santee Cooper to a private or do you want to leave it there and do serious reform?

Everybody agrees serious reform.

I think you're going to probably see a bill passed - I think there's a chance you'll see a bill passed that allows them to sweep aside the the board that runs Santee Cooper and the executives and putting people in place.

The selling part of it to a private company, that seems a little more doubtful.

The House seems enthusiastic about it.

The Senate seems very unenthusiastic about it.

If there's anything you know around here, if the Senate is unenthusiastic about something, good luck in seeing it happen.

Now, that being said, maybe the House gets a really good bid, maybe it changes some minds in the Senate.

We'll see, but overall you're going to hear a lot about Santee Cooper You'll hear it sprinkled all throughout the session.

<Gavin> Definitely a lot to look forward to.

We got about two minutes left.

A lot of long days on debates on there.

The intricacies of that.

Maayan, I want to talk about the Senate Democrats lost a few seats in the Senate.

They have even less of a of a stake.

We've seen some rule changes take place that will potentially limit some debate on some big issues going forward, we saw them change up leadership now.

Brad Hutto was leading the Senate Democrats.

What's the vibe over there?

Are they at a no holds bar type situation right now where they can just say we're going to just keep fighting or do whatever it takes because that's all we can do.

What's going to happen in the Senate these days with these big bills?

<Schechter> I think that remains to be seen.

I do think that there is an attitude by some that they need to make sure that as a caucus of 16 that there is a consensus that they can walk into the Chamber every single day with a unified message, but let's be honest every senator has a different personality depending on what bill.

Not every senator in the same party agrees on everything.

So, I definitely don't think that will see that unifying message all the time.

I do think there is a bit of an attitude by some that look we are in the minority.

Just the other day when the Senate made that rule change, I asked a Democratic senator his thoughts on it.

He said, what can we do?

We don't have the power and the bodies to combat that right now.

So, it's a mix of both.

It'll be interesting to see how that works out.

I do think that there is still going to be some of that burden of working with Republicans on certain issues.

There are a lot of nonpartisan issues and Santee Cooper is probably one of them.

Nonpartisan issues that Republicans and Democrats will need to find some kind of compromise to get things done.

That I don't think changes.

<Gavin> Jeffrey, you want to jump in on that?

<Collins> Yeah.

There are six new senators this year of the 46.

Five of them are Republicans.

Three of them flipped Democratic seats.

Five out of the 30 Republicans that are new, that's the sixth of the Senate's Republicans.

If there's one little thing I've noticed over the first couple days is they seem to get along very well together.

They've been a group you go through all that orientation together and you get to know each other.

It'll be interesting to see if they can create their own little block that gets some things done that might not have been done otherwise.

<Gavin> They're all wearing masks in the Senate too, unlike in the House.

That's a headstart on agreement.

<Collins> ...required it.

<Gavin> We have so much more to talk about but we're out of time.

We'll catch up with you in a couple weeks as we see some developments going forward in State House.

Jeffrey Collins with the Associated Press and Maayan Schechter with the State Newspaper.

Thanks for joining us.

<Schechter> Thanks for having us.

<Gavin> To keep you updated throughout the week, check out the South Carolina Lede.

It's a podcast I host multiple times a week.

It gives you the latest information about politics, COVID-19 and more in our state.

You can find it on South Carolina public radio.org or wherever you find podcasts.

For South Carolina ETV.

I'm Gavin Jackson Be well, South Carolina.

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