Welcome to This Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week we recapped the past legislative session and talked about the bills that passed, like the Fetal Heartbeat bill and the Open Carry with Training Act to the bills that didn't pass, like Medical Marijuana.

To do that, I'm joined by Jamie Lovegrove with the Post and Courier and Maayan Schechter with the State newspaper.

Maayan, Jamie thanks for joining me.

<Maayan> Thanks for having us.

<Gavin> Jamie, let's lead off with you.

I want to talk about Republican priorities this past legislative session.

Specifically, starting back at the beginning of session in February when Republicans had a huge win, a legislative priority going through and that was the so-called Fetal Heartbeat bill.

That was a big win for them there, something that was years in the making.

Kind of walk us through, how that came to be and where that's going right now, what the current situation is with it now.

>> Right, so, I mean the theme of this year's legislative session overall was elections have consequences.

It's a cliche we hear over and over again, but this year really proved it.

And last year in the 2020 elections, Republicans picked up five democratic held State House seats.

Most importantly three state Senate seats where Democrats in the minority had successfully been able to block this bill for a number of years now, but by losing those three seats and Republicans gaining them, Republicans were basically able to steamroll them and get this through.

Yeah, it does market a really significant victory for Republicans that have been pushing this for a number of years.

Of course in terms of it taking effect, that remains very much up in the air as Republicans knew this was going to be immediately challenged in the courts.

It was and it was blocked by the lower courts that are constrained by Supreme Court precedent that women have a constitutional right to abortion access before the fetus could survive outside the womb, which is typically around 24 weeks.

This bill the Fetal Heartbeat Bill would ban abortions after around six weeks, which the majority of abortions in South Carolina are after six weeks.

And so now we wait to see what will happen on the appeals that the really significant development, this week on that was that the Supreme Court did decide to take up a case out of Mississippi, which was a 15 week abortion ban.

And the fact that they decided to take that up after months of waiting indicates that this increasingly conservative Supreme Court may be willing now, for the first time in about 50 years, to really significantly amend their precedent on abortion, potentially curtail abortion access, and allows states to restrict access to abortion much more, could create an opening for South Carolina's law to take effect, but that will not be for years down the line.

<Gavin> So, yeah again a lot of consequences were seen playing out here.

We did see some leadership shake up too in the Senate, especially when it came Democrats because of those three seats.

How did that maybe play out this year, when we saw that new Democratic leader take hold in the Senate?

<Jamie> You know, it was a very difficult job to take on Brad Hutto, Democrat from Orangeburg, long time senator replace Nikki Setzler from Lexington, who, you know, I mean, basically the situation was for one thing Senator Setzler is I think very close to retirement at this point, one of the long serving members of the Chamber, but the fact of the matter was, Democrats had a really terrible election year in the Senate.

And it's pretty hard for the minority leader to argue that he should keep his job.

So he decided to step down.

You know, this is a very difficult job for Senator Hutto because it's really your ability to not only advance your own agenda but even to block the Republican agenda is extremely limited.

You know and what they didn't want to do and I think Hutto was quite careful about this was deliberately antagonize Republicans.

They wanted to play their cards, and pick their battles, as opposed to just fighting with everything, because they knew that ultimately at the end of the day, Republicans would always have the vote.

So they put up a lot of fuss on some of these bills, including abortion, including guns that we'll get to, including some of the others, but there was pretty limited ability for them to really impact the outcome.

<Gavin> And Maayan picking up from there too when we're talking about these big ticket items that Republicans passed this year, specifically the concealed weapons with a concealed weapon permit, Open Carry bill.

Again, it's not permitless carry, like we saw pass in some other states, but it is, it's an advancement for second amendment rights advocates in the state.

Tell us about how this bill came to be.

Some Republicans say it didn't go far enough.

Some law enforcement said it went too far.

How did it go down in the State House this year?

<Maayan> So, guns is sort of fitting on the same themes as Jamie just mentioned.

Right after the November 2020 elections, the House Republican Caucus was pretty clear, abortion and guns were going to be the two issues that they were going to push through.

And they did that, both successfully.

Obviously, the Senate took up abortion first, but they did both successfully.

The first bill out of the gate as it relates to guns came from Republican State Representative Bobby Cox out of Greenville.

He filed an Open Carry with Training legislation as you just mentioned, that would allow the open carry but only for someone who has a concealed weapons permit.

So it doesn't necessarily change who can own a gun and who can carry a gun.

It just changes how you can remove your jacket or your shirt or another piece of clothing.

And, but as Bobby Cox told reporters and everyone else, Open Carry with Training was never necessarily where he wants to see the finish line.

He wants permitless carry.

So there was a deal struck behind the scenes between leadership and between some in the Caucus to also push a permitless carry or what we know as constitutional carry across the line.

The House did both successfully.

There were many Republicans who had issues with both bills, especially Republicans who really quite aligned themselves with law enforcement or were listening very intensely to law enforcement including state law enforcement division Chief Mark Keel, also Leon Lott, Richland County Sheriff among other police chiefs as well out of Charleston, out of Columbia who were very opposed to it.

Now what's really interesting is that and I'm sure Jamie and others spoke to Senate Judiciary Chairman Luke Rankin, as well, but he really did not see a gun bill coming to fruition this year.

He was very clear that there was just too much on the agenda.

He was also trying to prioritize Santee Cooper and felt like the next session, the last year of the two year session would be the year to take it.

Well, obviously that didn't go as planned and as we saw in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey pulled a procedural power move pulled it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was able to get the Open Carry with Training legislation on the floor.

That was a multi day, hours long debate that went into the night and eventually they did pass it.

Now the Senate did make some changes to it, which once it went back to the House, the House did accept those changes.

They include, for example, narrowing the window for when court clerks need to send permit records, legal records over to SLED, in case someone is not allowed to own a gun, for example.

But one of the other things that they did and this was an amendment proposed and passed by Charleston Senator Sandy Senn, was to start a 90, not a 60, but a 90 day clock.

So the law that was signed, the bill that was signed into law by the governor just the other day doesn't actually take effect until 90 days from now.

So I think that's August 16th.

So that's when actually people with concealed weapons permits will be actually able to open carry in the state of South Carolina.

Now I don't think just as Jamie mentioned with abortion.

I don't think this is the last time we'll be talking about guns.

As I mentioned, Representative Cox is very clear that he'd like to see permitless carry get across the finish line.

So, we'll have to see if that works out in his favor, moving forward.

<Gavin> Something to build off of next session.

Another controversial bill that also made it to the governor's desk this past week was one that would make the electric chair the default execution method of death row inmates in our state since we can no longer acquire these lethal injection drugs.

It also adds the firing squad as an option too.

Can you tell us about this bill?

I know the governor, it's one of the first he signed into law when a slate of bills reached his desk.

Kind of controversial, raising some eyebrows, but something that's been a long time in the making as well.

<Jamie> Yep.

Yeah, yet another bill that has been introduced for many years.

I remember talking four or five years ago to then State Senator William Timmons, now a member of Congress, who used to be the biggest advocate for this bill and the argument that they have made for years is, look we have a death penalty in South Carolina.

That's the law on the books.

We can have a debate separately about whether or not that should be the law or not, but while it is the law we've got this situation where we cannot carry it out, because of the fact that pharmaceutical companies have been unwilling to sell the lethal injection drugs, fearing public backlash over their involvement in it and you know, so we've effectively nullified a law that does exist.

So they had been searching for these alternatives for years.

The proposal for many years was to make the electric chair the default if lethal injection drugs aren't available.

The interesting twist this year was that a tag team of Senator Dick Harpootlian, Democrat from Columbia and Senator Greg Hembree, a Republican from Myrtle Beach, decided to add an amendment to also include a firing squad as an option.

So, inmates, death row inmates will have the option to choose between the electric chair or the firing squad.

Dick Harpootlian pretty forcefully argued.

Both these senators are prosecutors.

Both of them have worked on death penalty cases before.

Dick Harpootlian spoke at length about sending Pee Wee Gaskins to death row in the 90s.

And they argued that basically the firing squad is more humane than the electric chair, that if you're going to have the death penalty and you're going to be executing people that the firing squad is more likely to effectively guarantee instantaneous death.

If you're getting shot at by multiple people all at once you're going to die right away.

Whereas there are a number of cases over the years of the electric chair not instantaneously killing people, people catching on fire, people writhing around for a minute and it can be a lot more painful.

So they were able to successfully do that.

They were able to convince their colleagues that this was not a poison pill designed to try to kill the bill.

It was a real serious proposal.

It has drawn a lot of attention but the House ultimately passed it as well and as the governor said in signing it.

His view is that this gives the families of victims of these murderous crimes, the potential to see justice in their eyes.

<Gavin> Gotcha, yeah.

There was some debate over whether to add hanging and other different things and some people didn't see that as a poison pill, but the firing squad, obviously now a law on the books here in the state.

Maayan, the House moved several bills this year, dealing with police reform, sentencing reform, equitable justice in the state.

Talking about the Hate Crimes bill they got a lot of attention because it passed the House earlier this year, as well as these other bills, but when they hit the Senate, a big uphill battle there too.

Some of them, the hate crimes bill did make it to the Senate floor, but it's been objected to.

These other bills just kind of got there a little too late to really be actionable this session.

Tell us about the state of play surrounding these bills.

<Maayan> Right so that handful of legislation that you just mentioned was born out of a committee that House Speaker Jay Lucas Republican from Darlington put together in response to the summer protests after George Floyd's murder.

They included as you mentioned hate crimes legislation.

They also included police reform.

Now, obviously some of these bills have been filed for years.

Wendell Gilliard, a Democrat out of Charleston has been trying to push a hate crimes bill forward year after year after year and hasn't been successful, but saw a chance this year especially after just the great sort of public push that there was.

A bunch of these bills came through the House as you mentioned, got to the Senate and hit a wall.

For example, police reform, this is a bill, that what the House did is they overwrote a separate bill dealing with certification of police officers.

This one deals with ensuring that all police agencies have mandated policies.

It looks at choke holds.

It looks at other ways that police officers would respond to issues, situations with other people, got its way to the Senate as did Hate Crimes as you mentioned and it didn't go anywhere.

Dealing with hate crimes in particular is interesting, because both Republicans and Democrats really didn't feel like this bill did enough.

Democrats really didn't feel like this bill did enough because it was pulled apart.

It didn't really deal a whole lot with verbal harassment or harassment, in general.

It really only dealt with the most serious of crimes.

Republicans had issues with it especially conservative Republicans, who believed that language in the bill would go after religious people, conservative religious people.

So, the bill never made its way out, despite the fact that it was pushed heavily by the Chamber of Commerce, despite the fact that you have businesses like Walmart and others getting heavily involved.

There is a chance that it survives in the next year, but we already know that Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey has problems with it.

We also know again that Democrats have issues with it.

We also know that Governor Henry McMaster hasn't completely been on board with the idea.

We also know that with these types of bills the movement really truly happens when there's something happening in the public.

Right?

So, will that same sort of push, that motivation, that motivating factor be there next year when they're returning during a time, when all of them in the House, the governor, along with others were going to be seeking re-election.

But as the Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey did express at the end of session last Thursday, he was disappointed that the Senate really didn't tackle, for example police reform, something that he hoped the Chamber would have done, but got buried in other things.

<Gavin> Yeah and one of those bills, sentencing reform, getting rid of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses and reducing sentences for people who are not eligible for parole, different things in those bills that came out of that big committee like you said last July, still active, still can be revisited in January.

But Jamie I want to talk about some other things, talking about medical marijuana, the state of play on that one.

We always hear the headlines for this situation.

We've heard Senator Tom Davis talk about this bill for years now.

You even heard from the governor this year being a little more open to the possibility of signing this into law whenever it reaches his desk.

Kind of give us an update about where that stands.

It sounds like, I guess, maybe what we're going to hear a debate for in January.

<Jamie> Yeah, so this bill that Senator Tom Davis has been pushing for many years as he calls it, the most conservative Medical Cannabis bill in the country.

It's very restrictive.

There's no smoking forms allowed.

It's very limited in terms of who can use it, how they can get it, the number of ailments they would need to be able to get it.

And that passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Senator Greg Hembree, we mentioned earlier put a hold on the bill as any one senator can do in the Senate, they can basically block bills from coming up for consideration.

That was very frustrating to Senator Davis, but he was able to get a commitment out of Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey that they will put the bill on special order effectively priority status at the beginning of the 2022 session.

So, it's basically the same thing they did for the Fetal Heartbeat Abortion bill.

This year was the very first thing that came up.

The Medical Cannabis bill will get the same treatment next year.

I think it's unclear at this stage whether or not it will actually pass.

This is still a very conservative state, very conservative Senate.

A Senate that has been very reluctant to deal with this for many years, despite Davis' advocacy, but he should at least be able to get a debate and a vote and then the House is basically waiting for the Senate.

The House's approach to this has been we're not going to spend all of our time debating Medical Marijuana bill, potentially voting on it, potentially getting it out of the House, only to see the Senate continue to doggle on it, be a waste of our time.

So, if the Senate passes it, then the House will start considering it.

But as you mentioned Gavin potentially the most significant development on this bill this year, with the fact that Governor Henry McMaster in an interview with the Post and Courier did indicate openness for the first time to potentially signing this.

He said that he still has some concerns that Sled Chief Law Enforcement Chief Mark Keel has concerns about how it would be implemented but that Tom Davis made a very convincing argument.

He has called him about it repeatedly and so for the first time now he has really indicated that he could potentially sign that bill into law.

<Gavin> A lot moving.

A lot going on there too, for sure.

Jamie I want to stick with you because we did see both the House and Senate pass a budget this year but they have not agreed on a budget.

They'll be coming back over the coming weeks to adapt a new budget.

I just want to ask you about what's going on there And what we saw in some of these budget proposals that might stick around when we see the final budget come out.

<Jamie> Right.

Well, for one thing, the finances of South Carolina fared a lot better after this pandemic than a lot of other states.

We did - We were dealing very conservatively with the budget for the past year, because they were worried about the potential revenue impacts of the pandemic and the fact that we had been taking less tax money, but it really did not have nearly as negative effect as initial projections expected, so we did end up having a pretty full budget in the end.

What the Senate has done perhaps most significantly is give thousand dollar raises to all K-12 teachers across the state which they have been asking for many years now.

That'll cost about 72 million dollars.

They're spending 400 million dollars on public colleges.

They are giving a two percent cost of living increase for all state employees.

So, a lot of money going out again because of the fact that we didn't take as big a hit as we expected.

The House, the bill, the budget that the House passed was more restrictive because they did it earlier.

They weren't sure exactly how much money they were going to have.

Now that the Senate has passed their version, the House can come back, decide what they want to keep in and what they want to take out.

And I guess one question we will see moving forward too, is we did see about a hundred million dollars worth of earmarks for special projects in the Senate bill.

For the first time, this year there was a lot more transparency around that because of, largely because of the reporting that the State Newspaper did about how that has been shrouded in secrecy for many years.

We at least now have a better idea of who is requesting that money and where it's going to than we did in years past.

<Gavin> So, we'll be watching that coming this June then there's about 2.5 billion dollars in federal spending too from COVID relief that they need to figure out as well.

Maayan, we have about five minutes left I want to ask you about some other controversial bills that we didn't see play out in our state as they did in other states.

I'm talking about the Transgender Sports bill.

We saw that happen in Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia banning transgender girls from playing in high school sports.

I want to get your thoughts on where that ended up in our legislative session.

And then maybe some of the politics surrounding it.

<Maayan> Well, I think the House gave a pretty resounding, absolutely not.

We're not passing not now.

Now, twice.

And this is a bill to take a step back that as you mentioned was filed in a handful of states after the November 2020 election when we saw a flurry of very socially conservative legislation.

It's a copycat bill.

It's been blowing around other legislatures for the past several months.

But in the South Carolina House, now twice, the same committee, twice has rejected this bill sponsored by Representative Ashley Trantham out of the upstate.

It was a bill that made its way through to the full Judiciary Committee and was rejected and stopped by Republicans.

That is a committee that's dominated by Republicans, but Republicans joined with Democrats in these instances and put a stop to it.

This has came after hours of testimony in which it was conveyed to lawmakers that truly there is a such a small number of students that this would impact and then on top of it, like I said.

You also had the South Carolina Superintendent of Education, Molly Spearman, speak out against it.

She rarely does kind of come to these committee meetings, especially on such sort of hot red meat issues.

And here she was testifying in front of the committee that she was against it as well.

But it's definitely not the last time I think we'll be talking about it, hearing about it, watching it.

The Senate will be probably debating it, potentially next year, at least in committee.

Anderson, Republican Senator Richard Cash, basically got a promise from his colleagues to put together a committee and so he started hearings on it, right before session ended.

So, I don't think this is one of those issues that's going to go away, but I think the House has pretty clear on where it stands with it.

And that's - you know - we've now debated this twice.

We said no twice.

A third time might be a little bit over kill.

<Gavin> Yeah, definitely the case there, but like you said we'll see what the Senate does with that track record if it holds steady next year.

Jamie speaking of other bills that passed in other states, looking at like election security laws here, we didn't see the same push as they saw in places like Georgia and Florida.

Tell us why and what maybe we can expect maybe next year or if these bills are kind of dead for right now.

>> I mean, for one reason, it may just be because of the fact that South Carolina is not really a swing state right now.

This is a pretty Republican dominated state.

Republicans are not particularly worried about losing statewide elections anytime soon, but losing their grip on control of power and most of the states that we are seeing these big sweeping election overhauls are in states where Republicans are very worried about losing control, like Georgia.

Another issue, this year was as with so many issues over the years the Senate and the House just really weren't able to get on the same page.

The House speaker Jay Lucas did introduce a bill at the beginning of session.

It was one of his top priorities to give the State Election Commission more power over county election administrators that typically oversee what happens in their local elections.

Elections are normally administered at sort of the local level and then rise to the top.

This would be much more of a top down operation, but the counties a lot of them, really did not like that.

They said one size doesn't fit all.

We need to have our own procedures that fit our own unique needs.

The Senate largely agreed with them.

Senator Chip Campsen said he didn't think - he thought that the House bill went too far.

The Senate instead was working on basically inserting themselves into the process by giving the Senate confirmation votes for the governor's appointees to the Election Commission, the five member Election Commission.

At the very last day of session on sine die, the Senate did sort of offer an olive branch to the House, kind of offering a diminished version of the speaker's bill tacked on to the Senate bill.

The House didn't bite on that.

The speaker said they'll have to basically work out their issues with the Senate over the off season and potentially come back next year, but other than that, major election bills really went no where.

There were a few very minor election bills that did pass to do with things like filing fees and other issues.

But in terms of major broad changes, there really was not any that this session.

<Gavin> And Maayan we have less than a minute left, just want your thoughts on what we'll see in coming weeks and also later this year with redistricting.

<Maayan> Well, right, as Jamie mentioned the legislature or the House will be coming back to tackle the budget.

We could see some negotiating happen as it relates to Santee Cooper while both chambers passed their own legislation, they really need to kind of come together and hash that out and then months into Fall we'll probably see some returns and kind of special session dealing with redistricting, though the Fall census numbers of the legislature would need to actually do the redistricting process aren't expected to come out until August or September so won't see any action on that until much later.

There's also other bills, of course that they sent to conference committee, giving it a chance at life potentially this year.

So we could see some movement on other things and as you mentioned, there could be more conversations dealing with COVID.

We just hopefully - we don't know what's going to happen with it.

We hope it's gone.

But, who knows after last year when they had to return a few times to take to take that issue up.

But that's what I think is this year.

<Gavin> Yeah.

Gotcha.

We have to leave it there, but we'll be watching with you as well.

That's Jamie Lovegrove with the Post and Courier and Maayan Schechter with the State Newspaper.

Thanks guys.

<Both> Thanks Gavin.

To stay up to date with the latest news throughout the week, check out the South Carolina Lede.

It's a podcast that I host and drops twice a week.

You can find it on SouthCarolinapublicradio.org and wherever you find podcasts.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina