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

I'm Gavin Jackson.

As the end of the regular session of the General Assembly came to a close, some major legislation was passed and some like Medical Marijuana and the Hate Crimes bill died for the year.

The Associated Press' Jeffrey Collins and The State's Joe Bustos join me to recap this year's legislative session, but first more from this week.

While the legislative session has ended, several bills are becoming law by a stroke of Governor Henry McMaster's pen in Columbia.

The landmark Early Voting and Election Integrity bill that had broad bipartisan support in both chambers, despite some differences became law on May 13th, but this week, lawmakers political party members and supporters gathered for a ceremonial signing of the bill >> So, individuals can go and vote in that 12 day window leading up to elections without having to make up an excuse.

We want all South Carolinians to have the opportunity to do that.

Eliminate dropboxes, auditing, eliminating third party funding of election, voter roll maintenance, no ballot harvesting, identification requirements for mailing absentee voting.

All of those things were included, but I think it's important for me to tell the entire story of House Bill 4919.

As I introduced it, it was a skeleton bill.

It dealt with early voting.

It dealt with absentee voting.

It dealt with voting centers, and with the work of the members of the House, and the members of the Senate and the Governor and the political party leadership in our state.

This bill grew.

<Gavin> In this day and age when changing election laws can prompt outrage from Democrats and Republicans.

South Carolina's Democratic Party Chairman Trav Robertson said the new law is a model.

>> .I can say this as chairman of the Democratic Party.

I will probably catch hell for being here today.

But this bill sent a clear message to those who will be reviewing our process or our role in nominating the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, and one of the keys is access to the ballot, and allowing us two weeks of early vote sends a clear message that South Carolina wants to continue to make sure that our elections are run above board, above and beyond reproach, but most importantly, they're run effectively and efficiently.

<Gavin> Of course, there were some compromises after the bill hit a snag with the Senate, which won a greater oversight of the state election commission.

>> You know, we ultimately had a compromise that preserved the notion of advice and consent in the Senate, while also sharing power with the House, and ensuring that we have checks and balances between the legislature and the governor, in a spirit that our founders would appreciate, and is really laid out in the Federalist papers that they've penned.

<Gavin> Voters will have multiple early voting location choices in their home counties starting May 31, for the June 14 primaries.

Now to recap the 2022 legislative session, I'm joined by two status reporters, Jeffrey Collins with the Associated Press, and Joe Bustos for The State newspaper.

Welcome back, y'all.

<Jeffrey> Thanks for having me, Gavin.

>> Thanks for having me.

<Gavin> You know, we started the legislative session off together in January talking about what was going on.

Now we get to recap it together.

Jeffrey, I want to talk to you first about the Early Voting Election Integrity bill that we saw the governor sign into law this past week.

He had a ceremonial bill signing this week.

A lot of bipartisanship, a lot of goodwill here, a very popular bill, but there were some moments, some tense moments throughout the whole process, kind of walk us through what happened.

What's in this bill, Jeffrey?

<Jeffrey> Well, it brings, it brings actual true early voting to South Carolina for two weeks, people will be able to go to the polls and vote for the June 14 primary.

That means starting May 31st, you can go and cast a ballot just like you went to the polling place on Election Day, and it's a pretty big deal.

There are also some other smaller components of the bill and band' what's called fusion voting with fusion where one candidate gets to run in two different parties and show up on the ballot twice...

It adds - it makes voter fraud a felony.

It makes a little more restriction on absentee ballot, stuff like that, but I almost thought we weren't going to get that bill this year.

The House and the governor supported one version and it passed through unanimously.

Senate passed their version of the bill unanimously too, but there was one little catch there.

The Senate version of the bill allowed the Senate to confirm all the members of the state election board and the House and the governor felt like that should - too much power in the Senate.

And so, we ended up playing a little game of chicken.

I mean everybody wants to say how we were going to get a bill and everything but to be able to negotiate, you have to be able to, the other side has to think you're willing to just drop it.

So..there was some back and forth negotiation, but we got this bill done about...it, Governor passed Thursday, Governor signed it Friday.

Here we are.

<Gavin> Yeah, we did see a lot back and forth there too, and a lot of House members putting that bill on to other bills too, and trying to get through and a lot of people kind of came out on top of this, and a lot of new leaders, we saw through this whole process too, especially in the House of Brandon Newton, Jay Jordan, and over in the Senate with Senator Kimbrell.

So, really interesting bill right there to that, like you said, Jeffrey will take effect, May 31st, essentially this this primary season, so.. Joe, I want to talk to you about a more controversial bill that got passed, but also somewhat bipartisan, and that was the Trans Student Athlete Ban bill that also had a very interesting journey to get to the governor's desk.

Talk to us about what's in that bill and who this bill affects this law, I should say.

<Joseph> So yeah, this third attempt by state representative Ashley Trantham to get passed this particular two your session.

She finally got through.

The bill bans transgendered women from participating in women's sports and applies to middle school, high school and college athletes.

Proponents say keeps men from participatingin women's sports and keeps boys from participating in girls sports, the middle, and high school level.

Because it says it puts girls and women at unfair competitive disadvantages.

Opponents included State Superintendent Molly Spearman, who said the system that the high school league used was working fine, and with the legislation was looking was a solution looking for problem.

I mean, since 2016, only five trans athletes have applied for waivers through the high school league to participate.

Only one transgendered female high school student was approved and three transgendered male high school students were approved, but now South Carolina is one of 17 states that have some sort of trans athlete law on the books.

<Gavin> Yeah, that's taking effect, like we said, and something that was really big, had been pushed for a while there and finally got across the finish line this past week or so.

Jeffrey, since we're on the subject of education, I want to ask you about a few other important education bills that reached the governor's desk.

One of them is dealing with unencumbered teacher time throughout the school day, and then another one is student lunch debt relief.

Talk to us about those bills, and you know, how that factors into this whole education discussion we've been having?

<Jeffrey> Yeah, I mean, these are two bills that have been very important to the education community.

I mean, teachers have asked for ever, several years.

In fact, one of the things that the big rally at the Statehouse back in 2019 was about was to get, and one of the things was to get a 30 minute break for teachers.

So they could have 30 minutes where they don't have any students where they can eat a lunch, use the bathroom, whatever it is that they need to do, just like most everyone else has on their job, and the other one, it doesn't allow school districts to turn over kids that owe money for school lunch.

The school districts can't turn that over to debt collection, and that was another very important bill and it got a lot of bipartisan support, because I mean, it's just one of those things where I mean, kids have to eat.

I mean, is it really fair to turn the debt over to a collection agency and that - is there a different way of doing things, and that it took a few years to get that passed too, but again, these are, these aren't humongous education deals.

These aren't, you know, teacher pay raises or massive overhauls, but they're big deals to teachers and educators in that group.

<Gavin> And Jeffrey keeping with that, when we look at, you know, these big overhauls these big changes, obviously, we're talking about teacher pay raises.

That's a budget discussion, which we'll talk about later in the show, but what about other factors when it comes to that whole movement that you're talking about?

Do you feel like it's just really piecemeal action when it comes to big reforms?

<Jeffrey> Yeah, I think that was a lesson that got learned.

You know, there's the huge education overhaul bill in 2019, that the House passed.

It rolls over to the Senate in 2020, and the Senate, by all accounts looked like they were going to pass something out of it, but then COVID happened, I think the lesson that got learned there was it's hard to take this ...gigantic overhaul bill and get it through, it's better to get it through in pieces.

And I mean, there's been some testing reform.

There's been some other things done in education.

I think that's what you're going to see from here on out is these smaller bites being taken instead of this huge chunk that they decided to take a few years ago.

<Gavin> ...Then of course, a couple of billion dollars in federal aid too, that came as a result of COVID going to school districts as well, hopefully, feeling some improvements there, too.

Joe, another controversial education topic.

This session was critical race theory.

That's the concept that is not taught in South Carolina K through 12 schools.

Nevertheless, that became the focus of the House Education Committee, and they heard about 15 hours of testimony around that.

They crafted a bill.

Tell us where that bill went, how maybe it's still in play.

<Joseph> So, I think one of the key things the House track was hoping to get this passed during crossover week.

At the same time they're giving the Trans Athletes bill passed because of the hundreds of members on The Trans Athletes' bill the House was unable to get to the Critical Race Theory bill on crossover week, which meant that it got delayed and didn't make it out of House until, until April, and when it when it passed the House, it went over to the Senate, it just sat in committee.

House members tried to attach it to another bill, during the last week of session, when that bill went over back to the Senate, it got placed on the calendar for a later day and then it just died.

So, Critical Race Theory bill isn't happening this year.

<Gavin> But we can possibly see it in the budget in the form of a proviso, like we saw in the current year.

<Joseph> Possibly, we will see what...what, what ends up out of final conference committee?

<Gavin> Yeah, we'll talk about the budget, like I said in just a moment, but...I want to keep talking about some of these bills that didn't make it to the governor's desk, but some that didn't, Of course, we're talking about criminal justice reform, social justice issues that we saw really come to light in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd.

We saw a big push in the House for such issues like as Civil Asset Forfeiture, reform, Drug Sentencing reform, the Hate Crimes law - bill.

None of those made it, but we did see some changes for policing in the state.

Talk to us about what got to the governor's desk.

<Jeffrey> What ended up getting to the governor's desk is a bill that puts a little more guidelines on policing.

One of the key ones is police officers to have to go to the academy, Police Academy and to be certified.

They go through multiple week training, and - but one thing South Carolina has allowed for a while is while an officer is waiting for a slot to open, they can actually be a police officer without having gone through the training.

There's only - there's a there's actually a certainly a window of several months, they can do that in and after a police officer that was in that situation hadn't been fully trained yet was shot and killed.

He was a Florence airport police officer that kind of switched the push from criminal justice reform, you know, civil forfeiture and that kind of thing, more than this policing role, and so, this bill only allows that non-certified officer to be a police officer in the presence of a certified police officer, essentially a trainer - trainee kind of situation.

It also does a few other things.

It bans certain chokeholds.

It requires an officer that sees a fellow officer do something illegal or do something harmful towards somebody to intervene.

They're required to by this law to go ahead and intervene and try to stop the situation, and there's some other training things that kind of give a certain, you know, standards across the board in South Carolina, small and big police departments.

<Gavin> Yeah, definitely, because a lot of those bigger police departments have a lot of those standards already on the books, but a lot of this is targeted to the smaller departments that don't have the resources per se, to have such things on the books, but also, the Hate Crimes bill, really a lot of attempts right there to get that through, because it did go as far as it's ever gone before, but still didn't make it across the finish line this year.

<Jeffrey> No, it was, you know, I think and probably if you roll the tape back in January, I was like, you know, ...the House, That was the big hurdle was the House I think the Senate's going to be okay, but there was a group of senators, Republican senators that did not want this bill at all.

They didn't want to debate it.

They didn't want to bring it up on the floor.

and it never moved.

I mean, it got out of judiciary committee at the end of 2021, and it didn't take a single step forward after that.

So, I mean, in the end, the, you know, we'll see I mean, all bills die at the end of the session.

So, hate crimes will have to be revived again.

It sounds like the supporters have concluded that they'll have to get it through the Senate first now before they can get it back into the House and have that happen, but South Carolina and Wyoming are the only states in the US that don't have a Hate Crimes law now.

So, we'll see pressure gets put on South Carolina from business and some other things to eventually get this done.

<Gavin> We did see a big push...at the end there.

Joe, I want to talk to you about conference committees and bills that are still alive, but have to have some differences ironed out.

They passed both chambers, but with different language in them.

So, we have committees with six lawmakers on the right now working in this little offseason before special session on June 15th.

One of those bills is the Medical Conscience bill.

Tell us about that bill and why that's such a big issue right now.

<Joseph> So, this is a bill that allows medical providers to choose not to perform a procedure they have the moral protection to.

So, if a doctor doesn't want to perform a medical service like gender affirming care, he or she wouldn't face any kind of criminal or civil penalties for it.

Supporters say this allows medical providers to stand by their religious beliefs, but opponents such as LGBTQ community say it will allow certain patients to be discriminated against and they call it vague and overly broad.

Some of the opponents say it can feed - some opponents say it will affect those who are seeking gender affirming care, birth control, or even HIV medication.

<Gavin> Gotcha.

Yeah, definitely, and that could also on the flip side, if doctors don't want to prescribe someone ivermectin, they don't have to do that either.

...That was a big push back during the COVID days too.

So, it's kind of cut both ways, there.

Again, that bill's in conference committee along with another bill, Jeffrey, this is a controversial one, the Education Scholarship Account program, which opponents have said is basically a voucher program.

This is a pilot program, but talk to us about the state of it.

What goes into this bill?

<Jeffrey> Probably the outside of the budget is probably the biggest difference between two versions of bills that the House and Senate passed this year.

The House version is just a three year pilot program.

They would have to come back around and renew it.

The Senate version is permanent.

They paid - there's different, they pay for it in different ways.

The Senate version actually, takes money out of the way it gets sent through to K through 12 schools for the scholarships, and they're worth $6,000 dollars each.

The House uses just one time reserve money, and it's a $5,000 dollar scholarship each.

They both are providing for mostly for low income students.

It's the students whose families are eligible for Medicaid and things like that.

I believe it's the House version sets aside some of these scholarships for military families, but they're going to have to find, figure out the difference between them.

I mean, I think you're going to end up with something.

I mean, both Senate leadership and House leadership want this.

So, I think they'll figure out the compromise.

We'll see where they end up, but it could be some pretty intense negotiations for a few weeks.

<Gavin> and one of the biggest advancements, I'm guessing for school choice proponents.

<Jeffrey> So, it's a big deal.

This has been back before...we go back to Governor Mark Sanford.

This is one of his things that he really wanted.

I mean, this is for school, for folks that have been pushing hard for school choice and for being able to spend public money on private schools.

This is a benchmark bill if it comes through.

<Gavin> Gotcha.

So again, a lot of big bills here passing and then also soon to pass that a lot of folks can run on in November.

A lot of folks are probably running on right now for these June primaries.

We can talk about that in a minute, but I also want to talk about bills that are dead D.E.A dead after the end of this two years session.

We did talk with Senator Tom Davis last week about his Medical Marijuana bill, which he will resurrect next year.

We'll see him move that through fairly early in the session is what he's saying, but Joe, the big bill that died as the clock ticked down to 5pm last Thursday, was the USC Board of Trustees Restructuring bill.

That was quite something to see in the Senate.

What was going on there?

What was that bill about, and what were the differences?

<Joseph> So, the House had its version to reduce the number of board members on the USC board, and remove the governor's voting power and remove the State Superintendent as an ex officio member, a couple - with a couple of other changes.

The Senate was votinh for the wrong version, but they also wanted to make sure that those who are about to lose their seats next year that they don't have any kind of leadership positions on the board.

When it got to the Senate floor, Senate minority leader Brad Hutto held up the bill, and when they were debating the bill, he actually held the floor and ran out the clock until 5pm and for those football fans out there, he pretty much ran the perfect form and offense, the whole possession of the ball.

He was criticized by a fellow Democrat Dick Harpootlian, who said, Hutto has, his law partner is on the USC board, and there's a personal relationship, and he called on Hutto to recuse himself from all of this.

Hutto said, "No!

I'm not going to I'm going to hold up this bill."

And it ultimately didn't pass.

So, that means we still haven't had elections for USC board members this year.

We may get it during the special session, and they could agree to do the two chambers could agree to hold the elections and any kind of board restructuring on USC has to wait till next year, if they're going to try again.

>> Yeah, so <Jeffrey> Gavin, as long as we're pouring one out for dead bills.

Let's do one for the State Flag bill.

<Gavin> Oh, yeah.

>> It was a bill that would have standardized the state flag because right now, the flag that flies in the governor's office looks different than the flag that flies over the Statehouse, but unfortunately, that got to the Senate and it just went kaput, and I thought it led to probably the best quote of the session from Brad Hutto.

Again, Senator Brad Hutto, who said, who compared all the different versions of the flags to photos of his wife.

They're all unique.

They're all different, but they're all beautiful.

So, let's pour one out for the state flag too.

<Gavin> Yeah, and... <Joseph> I think Senator Hutto would think the flag behind Gavin looks beautiful, so.

<Gavin> I was going to say, I don't know which version we have behind me, but I'm sure it's the right one.

But Jeffrey... (laughter) Jeffrey, yeah, that was, again, because senators can object to bills and that can hold them up, and that's that's the process over there in the Senate, but one of the biggest bills that we're still debating that we're still seeing lawmakers work on, a very select group of lawmakers, is the budget, Jeffrey.

We had a lot of extra money in the budget this year, which of course leads to more problems, different different leaders at play, different priorities at play there, but tell us what's the status of budget negotiations.

Maybe is there anything that we can point to right now where we can say definitively that something will be in the budget or... is it so in flux that we really can't at this point?

>> I mean, most everything is kind of is locked in, I suspect, you'll see some sort of raise for teachers and state employees, you know, all...the stuff that's still in flux, obviously, the tax cut, obviously, whether we get a rebate that's in flux.

The state...the House included in its budget, about 300 plus million dollars worth of kind of projects for districts.

So, they'll have to figure out some way to get that together, but the wildcard you talk about the where we're at in negotiations, sometime in the next week or two, there probably will be another budget estimate released.

We still don't know how much money the state took in over the last few months, and if it's the same way, it's been over the past six, seven months of this budget cycle, there could be a lot more money left over.

I mean, they could end up with hundreds of millions of dollars that they weren't expecting to spend, which certainly makes it a lot easier to paper over the differences between both sides.

That's probably coming before the end of this month, and I would imagine certainly before the budget negotiators get together and start talking <Gavin> Gotcha and Joe just to jump in there, because you cover the budget, too.

I mean, I know, state economists have been very conservative and you know, warning a lot about how things are going to slow down in their own ways, because a lot of that money, a lot of that extra revenue coming in was because of the stimuluses from the federal government because of COVID.

Of course, there's been some organic growth there too in the tax revenue, but anything else jumping out to you during these budget negotiations?

<Joseph> It's a couple of small key things in the budget that there's 20 million dollars for a new DJJ facility for the children who are severely mentally ill that are in DJJ's care.

There'e 3% raises for state employees, both chambers are agreeing to and there's money for the Department of Social Services to help them provide services under the Michelle H lawsuit settlement.

That's something they've been asking for.

I think there's actually is enough money for them to carry out the lawsuit settlement.

<Gavin>...A lot still in play that we'll be watching for.

...Jeffrey, I want to ask you really quick, you brought up tax relief, tax reform, tax rebates, we're going to see some sort of version of that, because both chambers have passed a version of that.

What's going on with those?

Can you give us more detail?

<Jeffrey> On the tax cuts side, the big difference is that the House version cuts the state's highest tax bracket from seven to 6.5% immediately and then takes this stair step approach to slowly get it back down to six and consolidates all the lower brackets.

The Senate just lops it right down.

I mean, takes it down to I believe it's 5.7%, 5.8% Which one Joe?

Was it 5.8?

<Joesph> It's 5.7% >> 5.7%.

Yes.

And so you know, the Senate's cost more this year, because it has such a bigger cut initially.

And then on the rebate side of the House does not have a rebate plan where they just give you money back directly.

The Senate version has rebates ranging up all the way up to $700 dollars and it spends a billion dollars on it to make sure everybody that files an income tax form gets a rebate, even if they don't pay any tax at all.

The thought is you pay sales tax and some other taxes.

So, you deserve something small about $100 dollars or so, even if you don't have an income tax burden, and that is a big gulf that they need to figure out and negotiate through.

<Gavin> ...We have about three minutes left and I know we're going to see a lot of money coming to the state from the federal government too.

They passed that House Authorization bill for American Rescue Plan Act dollars, Joe.

That's going to be big, as well as the Savannah River site settlement too.

Just the status of those bills and what we can see happen as a result.

<Joseph> So, the ARPA money the COVID relief money that one, that passed both chambers is 1.9 billion of 2.5 billion the state has to allocate, you'll see money for a new DHEC lab, though there's money for broadband expansion, money for the office of resilience, money for water and sewer lines...or rural infrastructure.

So and...money for widening I-26.

between Columbia and Charleston, and widening I-95, the first 33 miles north of Georgia, which is good for me when I come back to Florida.

The Savannah River site money there's $525 million for them to allocate.

There are differences in how they want to spend that.

Most of the money will be going to Allendale, Barnwell and Aiken counties, but each chamber wants to spend the money outside those counties.

The Senate wants to put some money into the adjacent counties and also into county transportation funds for road projects for local road projects.

The House wants some of the SRS money into the Port of Charleston for barge and railroad improvements.

So that still needs to be worked out.

How do you spend half a billion dollars?

<Gavin> We'll find out soon.

We have a few moments left here.

Jeffrey, I want to ask you just about this special session that lawmakers will have June 15.

That's the day after primaries.

A lot of House members will learn their fate whether they're coming back in January or not, but I want to ask you what they'll be doing that and then also just kind of piggyback on that with what's going on in the opposite session itself, including looking at the future of abortion in the state.

<Jeffrey> Yeah, I mean, it's almost all budget.

I mean, if you look through the 200, more than 200 bills that the House and Senate passed over this two year session, Master, Governor McMaster vetoed very few of them and they were mostly local bills that, you know, he just vetoes on, you know, if a lot...philosophical reasons, and they get overturned.

So it's mostly going to be budget, if not, and then some conference committee things like the voucher bill, and things get taken up.

It's...the most interesting special session may happen sometime in the summer or fall, depending on if we get a ruling that overturns Roe versus Wade, depending on how far that ruling goes.

If it goes far enough to where it you know, South Carolina has the six week ban, essentially, if the Supreme Court allows an even further ban, chances are the House and Senate will come back and at least debate you know, maybe a full ban on abortion in South Carolina or whatever would fit under that Supreme Court ruling.

So that's the big wildcard we could have a couple of weeks in Columbia debating abortion depending on what the US Supreme Court does.

<Gavin> Gotcha.

What you're saying is that there is no offseason in Columbia is what I'm hearing.

>> No.

<Gavin> Great.

We'll be watching with Joe and Jeffrey.

That's Jeffrey Collins with the Associated Press, and Joe Bustos with The State newspaper two great Statehouse reporters.

You can follow their work in their newspapers and respective outlets and of course on Twitter.

Thank you guys so much.

<Both> Thanks for having me.

Thank you, Gavin.

>> For South Carolina ETV.

I'm Gavin Jackson, Be well, South Carolina.

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