♪ (opening music) ♪ Welcome to This Week in South Carolina .

I'm Gavin Jackson.

We're getting close to the official end of this year's legislative session.

COVID-19, abortion, guns and medical marijuana have all been topics of debate.

The Associated Press's Jeffrey Collins and The Post and Courier's Seanna Adcox join us to break down what's been done and what's left, but first, here's more from This Week .

This week at the State House, the Senate calendar was shortened ahead of the Easter weekend, and House lawmakers were on spring furlough, after they approved their version of the $9.8 billion dollar budget last week.

Despite the short week, the Senate still made big moves on several bills including a medical marijuana bill that is now in the Senate calendar and could pass next week according to the bill's sponsor, Beaufort Republican Senator Tom Davis, who has been fine tuning this legislation over seven years.

<Rep.

Davis> This is the most conservative medical cannabis bill in the country.

It's got a very restrictive list of qualifying conditions, for which there must be underlying, empirical, objective, diagnosis by a physician.

It can't simply be subjective.

It can't simply be the physician saying, "I think this is it."

This is the most comprehensive, detailed, conservative medical cannabis bill that I can come up with.

It accomplishes the goal of empowering doctors to help people that we know, we know our suffering.

<Gavin> The Senate Finance Committee will start marking up the House budget, as it crafts its own version, with plans to debate it on the floor later this month.

Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Director Frank Rainwater gave the committee an update on the state's finances.

<Dir.

Rainwater> Across the nation in Fiscal 20, 35 states had general fund revenues that came in below their budget collections.

South Carolina, we were $462 million dollars above our revised estimate.

We had dropped our estimate, but we still came in above projections compared to a lot of other states.

The average in the other states, they actually decline revenue in Fiscal Year 20.

We grew 4%.

<Gavin> Next week will be fast paced as lawmakers work to get bills passed to the other chamber by the end of session Thursday, known as Crossover Day.

After that day, it becomes harder, as well as clearer, what will likely make it to the governor's desk by Sine Die.

The last day of session is on May 13th.

There are 18 legislative days left in session, and next Thursday is Crossover.

There've been several big moments so far in this legislative session, and to recap those, and what to expect in the few days ahead, I have Seanna Adcox with The Post and Courier on with me, as well as Jeffrey Collins with The Associate Press.

We've got two of the top State House reporters with us.

Guys, thanks for joining me.

<Seanna> Thanks for having us.

<Jeffrey> Good to see you, Gavin.

Thanks for having me.

<Gavin> So we want to recap a little bit about what's already been passed into law this session before we get into what's going on, what's still working through the chambers, and Jeff, I want to start with you.

We saw the huge Fetal Heartbeat Bill, the so-called Fetal Heartbeat Bill get passed into law early on in the session.

It went out of the Senate really fast, over to the House, the governor signed it right there in the State House.

It was a big deal, but now it's in federal court.

Tell us where we are and how we got here.

<Jeffrey> Well, I checked before we got on today, and so far there have been 12 acts that have been passed, both the House and Senate so far this session, and there's only three of them you've heard about.

The step increases, the small raises for teachers.

There is a COVID relief package, and then there's the heartbeat abortion bill, which took a good chunk of the first couple weeks.

It kind of sucked the air out those weeks.

The bill essentially bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is somewhere in the general neighborhood of six to eight weeks after conception, which opponents of the bill say that most women, especially women who aren't expecting to become pregnant, don't know they're pregnant until that time.

That bill was immediately, almost immediately, like within hours, a federal judge suspended it saying that it appears to be unconstitutional based on current, you know, judicial rulings and things like that.

So where we're at right now, is we're just waiting to see if some case, probably not the South Carolina abortion law, some other abortion law in some other state, gets to the Supreme Court and they choose to overturn the current federal law under Roe versus Wade which allows abortions up through most of the first trimester in most cases.

<Gavin> Mmhm, and Jeffrey that bill was a long time coming.

They've tried and tried over the years to get to this point, and then this year... Tell us what made the difference this year in getting this across the finish line.

<Jeffrey> That bill actually probably passed in reality at the beginning of November when Republicans won five seats, you know, two additional House seats, but especially three additional Senate seats, and that gave them 30 senators to 16 Democratic senators, and that was enough to push it over the two thirds procedural hurdle that had been tripping it up, and so in honesty, that's kind of the theme of this legislative session, is with those few extra Republican seats, we've had a lot of arguments and a lot of tension and everything, but not a lot of action yet because we have those additional people, and I think people are trying to figure out exactly what they want to push through these last eight weeks.

<Gavin> Yeah, we have some big bills to talk about as well, but I want to stick with things that we have passed, like you're talking about, that have made it to the governor's desk.

And Seanna, to follow up with what Jeffrey was talking about, we saw some funding requests get approved right off the bat.

We're talking about $208 million for vaccine rollout programs.

We're also talking about teacher increases for the current year, as well as some charitable funding.

Tell us about those items and how rare it is, I guess, maybe for them to be approved outside the budget process.

<Seanna> Well, you know, still operating in the 2019-20 budget.

We officially don't actually have a budget this year, so when they froze the budget last year, that meant that the teachers get what they call step increases.

They get roughly averages two percent for basically each year you're in the classroom.

Those were frozen last year, so when they came back this year, they put 50 million to basically retroactively give them that money that should be showing up in their bank accounts pretty soon, depending on how quickly the process goes, but they also put aside 208 million, 14 million for charter schools.

It's unusual, but it's also unusual that we don't have a state budget this year, so that was basically their stopgap.

<Gavin> But now we do have a state budget right?

Well, so far we see the House approved budget at this point.

<Seanna> We're working on it.

<Gavin> Yeah, we're working on it, which is encouraging news.

Tell us about that budget, Seanna.

It just passed the House.

It's now over in the Senate.

Tell us some highlights that you've seen this budget, maybe some surprises as well, $9.8 billion dollars now.

<Seanna> Well, there are very few surprises actually.

As has been the case the last few years, the House -- the legislature and the governor is working better than have previous governors.

There's a lot in there that the governor put into his executive proposal.

Part of that is because legislative leaders and the governor get together as the governor's putting his together, but some of the amounts are different, but some of the things that are exactly the same, a big thing is the 500 million put into reserves.

That's just set aside.

They also put $30 million to continue the broadband efforts.

Obviously, the pandemic showed the digital divide in this state, what a problem that is both educationally because of health care, economically, and there's about $20 million for law enforcement pay raises, as it continued that other step for teachers, but other than that, there's no increase for state employees across the board.

But the one thing about this budget as opposed to previous years, while budgets always start in the House, this is, as I've said before, very much of a rough draft more than normal, because we're going to get a new estimate this coming week from the state's revenue forecasters.

We expect it to show we have a lot more money than the House said to work with, and plus we're going to get about $2 billion from that latest congressional act.

We have several years to spend that, so I don't expect the legislature to do that all in one shot, but that combined with -- well, we also have $600 million in the law enforcement -- I mean, Department of Energy, so all that is yet to be worked out.

That probably will be debated May, June.

<Gavin> Yeah, fiscal year starts July 1st.

Yeah, because we did see our budget but, you know, the estimates were obviously revised throughout the past year, but right now what the House is working with, they had about what, like $189 million in growth, and then, you know, some $770 million in one time dollars, so that's kind of what they're working with right now.

That's why we're seeing such large sums, at least that half a billion dollars being socked away in case of future problems.

<Seanna> Even after that $200 million was set aside for vaccines, the House still had a billion to work with.

Now, less than 200 million of that is for what we call recurring expenses, you know, salaries, things that go year after year, but we are faring much better than other states are.

That is because of our conservative revenue forecast.

Over the last few years, we've taken in a lot more money than they forecasted.

It says -- <Gavin> And so, again -- As Frank Rainwater with the BEA said earlier this week, just paychecks alone last spring put $4.3 billion directly into people's pockets.

That is, I think he said, more than the entire state -- <Gavin> -- payroll -- <Seanna> -- payroll, yeah.

When you see all that economic stimulus coming to the state, we're seeing it get juiced up here, and we're pretty fortunate compared to some other states too.

I mean, Jeffrey, we didn't have to do any budget cuts or no big issues here.

I mean, obviously we're not getting everything everyone wants, but no one's getting cut here.

<Jeffrey> No, and the lesson in the State House that you keep hearing over and over again, and for those of us like Seanna and I who've lived through it, is the Great Recession of 2008 and the massive cuts.

I mean, South Carolina lost about 25% of its budget in a little over a year and a half in that Great Recession, so we've done worlds better this time, and like I said, no cuts, no employees let go, it's actually been very soft as far as the impacts.

<Gavin> And even the potential for state employee pay raises, I know there's been some -- they are covering the premium increases like they always do for health care, but we're gonna see some more debate <Seanna> Tuition increases -- <Gavin> We'll probably see some more debate about what can be done, I'm guessing, the closer we get to July 1st.

<Seanna> I think it's a pretty good chance that state employees are going to get an across the board pay raise of some sort.

<Gavin> Mmhm.

<Jeffrey> Yeah, no doubt.

<Gavin> Jeffrey, I want to kind of move on to COVID based bills here.

You know, we've seen a lot of action going on here with one, specifically, hundreds of million dollars in federal assistance for rental assistance moving through the State House right now.

It's a House approved bill that's just got through the Senate.

Can you tell us a little about that and again, kind of sticking with the theme of this money coming from the feds and how it's gonna help our state?

<Jeffrey> Yes, so the money actually goes mostly towards landlords in the end, so like if somebody hasn't been able to pay their rent for months, or I guess at this point it could be over a year since we started the pandemic, that money would go to the landlords to cover the rent, and then the person that hasn't paid the rent would not be evicted, so right now, it goes back to the House.

The Senate made a few minor changes, but I suspect the House next week will be okay with that, and that money will start to flow.

The government agency responsible for it says they'll send out, you know, start sending out the regulations and how this is going to work once it gets passed, so that's another big pot of federal money that's come to South Carolina to help us out and again, to make it a much softer landing from all of this.

<Gavin> Yes, and I think $346 million there, and it's also split up among some smaller housing authorities across the state too, and we just had the Housing Authority, SC Housing, on our show the other month, and they had a $25 million rental assistance program going on.

That had already expired, so it just really shows the need for this money out there right now for utilities and for rent.

Seanna, I want to -- keeping with these COVID bills, we've seen a lot of activity at least earlier in the session when it came to try to get teachers vaccinated in Phase 1A.

They got pushed to Phase 1B with a lot of people.

That's been ongoing since March 8th.

That was a big push by Senator Shane Massey.

I want to talk about the politics behind that push with the governor there.

That bill failed, but we have been seeing some more education bills specifically going full five day a week options for schools this month.

Tell us about those, and then maybe some other ones including this COVID liability bill that's also been debated.

<Seanna> Well, just yesterday the Senate passed a bill requiring all school districts to offer five days a week in the classroom starting April 12th, which most school districts already planned to do so anyway, but it does ensure all districts, including the small rural ones where kids really need a lot of help, to be in the classroom for at least the last month of the school year --.

Also what teachers like about it, is it guarantees that next school year they won't be required, or should guarantee, that they wouldn't be required to both teach online like we're doing now, and in front of the classroom.

Essentially have the same -- teach twice, double duty, as some of them are doing now.

It says if in extraordinary circumstances that required that teachers would actually be paid extra to do that.

Now, it goes to the House next week.

April 12th is coming really quick, so the House is going to have to move next week on that for it to really work.

<Gavin> And that COVID liability bill also went through the Senate.

That was a big bill, a big push by business to make sure that, you know, businesses don't get sued.

<Seanna> If you happen to get COVID, it says you can't sue the business and say oh, I got COVID at your place .

But I don't expect it honestly to go anywhere in the House.

<Gavin> It seems like a tough sell.

It's a very tricky bill, it sounds like.

<Seanna> The House Judiciary Chairman, even before the session started, said he didn't see a need for it, because the thing is it's very difficult to prove you got COVID in any particular spot with all the places they can pick it up.

Even Republicans don't see a need for it.

<Gavin> Jeffrey, I want to maybe stick with some bills that we saw as a result of this crisis, this pandemic we've been in for now more than a year.

Talking with curbside beer and wine pick up as well as delivery, and then also we're talking about churches becoming essential services during emergencies.

That was a big push in the House for that, and then also move to break up DHEC, which has been the lead agency on the response to COVID-19.

Tell us about these bills and how things are changed because of the pandemic.

<Jeffrey> Crisis sometimes leads to innovation, so in the case of the beer and the wine and the curbside pick up and the delivery thing is, these are all things that were put into effect on emergency basis, when the pandemic started.

Part of the governor's emergency powers, and now that at some point we should wean off the state of emergency.

The thought was well, you know, it's a convenient thing to be able to pick up some beer or wine or alcohol as part of your restaurant meal when you get to go meal, or to have wine delivered to your house as part of your Instacart or your grocery run, so that bill has been passed by the House.

It goes through the Senate.

We'll see what they do.

The DHEC break up thing is kind of interesting, because in a way, it's the other side of things, so could the crisis maybe keep people from splitting up DHEC?

One of the things that people that are against splitting up DHEC, including DHEC employees have mentioned, is that they were able to pull employees in on a temporary basis from the environmental side of the agency because it's so large, to come in and help them out with this healthcare crisis, and of course the reverse could be true if there was an environmental crisis.

Now state lawmakers, especially Senate President Harvey Peeler is in the lead of this, think that agency is too big, and there's certainly an argument to wonder why an agency that does all this health care stuff is also doing this environmental stuff, and can you really do both well if it's such a big job?

And the third bill I think you mentioned was the, let's see if I can remember... <Gavin> Churches deemed essential.

And I also want to talk about the governor's emergency powers.

We just mentioned emergency powers, and he keeps renewing these emergency orders which have caused some concern.

<Seanna> I think we're at 26 at this point.

<Jeffrey> Yeah, yeah, every two weeks we get a new one.

Yeah, the church deal is that there were some people, especially conservative Republicans, that worried that churches could be closed by a governor's order, emergency order.

Henry McMaster was not going to close churches.

For one, it's not in his -- He's very constitutionalist, so it felt like it would break the first amendment, freedom of religion, and also he's just not going to do that.

I mean, a conservative Republican governor of South Carolina doing that would just be fatal, but just to be on the safe side, that would make churches an essential business, so as long as other essential businesses like grocery stores are open, churches can stay open, and you know, the emergency power thing is another -- it's one of those things.

South Carolina's been around 250 years, so we have a structure for the governor to have emergency powers, but it doesn't have a real modern feel to it, so as of now the governor issues an emergency decree, and every two weeks he issues another one because they only last fifteen days.

Well, he tweaks a couple of words.

He can't issue the same one over and over again.

That's not allowed.

So what he does is moves around some words or he removes this clause or adds back clause, and the governor and the legislature agree that's not a good system, so it looks like right now, it's still working its way, but it looks like we'll have some kind of system where the legislature gets a check on it, where the governor issues a emergency decree.

If a certain number of legislators or county legislative delegations, or that's the details they're working out, say H ey, we want a say in this , then they can vote.

They can come to Columbia or whatever arrangement they have to meet at that point, and have a say in what the governor does instead of it just being a governor's kind of fiat declaration, and Henry McMaster says that's fine.

I mean, I don't think they've encroached enough on his power to upset him in that regard.

<Gavin> Yeah, that's what we heard on the State of the State.

<Seanna> Well it does mean he doesn't have to keep issuing those things every 15 days.

<Jeffrey> That's true!

How tired is Mark Hammond getting from stamping all of them?

[laughter] <Gavin> Secretary of State, yeah definitely, but Jeffrey we have about 7 minutes left.

We have a lot of things to still talk about.

I want to talk about this Gallo winery and I'm gonna use the term winery loosely because it's gonna be a production facility up there in Chester County, but also some taste rooms.

Tell us the big deal, the big hubbub around that, and maybe tie it into some other commerce related bills we've seen moving, at least through the Senate right now.

<Jeffrey> I have to say, I've enjoyed this modern South Carolina general assembly thing of having really odd economic development discussions.

You know, we have the Carolina Panthers that dominated 2019, and Gallo may end up dominating some of the time in 2021.

What Gallo wants to do in Chester County, which is really rural between Columbia and Charlotte, they want to build a bottling facility and warehouse, just a huge complex for them and it would bring in about 400 million people, about 500 -- $400 million, yes.

That's a lot of people, 500 people, roughly, and be a very big investment for a rural county.

So normally, that would just breeze right on through.

I mean, the general assembly wouldn't have a problem with that at all, even with some small incentives.

But what Gallo wants to do that's causing all the problem, is they want to create what's now called three tasting rooms.

What it would be is there could be about a dozen people at a time would come into a room.

They'd taste a bunch of different wines.

You have a light, you know, nice little gathering with your friends or your family, and then conceivably, if you like one or two of the bottles, then you would buy them from a store on the site.

And that, you know, alcohol retailers don't like that.

They feel like that is allowing Gallo to broach in on their territory.

Restaurants are not quite as enthusiastic either, because again, they feel like Gallo's broaching in on their territory, and South Carolina has a very, interesting might be the way of putting it, system of selling alcohol.

It's a very complex -- there's a limited number of people, a limited number of alcohol stores a particular person can own, so this gets all tied up into that, and so the tripping point is these tasting rooms, and Gallo has reduced them from four to three to try to get it passed.

They reduced the hours they can run because they wanted to run them late into the night, because people like to do things later at night, but now they're closing at 5:30, so it's out of the Senate committee.

It's now on the Senate floor.

We'll see what happens next week.

I think it probably has a pretty good shot at passing, but you never know.

<Gavin> Yeah, well Seanna, we have seen one bill passed over in the House - a big one for Republicans, and that's the Open Carry with Permit Act.

We're talking about guns here.

Give us a load on that and where you see that going in the Senate.

There's also another bill in the house too.

We have about less than five minutes.

I want to cover a couple more, but what's going on with that bill in the Senate now?

<Seanna> So, on Open Carry with Training, it basically means that if you have a CWP, you don't have to have your gun concealed.

You don't have to have a suit jacket over your holster essentially, but you do have to have a CWP.

All the rules where you can legally carry still apply, and so that is in the Senate, and I think that would be more palatable to the Senate, whether it actually moves in the Senate, yet to see.

Now what's going to be in the House next week is what they call a Constitutional Carry, which means anybody and everybody can just carry a handgun, training, whatever.

That, I don't think, is going to possibly go anywhere in the Senate, <Gavin> But would be another big -- at least when we talk about the one with the Open Carry with Training, could still be a big win for Republicans as we keep talking about these big wins for this session.

Jeffrey another interesting move we've seen this week especially is medical marijuana.

It just got voted out of the Senate Medical Affairs committee on Wednesday.

Give me an idea about this bill that's been Senator Tom Davis' baby for the past seven years, and where we are right now and its future.

It sounds kind of promising according to him.

<Jeffrey> Tom Davis is a Republican, was Mark Sanford's Chief of Staff, so, you know, but this has been something he has been top priority for seven years.

They didn't even worry about having a subcommittee hearing.

They just passed it straight out of the Medical Affairs committee on Wednesday, and Davis insists that he has enough support to pass this thing out of the Senate.

Wait to be seen.

I mean, there's a lot of skeptical Republicans and some skeptical Democrats that aren't sure that South Carolina needs to legalize marijuana in any form, even medical marijuana.

Davis insists this is a very conservative bill.

You'd have to meet with a doctor in person.

You have to have a written plan.

You couldn't smoke the marijuana.

It'd have to be used as an oil or something like that.

I think Tom Davis thinks he can get a hearing on it before Crossover Day -- would get a vote on it before Crossover deadline coming up next Thursday, we'll see.

I mean, it seems like every year he gets a little closer to this.

I'm not sure he's quite reached the end zone, to use a football metaphor, but you know, he's close.

We'll see.

<Gavin> Yeah, that's an incredibly tight bill, and one that keeps getting tighter and tighter over these years, and it's interesting to see that we have seen more co sponsors added to that bill, such as the Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman, Senate Judiciary Chairman Luke Rankin, and then we've also heard from the governor saying he's a little bit more warm to this too.

So, I mean... <Seanna> That was shocking actually.

<Jeffrey> That was a surprise.

<Gavin> You know, we always kind of suspend logic a little bit when we cover the State House, but who knows what could happen, you know, with this bill at this point, because it has gotten to this point before but it's always been obstructed a bit on the Senate floor.

<Jeffrey> Even the opponents will say that Tom Davis has brought them from an absolute no to at least listening, and Shane Massey, the Senate Majority Leader, says he's leaning towards voting for it, just off of Davis' repeated and continuous and fierce advocacy for it.

<Gavin> Mmhm, and Jeffrey, with a minute left, the Hate Crimes bill in the House was part of a big slate of bills that the House committee formed last summer in the wake of George Floyd's death and the protests that ensued.

It's finally worked its way into the calendar.

Can give us an update about that bill, where it might be going, especially with Crossover approaching?

<Jeffrey> Yeah, Hate Crimes is probably going to be -- the House really wants to get that passed before that also, that Thursday Crossover deadline, and there's been some back and forth.

You know, they've removed some things.

They removed LBGTQ protections at one point.

They re-added them.

Now they've removed out vandalism or harassment as something that can lead to a hate crime enhancement.

There's some argument that in that case, all you're doing is allowing a hate crime for someone who gets beaten terribly, not someone that has a racial slur sprayed on their church or something like that.

So the House is determined to pass this.

Business wants it done, and when business wants something done, the House usually says okay, sure thing .

So, but, there's this very conservative argument against it, and this is one point where all that extra Republican push might actually end up hurting this bill, because the conservative Republications are worried that this will affect their religious friends, the people that are against abortions and things like that, that they may end up being on the wrong end of this at some point.

<Gavin> And Seanna, we're wrapping up here, running out of time.

Redistricting, we didn't talk about it, but it sounds like it's gonna be one of those things we deal with in off session, just because the sense is that it's been delayed.

<Seanna> I think it's going to be around September or October.

<Gavin> Yeah, it's gonna be a real long time coming there, so.

<Jeffrey> Merry Christmas!Redistricting!

<Gavin> I mean, is there any way that we can see our primaries get pushed back at that point as a result?

<Seanna> People are talking about that, but I think they'll work late to get it done.

<Jeffrey> If the primaries get delayed, it'll probably be a lawsuit situation.

Somebody got sued and a judge decided that they just can't go forward.

<Gavin> Well, here we go.

We'll keep an eye on that.

We'll keep an eye on the remaining days with Seanna Adcox with The Post and Courier and Jeffrey Collins of The As sociated Press.

Thanks, guys.

<Seanna> Thank you.

<Jeffrey> Thanks for having me.

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

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

You can find it on South Carolina Public Radio dot org or wherever you find podcasts.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well South Carolina.

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