By Lindsay Street, Statehouse correspondent | There are plenty of hair-raising issues coming in 2020 for state lawmakers. Chief among them is what to do with state-owned utility Santee Cooper, according to legislators.
With Halloween around the corner, Statehouse Report thought it would be (forgive us) spooktacular to ask state lawmakers: What’s the scariest thing coming to the Statehouse in 2020?
More than 30 were called or texted and asked to respond. Only 10 gave answers.
The second year of a two-year session starts in January with thorny issues from restricting abortion access and whether to allow guns to be carried without a permit to how to shape the future of energy for millions of South Carolinians or how to alter how the the state educates children. But perhaps the scariest thing of all to many in South Carolina Every House member and every Senate member can seek reelection next November.
Legislators’ answers were mostly serious — and difficult to turn into a Halloween costume. Here’s what lawmakers had to say:
On Santee Cooper
Three lawmakers mentioned Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility that lost big on part-ownership of a $9 billion nuclear plant investment in 2017. In 2020, lawmakers will decide the utility’s fate — to sell it to a private entity, let a private entity manage it or restructure it to keep it public.
“The most significant (issue), that is the most complex, is whether or not to sell Santee Cooper, whether to have a management team come in or an alternative to that is to enact some reforms,” Beaufort County Republican Sen. Tom Davis said. “The implications of what we do will have an effect for decades to come.”
Orangeburg Democratic Sen. Brad Hutto called Santee Cooper “a big deal” and listed it at the top of the scariest things coming to Columbia in 2020.
“That’s probably the thing that has the biggest potential of long-term consequences for the state,” he said.
Senate Education Chair Greg Hembree, R-Horry, gave a more light-hearted answer:
“It is the army of zombie lobbyists representing companies that want to buy Santee Cooper,” he said. More seriously, he added: “When you get that many people that are all hired to achieve an objective, it can be hard — I don’t know if we always make the best decision with that much pressure … The scary part is if we don’t make a good decision because of that effort.”
Hembree expected lobbying activity to hit a “fever pitch” in February and March, about the time House and Senate committees are expected to make recommendations about Santee Cooper’s fate.
On education
During the off-session, the Senate has been taking a hard look at the House-passed education overhaul package (H. 3759). The package seeks to raise the minimum starting teacher salary to $35,000, gives the state education superintendent more ability to take over low-performing school districts and creates a $100 million fund to bring businesses to areas with poor and struggling schools.
For Charleston Republican Rep. Lin Bennett, the scariest thing in 2020 could be the Senate dismantling or “weakening” the bill or “that we don’t get the education reform bill right.”
“They have been holding hearings all summer long so I don’t know what it’s going to look like,” she said. “We just need to get some of this administrative or ‘edu-crat’ stuff out of the classroom. That would be frightening because it wouldn’t be a change.”
On guns and abortions
Columbia Democratic Rep. Beth Bernstein said what scares her most about the 2020 session is the House-passed bill that bans abortions after most women know they are pregnant (H. 3020), and a Senate bill that would allow a person to carry a gun without a permit, known as constitutional carry (S. 139).
A Senate Medical Affairs subcommittee has been holding hearings on the so-called fetal heartbeat abortion bill in the off-session.
“It’s scary to me that as a legislature, we are legislating medical procedures,” Bernstein said. “It’s a decision to be made with the patient and her doctor. That type of legislation is always troubling for me.”
Constitutional carry of guns is awaiting third reading in the Senate when lawmakers reconvene.
“(It’s) very alarming to me,” Bernstein said. “We need to have sensible gun safety legislation and constitutional carry would not be helpful in that initiative that I support.”
Hutto, who helped to kill the 2017-2018 abortion restriction bill that sought to give “personhood” status at the moment of conception, said the two bills don’t scare him.
“We’ll debate abortion again, but we do that every year so that’s not scary. We’ll debate guns again, but we do that every year so that’s not scary,” Hutto said. “They’re not scary because they’re normal.”
On medical marijuana
The House and the Senate have yet to pass a bill legalizing medical marijuana in the state. The effort is largely being pushed in the Senate through Beaufort Republican Tom Davis with S. 366. The bill has had multiple hearings through a Senate Medical Affairs’ subcommittee.
In the House, House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford of Columbia is a sponsor of similar legislation, which remains in the Judiciary Committee.
“What would scare me the most is if we don’t get medical marijuana passed,” Rutherford said. “People are demanding it and I’m tired of making excuses … There’s simply no reason why we haven’t done it.”
On politics and time
House Speaker Pro Tempore Tommy Pope, R-York, said while “everything we do is so serious and important … the scariest thing is that all these people you sent down to Columbia are up for reelection.”
Hutto also mentioned reelection, saying many General Assembly members would be a bit spooked by that.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey of Edgefield also mentioned politics.
“One thing that concerns me is the vitriol of national politics seeping down from Washington making it even more difficult to do what people expect us to do,” Massey said. “It’s already hard enough … but when you bring in all this external stuff that definitely has an impact.”
Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, said the Senate has a number of appointments to weigh for state offices.
“Appointments are going to be a nightmare,” she said. Appointments to be considered include those for leaders of state departments dedicated to natural resources, aging and veterans. “We all know how long these appointments take and we can’t do anything about them until we start back in January and then we only have four or five months to work on them.”
Rep. Raye Felder, R-York, said she was concerned about the “time crunch.”
“It’s the second year of a two-year session so you’re up against that clock,” Felder said. “That’s the scary part: how do you prioritize what you’re going to work on first?”
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