By Lindsay Street, Statehouse correspondent | The clock is ticking down: There are three legislative days left in the House before the start of budget deliberations and six legislative days left in the Senate before Santee Cooper deliberations.
The session is expected to end May 14.
Ahead in the House
House floor deliberations on the state budget begin March 9 and are expected to be done by the end of the week. The following week is a furlough week for House members. And then they are expected to debate the future of Santee Cooper — something that could eat up a lot of floor time that remains for the session.
House Majority Leader Gary Simrill of Rock Hill said members are focused on “working the calendar at this point.” This week, the House passed several education-focused bills, including limiting lunch debt collections, and a bill seeking to streamline local governments’ business license fees.
And floor time in the House will continue to be limited through the next three legislative days to allow the Santee Cooper Ad Hoc committee to continue to meet and work toward making a recommendation to the House by March 12.
Lancaster Democratic Rep. Mandy Powers Norrell said all eyes are on the budget and Santee Cooper in the House.
“There’s a sense among legislators if we haven’t gotten our bill out of the chamber by now we’re going to have to wait and reintroduce it next session,” she said.
Gilda Cobb Hunter, D-Orangeburg, said she is sponsoring a bill at the top of the contested calendar for second reading that she would like to see heard on the House floor: It would require the state inform people who are released from prison of their right to register to vote.
Ahead in the Senate
Senators voted 25-17 this week to limit debate on an education bill that has sapped energy and time for most of the year, so far. But don’t get too excited, some say, because the debate isn’t over yet and, if it wraps up before the chamber deals with Santee Cooper, senators may spend several legislative days dealing with its backlog of uncontested bills.
“This bill that was bad from the beginning is still a very bad bill and the Senate has decided that bad bill or not, we are going to get this thing through,” Great Falls Democratic Sen. Mike Fanning said. He has pulled most of his amendments but said he plans to “fight until the very end.”
The cloture on debate does not limit third-reading amendments in the Senate.
Fanning said he thinks Republicans in the Senate have another motive to limit begin ending debate on education: voting on a bill that would end nearly all abortions in the state ahead of the March 16 deadline for candidates to file in party primaries.
“That is the million-dollar story that no one is telling right now. If we are moving past this bill to start moving down the calendar, there are some good bills to work on but that ain’t the reason,” Fanning said. “If we thought this was a bottleneck, wait until we get to abortion … This is the dirty side of politics that I never dreamed I’d have to face at the state level.”
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey of Edgefield said there’s little chance the Senate will actually take up the “Fetal Heartbeat Abortion Act,” House Bill 3020. Since the beginning of session, he has publicly doubted Republicans had enough votes to put it to the top of the Senate’s agenda.
“We haven’t really had a conversation about what’s next as far as the next contentious items,” he said. “When we get done with education, we are going to have to have a conversation about what we are doing next. The focus so far has been to try to end education debate.”
Massey said he expects the Senate to deal with about 50 uncontested bills on the calendar before dealing with the future of Santee Cooper and then the budget.
In other news:
Democratic primary set for Saturday. The S.C. Democratic Presidential Preference Primary is Feb. 29. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. If you have questions on voting, click here.
Trump taps House Judiciary chair McCoy. The White House announced this week that Charleston Republican Rep. Peter McCoy has been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of South Carolina. The appointment is pending confirmation in the U.S. Senate. Read more. In other House Judiciary news, the committee received favorable reports on a Senate-passed bill, S. 176, to reinstate the electric chair for executions and on a bill that seeks to curb teen vaping, H. 4710. Previous coverage of vaping and state lawmakers.
4K program covered 70 percent of impoverished students in 2019-2020. About 70 percent of South Carolina’s low-income 4-year olds, or 25,366 children, were enrolled in the state’s public education in 2018-2019, according to a new report from the state’s Education Oversight Committee. Read more about this finding and more here.
- Previous opinion: South Carolina needs to expand access to 4K education.
House leader says anti-offshore drilling bill ‘will pass.’ Simrill said a House bill that would effectively bar offshore drilling and its infrastructure in South Carolina “will pass in the House but it will happen after the budget.” Read previous coverage on this session’s off-shore drilling legislation.
Lawmakers to screen MUSC, USC, S.C. State trustee candidates. Senate and House members will screen candidates seeking to serve on the boards for the Medical University of South Carolina, South Carolina State University and the University of South Carolina beginning noon March 2 in room 209 of the Gressette building at the Statehouse grounds in Columbia. See the agenda here.
Senators to hear from DHEC on coronavirus. The Senate Medical Affairs Committee will hear from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control regarding the coronavirus in a meeting starting 10 a.m. March 5 in room 308 of the Gressette building on the Statehouse grounds in Columbia. See the agenda here.
Deaf, blind students to perform at Statehouse March 4. Fine arts students from the S.C. School for the Deaf and the Blind will perform two songs before the SC House of Representatives on March 4. The students will perform “Stand by Me” and “I Love South Carolina,” an original song by the students and singer/songwriter Ellis Paul. More info.
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