
Legislative Session Check In
Season 2025 Episode 9 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
Gavin is joined by Jeffrey Collins and Maayan Schechter.
The House and Senate are more than halfway through the legislative session and The Associated Press' Jeffrey Collins and SC Public Radio's Maayan Schechter join Gavin Jackson to discuss the latest from the State House.
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Legislative Session Check In
Season 2025 Episode 9 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
The House and Senate are more than halfway through the legislative session and The Associated Press' Jeffrey Collins and SC Public Radio's Maayan Schechter join Gavin Jackson to discuss the latest from the State House.
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship♪ ♪ >> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina .
I'm Gavin Jackson.
This week we are looking at the legislative session.
Since we're more than halfway through it, we're going to take a look at what's been accomplished and maybe what hasn't been accomplished so far since January.
And to do that, I'm joined by South Carolina Public Radio's Maayan Schechter and the Associated Press' Jeffrey Collins.
Welcome back to both of you.
Maayan> Always good to be here.
Jeffrey> Good to see you, Gavin.
Gavin> I see you in the State House.
Now, it's like come to the set, let's talk about this.
But, Jeffrey, it's been a while, since we've been talking about this session for like, all half last year, We were talking about what's going to happen, what's going to happen.
Now, we're in the thick of it, and we're trying to see what is happening.
And one big bill in the Senate right now is that tort reform bill.
It is taking up all the oxygen in that chamber.
It was, it's been a three week debate.
Now, it's going on four weeks.
I want to get your take on what's happening with that bill as 244, which has a lot of people worked up a lot of money flowing into the State House.
What's going on with that?
>> Well, when we left it a couple of days ago, they had reached a compromise on liquor liability, on how much insurance people have to keep, if bars have to keep, that kind of thing.
But it seems like it's kind of a tenuous compromise.
I mean, it took days to get there.
You know, the compromise was made.
Well into the night, like 9:00, 10:00 at night.
And there's it seems like the longer it goes, the more people are like, I'm not too sure about it.
Like it's one of those deals where it's a compromise that isn't necessarily solving the problem, but maybe it's a compromise that just helps both sides say, hey, we found a compromise.
So, you know, they're going to revisit this on Tuesday.
There's probably going to have to be a lot more debate about it.
I mean, they, when they left off, they had not dealt with joint and civil liability, which is, which is the biggest hurdle of all, which is, you know, which basically is who, who's responsible for what in the lawsuit, and how much people have to pay.
Do they have to pay more than they're kept responsible for?
There's all these all these very important but very hard to understand details.
So that is what they're going to take up on Tuesday.
So, at this point it's kind of stay tuned.
I mean and you know, there will be some...just, like I said, we're just kind of in a place where we're still going to have to work it out.
It could be a week or two.
Gavin> Yeah.
And you said after that, that Tuesday that compromise amendment came up, they voted on it by voice but we don't really know where everyone was falling on that.
But that was the end result of Senator Stephen Goldfinch had an amendment that almost sunk the bill during one of those weeks of debate.
And then, of course, they took off last week essentially to kind of work on this compromise.
And now we're kind of, again, working on some bigger things.
So it's going to be kind of interesting to see what happens in the Senate and if there is enough momentum, because again, the calendar's stacking up behind it too.
Jeffrey> Yes, they, they're going to need to take up energy, which is a big deal.
They've got the budget coming up.
And you know you only have basically two months left in this session.
And that's not a whole lot of time in legislative time, especially if you have any issues that take the Senate time to get through.
Maayan> And in addition to that, Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey told us that they want to take, what, a week off, off the floor, so that the Senate Finance Committee can actually deal with the budget.
So the calendar continues to get even more narrow.
Gavin> Nothing happens unless there's pressure in the State House, right?!
But Maayan, I mean, this has been quite, the debate we've been seeing, right?!
We've been seeing a lot of outside money come in, and we've been seeing advertisements on social media, memes, you know, text messages.
It's been an onslaught that we haven't really seen in any debate recently.
Maayan> No, I found it, I have been finding it really fascinating.
Some of these, social media influencers, folks like Donald Trump Jr, who have been wading into this debate, a debate that is so wonky.
And that's been really fascinating to just kind of see the people who are starting to, feed into this entire debate in the Senate.
Yeah, we've seen billboards.
We've seen social media memes.
And obviously, I think that, that has had perhaps some effect on some of the communication that we've seen between lawmakers.
I know it's soured.
We know it's soured moods on a few occasions.
And, and I do not see it, lining up any time soon.
I mean, I've seen some postings on social media, you know, tying it to, President Donald Trump's inauguration, things that, again, we're kind of like out of the box, now as far as it comes to, debates going on in the State House, but especially, as Jeffrey mentioned, we're getting into the joint several liability piece about it.
I mean, this is where a lot of the trial attorneys, of course, are very, very invested, very interested in.
And I don't see that lighting up, or lightening up at all.
Jeffrey> Well, it has been inter... you were talking about the tenor of this debate, you know, typically in the State House, especially when it's like a Republican issue or it's an issue that, that is contained within a party, or it gets the party's, members of the party going after each other.
Typically the move is to persuade people, and this has been a move to denigrate people.
I mean, if you're, you know, instead of trying to persuade your opponents to your side, they've been ripping into them.
So that's been an interesting segment of this.
That's...that's different than other debates.
Gavin> And also when we're talking about compromises, we're talking about stuff not happening in front of the cameras locked behind closed doors.
There's also talk about vote swapping and comp...like and extracting some concessions here.
So I'm wondering, you know, when this is all said and done with S. 244, if and when it makes it out of the body, you know, who knows what else we could maybe see come to the floor in terms of bills and legislation that people said, okay, I voted for this bill.
I want a hearing on, you know, a more restrictive abortion bill, for example.
Maayan> And I think, once again, if this bill does in fact get to the House, I mean, it's going to be an event, you know, for example, Senator Stephen Goldfinch talked about the blood that had spilled over this debate.
I think you'll see that carry on into the house where you have, again, a lot of members of the House, just like a lot of members of the Senate, very, also invested into this bill because their line of work also overlaps with it.
Gavin> And, Jeffrey, when we're talking about this Bill too, versus the House versus the Senate, the House did unanimously pass that bill H. 3497, which deals just with liquor liability, which has gotten so many people fired up because a lot of bars and restaurants have to carry this one million dollar insurance policy in case they get sued for, you know, a drunk driving incident or something like that.
And that has also priced a lot of folks out of the market in terms of insurance carriers, too.
But the House passed a bill, like we said, to deal with that specifically.
So I'm wondering, does that become maybe more of, you know, an insurance policy in itself to this larger, almost unwieldy S. 244, which is trying to cover so many different aspects of tort reform?
Jeffrey> I think that's a very distinct possibility.
I mean, it solves, it solves what appears to be the most pressing issue, the thing that has people the most upset, which is liquor liability.
I shouldn't say it solves, but at least it gets there.
And, you know, if the Senate does go ahead and pass its version, you know, this is the first year of a two year session.
So that can just sit around and be the, the, again, insurance policy into 2026 that you can use if you if you find out that this didn't do enough or you need to do something different where you need a little more time to work on things, Maayan> And there's nothing about a bill that will tame it more down than a, you know, an election cycle coming up with a governor's race.
Gavin> Yeah, a big statewide race.
Yeah for sure.
And again, people wanting to go home and tell their local proprietors that they actually did something because, I mean, it's surprising when we're talking about just how invested folks are.
Bar owners, people that you would not expect engaged in the legislative process are saying, "Hey, is this up for debate, too?"
Like, it is, it is something that's like a reality TV show, almost.
But Maayan talking about reality TV shows, let's talk about the budget.
That's always an exciting time.
The biggest thing that the lawmakers have to do during session is pass a budget.
We did see the House pass its version of the $14.5 billion operating budget for the state.
We had House Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister on the show before, and we also talked to him about just how important this budget was and what was in it.
So what were some of the highlights for you when we saw this debate and some things that folks maybe should be aware of, Maayan> I, I mean, I think for, you know, all of us who have watched the budget debates over the last several years, this is a very familiar spending plan.
It spends, a huge chunk on public education, a huge chunk on health care.
And those are the two leading pots of money.
We saw spending for teacher salary pay raises, state employee pay raises.
We saw millions of dollars for tuition mitigation at higher education institutions, something that they've been asking for and has been readily available to them over the last several budget cycles.
We saw, $200 million dollars forwarded to replace bridges.
But we also saw small things, you know, money to go toward.
Well, not small, deferred maintenance is a huge issue at every single state agency.
And so we saw a lot of money going toward that.
We saw money going toward, Medicaid coverage.
I mean, that's a huge chunk.
I think that was over $60 million.
We saw money again.
I go back to the smaller things, things like, helping, Vietnam veterans tell their oral history.
So little things for state museums here and there.
But again, the pots for education, the pots for health care.
The pots for education, Those are the biggest pots of money that we saw, in this budget, in addition to all the other provisos, the one year budget laws that they included.
Gavin> And when we watched that floor debate play out, I mean, were you were you surprised by the way it went?
Do you think it was pretty typical?
What were some of your takeaways from those, long days in the House?
Maayan> Yeah, I think this, this harkens back to like the first several budgets that I covered where we were going until -we- they were going until midnight and we were all sticking around.
Hadn't seen one of those in a while.
I think the last 2 or 3 budgets ended at, say, 5:00.
We all got to go home for dinner.
This was a very different type of debate, but it ended in the way that I expected.
I think we all expected the Freedom Caucus, the more hard line conservative Republican lawmakers in the chamber to try to cut parts of the budget.
They had, had a press conference earlier, earlier in the day, telling us that they were going to try and cut a billion dollars out of the budget.
A Republican leader said, it really shook out more to maybe 100 million, not that much.
So we knew that they were going to put up amendment, after amendment, after amendment.
We also knew, frankly, that given their numbers, it probably was not going to be successful.
So, it maybe it extended the debate, you know, compared to previous years.
But it ended, I think, typically in the, in the same way that we've seen before.
Gavin> And Jeffrey kind of pick up on that, you've covered these debates.
You've, this is now Bruce Bannister's third budget.
And it's always interesting to see how they have to handle the floor debate.
You know, they're out there running around trying to appease folks, trying to deal with, amendments on the fly, provisos on the fly.
I just want to get your thoughts when we're talking about the Freedom Caucus, because, you know, they're part of a very small group of that 88 Republican, strong block in the House, that super majority, of course, Democrats kind of just like, let them play it out there, too.
But what were some other highlights that you had in the budget and then how that played on the floor?
Jeffrey> The budget is for, is written in the Ways and Means Committee, and it's almost buttoned up there and tied up in a nice little bow.
So, what the budget debate becomes, it's an opportunity for a lot of people that are outside that committee to get to, to, to air out their own pet projects or, their own pet ideas, because in the budget process, you can put out the proviso and it gets debated.
And then, you know, for years it was abortion that got a hearing there because it couldn't get a hearing in the full House, in places like that.
In this case, though, they cracked down on that a little bit.
For more than any other budget that I can remember they had with, you know, the germaneness issue.
Well, this isn't germane to the budget because it doesn't handle money.
In fact, that took out a lot of the freedom Caucus' ideas.
But it also took out DEI,, which was, you know, the, the mainstream part of Republicans wanted a DEI proviso that, well, since they were knocking out the Freedom Caucus' ideas and in fairness, they had to knock out that one too.
So, you know, it's but it's part of the ideological debate that's been going on in the House all year is probably going to continue this year and into next year, because we just, we're at a point where the numbers aren't moving.
We have the same small group of conservatives.
We have the same large group of mainstream Republicans.
I mean, this group is so large they can do whatever they want.
If they wanted to pass a law saying all South Carolinians had to wear socks.
We would all be wearing socks.
Gavin> That is an attack on my side.
Jeffrey> I understand... but I believe it wouldn't.
Gavin> Yeah Jeffrey, I am hurt.
Jeffrey> They're smarter than that.
But I mean, the point is, you know, they have enough people, they can do whatever they please without any Democrats or Freedom Caucus people, so now we're just going to end up at this place where both sides are just staring at each other and, and there's a bunch of arguing and a bunch of, petty kind of, you know, back and forth that and I don't think... that's what its going to look like for the rest of the year.
Gavin>We did see that play out, too.
I mean, there was quite a moment there on the House floor with House Majority Leader, House Majority Leader Davey Hiott, who had a very, a feisty moment, something for, you know, the man from Pickens who's very soft spoken, not really one to give really impassioned speeches.
I mean, he really went in on, Representative April Cromer from Anderson, who made some insinuations about there being crap in the budget.
And he kind of went off on, on that.
And I mean, that's something we don't typically see in these debates.
It seemed like things kind of boiled over to a point, finally.
Jeffrey> Well, they farmed out the, you know, the sniping at the Freedom Caucus, mostly to members that aren't necessarily in leadership.
So it was a surprise to see someone in leadership.
And also it wasn't personal.
It was, you know, it was attacking April Cromer for what she said, but it was attacking her for, and the Freedom Caucus, in general, for their whole philosophy.
So that was a little different.
And I think there's a lot of folks in the House that are just tired of it.
I mean, you know, Hiott got a standing ovation from everybody outside the, the Freedom Caucus when he was done saying it.
But again, it's the House.
So, next week they come back and...don't be surprised, if we're in the same spot we were before.
Maayan> And I think too, you know, the uniqueness of this is, is Davey Hiott is a conservative Republican.
In many ways, you would maybe associate him with a type of like a type of Freedom Caucus member wants to see budget cuts, wants to see stricter policies on abortion, etc..
But yeah, I think, I think the level of exhaustion has kind of hit its limit.
And, the legislature, well, the Majority caucus and even Democrats are kind of ready to, as they put it, govern more the room better.
Jeffrey>...you know, 8 or 10 years ago, if I'm right and I'd write Davey Hiott, one of the most conservative members in the South Carolina House.
Maayan> Absolutely.
I think there was some surprise when he became Majority leader.
And then here he was speaking up against the Freedom Caucus.
So it was definitely an interesting moment Gavin> How ideological goalposts keep moving and moving, even though some still have their beliefs.
Maayan, when we're talking about the Freedom Caucus, we're talking about how, you know, Jeffrey mentioned that we didn't see a lot of those, you know, those social issues come into play in the budget, per se.
That's because a lot of them were actually happening in committees, before sub-committees, before, we're talking about there's a hearing on abortion bill.
There's also a lot going on with the DEI bill in the House Education Committee, which also had a hearing this week.
That bill got changed up a little bit.
Tell us the latest on that.
>> Yeah.
I do want to mention on the budget because this has been a hot topic that there was money set aside to accelerate the income tax rate cut, which everybody has been paying attention to and asking about where's the plan, etc..
Anyway, shifting to DEI.
Yeah.
So Democrats were able to take out that proviso out of the budget.
But at the same time on a different track, in the House Education and Public Works Committee, there was an even broader, more expansive, anti-DEI bill filed by Representative Doug Gilliam, a Republican from Union.
This bill went after everything.
I mean, it talked about higher education, state agencies, quasi state agencies, school districts, charter schools, local governments, etc.
It went after DEI offices, programs, trainings.
There were questions about whether it would ban Black History Month, or programs that universities rely on to help get, more diverse pools of candidates to be doctors, for example.
But it also had another provision in it that dealt with private contracting, essentially saying that, you could not do business, you could not get funding, grant funding from a, say, a company or outside of the state that perhaps has a DEI program or office, and universities and state agency said that is going to cost us millions of dollars, millions in lost funding and also in workload.
It's going to take additional people just to kind of comb through all of those contracts.
And so the House Education Committee, went back and did, what's called a strike through insert amendment, and clawed back a lot of those provisions, like the private contracting.
Now, it still affects the same, you know, schools, local government, state agencies, etc, you cannot have a DEI office.
A lot of higher education institutions have already also clawed back their DEI offices and in some cases, renamed them completely.
But we spoke to members yesterday who said this would not affect things like Black History Month.
This would not affect programs like Call Me Mr. A very popular program in the state to get more men in the teaching field, particularly Black men.
But again, it clawed back that, that private contractor provision, which was really, a heartburn for a lot of folks, including lawmakers, Representative Tim McGinnis, who kind of helped shepherd this, told us that that probably would not have been a measure that he would have put in the bill himself.
Gavin> So now this moves forward to the House floor.
We expect it to be pretty soon?
Maayan> I think so, I think there's going to be a want from, frankly, both the Majority caucus and the Freedom Caucus to put this bill up, get it done with, get it over to the Senate, which, again, we've talked about how narrow that calendar is in the Senate right now.
Gavin> Yeah.
There's so much to do.
Maayan> It remains to be seen whether they will get to this bill.
But I do think that we will see before session ends, the House pick this up.
Gavin> And people want to have a victory, too.
Jeffrey, keeping up with education.
Another big priority of this session was that school choice school voucher bill that the Senate took up right out of the gate in January.
That thing zoomed on through, sent it to the House, where it amended it to its own version and sent it back to the Senate on February 27th, where it's, it's sitting somewhere.
I couldn't quite find it on the calendar, but obviously it's over there.
But House Education Committee Chairwoman Shannon Erickson said on this show recently that she wouldn't be surprised if they actually agreed with the changes that they made.
So walk us through what, what that bill looks like and what we could possibly see in the future when it comes to this.
Jeffrey> Yeah, this wasn't priority number one for the General Assembly of Republicans there.
It's 1-A, and this is another thing that has to get done, because they have to get the bill passed, signed into law so they can get that challenge before the South Carolina Supreme Court that they want so at this time, it can be there.
They think, it will be found legal and they could start this program over again.
But where the bill is right now, the position is, you know, the Senate has a different funding version.
It's using lottery money to pay for these vouchers.
That's the biggest difference between it and the Republicans, which have essentially the same funding mechanism as the bill that was found unconstitutional.
They just have a different way of routing the money to parents and routing the money to caregivers.
The, the House version, the difference is the big difference is it has no, income limits.
In other words, like, it's eligible to anyone, whereas the Senate has an income limit.
And in fact, you know, they tried several times like had a couple test votes to where it had to land.
And it seems like the Senate's going to probably demand some kind of income limits.
The House is probably going to demand they get rid of the lottery idea, because they're, the... Shane Erickson, and some people in the House just aren't very happy with that.
So they're got to work that out and, you know, the way that they've written some of the Sine Die and ending legislation is that they can't have conference committees and stuff after they leave in May.
So again, that's another thing that's in this eight week...period that they've got to figure out and they've got to solve it and they've got to get it through.
Gavin> Mmm hmm.
Maayan> I was going to say they stuck the $30 million back into the budget.
So it's still there, if it's, if it's found constitutional.
Gavin>...I know we're kind of ticking through time, and Jeffrey I want to stick with you for another big priority, we're talking about electricity, South Carolina, the country, the world is demanding more electricity, especially when it comes to, you know, these computing loads.
We're talking about manufacturers in the state.
We're talking about a growing state.
We've talked about, we've talked to several leaders on this show about the need for and even possibly restarting V.C.
Summer, the nuclear plant, others, two reactors out there.
I want to ask you just where we're going with that, because we've been hearing a lot of talk about it.
We saw a House bill move through, and we saw it over in the Senate this week, where some utility leaders were before a subcommittee that you were at.
Tell us the latest on that, and if that's going to move too in this shortened time period, Jeffrey> That is another.
That's not 1 or 1A.
It's 1B.
But I mean, you know, that, that every you know, that's one that, that a lot of folks want.
And I think part of the, you know, it passed through the House fairly easily.
It's sitting in the Senate.
I think the Senate wants to do it.
I think they kind of agree on the parameters of it.
But in the back of the minds of the senators, who most of them have served a lot longer than House members, are V.C.
Summer and some of the problems with, you know, the, the nuclear plant that was never built.
And so, you know, they're always very leery about ceding any extra control over utilities that might end up putting them in the same spot they were before.
Not to say that could happen.
I mean, but it's always that, you know, once you've been kicked by that mule, it's always in the back of your mind.
So I think that's going to be part of what ends up having to be sorted through.
That's the next thing behind tort reform.
Maybe they can get it done by the end of March.
And I think, I think they can find a bill that everybody's happy with.
It's just again, tick, tick, tick, tick.
Gavin> Yeah.
It's terrifying.
But of course when we're talk about energy, we're talking about, you know, restarting those two reactors.
And it's interesting too because we'll probably we have seen Santee Cooper put out a request for proposals to see if there's any interested parties.
There's been a lot of feedback there too.
So we'll probably see some tech giant come in here and, and foot the bill for that, because they need that energy more than anyone else.
Jeffrey> Well just, put it into the cloud, and that's going to be one that may be the other, huge sticking point is you know, data farms.
And how much energy they use.
And there's a, there's a segment of South Carolina that seems to be okay if we can generate enough power to bring in data forms, but there's a segment that's like, you know, it's not good.
It doesn't...they don't pay a whole lot in taxes.
There's a whole lot of...
So that may be if there's a big sticking point over the next couple of weeks, it may be that over that how, how welcome South Carolina wants to be to this.
>> Maayan, we have about five minutes left.
The governor has seen some turnover in his cabinet.
He's appointed several positions recently, including the head of Department of Natural Resources a new Adjuctant General, who's awaiting confirmation this week, a new director for the Department of Social Services.
He also has picked Tony Catone and his work, especially at DSS, we're talking about Department of Social Services, which has had, you know, its issues over the years.
What's the latest with that appointment?
Maayan> Tony Catone has been a lawyer at DSS since 2015.
He's well known around that agency and from Lancaster County.
He is very well respected.
And, and again, he talked a little bit about this at his, at his announcement hearing.
He's got a personal interaction with this agency.
He's been affected by, abuse and has had to go through this agency.
So, again, personal touch, he understands how this agency works.
He is going to deal with some of the similar things that his predecessor, Michael Leach, had to deal with.
Things like, again, making sure children have enough beds, the foster care program, the latter of which he said was a top priority to deal with moving forward.
There were a lot of successes made under Leach's, tenure over DSS that, Tony Catone said he wants to continue.
So he'll have, I'm sure his, his confirmation hearings very soon.
Gavin> A hard job.
Maayan> It is a hard job.
I mean, look, it's an agency that oversees children, and that is always going to be an agency under the microscope every single year.
So, yeah, not, not an easy position to be in.
Gavin> Jeffrey, speaking of, appointments were taping this episode early Thursday morning, which is before a Senate Medical Affairs Committee meeting with former DHEC director and current interim director of the newly formed Department of Public Health, Dr. Ed Simmer.
He's going before that committee for a confirmation because the governor has appoint him to that position.
It doesn't seem like he's going to make it out of committee.
Who knows how many committee hearings there might be, but, the governor does have faith in him.
And he led the DHEC post-COVID vaccine response in 2021.
And when he first got over DHEC, DHEC was kind of rudderless during the middle of the pandemic with going through two different heads.
He's stabilized that ship.
But then he also oversaw the breakup of DHEC.
And now this new agency.
What what's the situation with Simmer?
Why do so many people get so worked up over this man?
Jeffrey> There are people who are still, you know, we're five years, if you look at your Facebook memories, five years.
was when all this stuff was going down.
So there are people that are just vindictive and angry over the lock down, over, you know, vaccines, over the everything that happened in COVID and all that anger is being pointed at Simmer.
And I think that's that was what in the end, I mean, that's what this is all about.
And probably if he isn't, you know, if he doesn't get confirmed.
to this job in this newly created agency it will be because of that.
And I mean, you know, I think people forget I mean, you know, I looked it up on the way over here, 18,000 people died of COVID in South Carolina.
That was more people, I think about double the death rate of in World War Two of South Carolina soldiers.
And I mean, it's like so, but, you know, everyone's looking for this blame in a scapegoat.
Now Simmer is very strongly supported by the governor, public health agencies and people that deal with the public health.
They like him.
But sometimes in South Carolina, it's that small vocal group that can really, really, you know, do somebody in.
Gavin> Yeah.
Especially since he was again, like I said, he came on the scene right after in 2021, not the initial response, when there was a brief shut down in the state.
So it's fascinating to see how this is going to play out.
Maayan do you have something to add?
Maayan> I was just going to say the Senate, as we know, has so many new freshmen, lawmakers, people who were not here during the time when DHEC was looking for new directors and a new public health director as well.
So, there's a lot of folks who are brand new to this, to this agency.
Gavin> We have one minute left.
I didn't plan my time correctly, but Maayan, really quick I want to ask you just about, what we can expect to see coming out of the Senate when it comes to Treasurer Loftis in this report dealing with that $1.8 billion accounting discrepancy?
Maayan> Yeah.
I feel like we're waiting for the finale of a show that we've been watching for, I don't know, two years at this point.
Yeah.
The Senate Finance Committee, a panel run by Senator Larry Grooms is expected to release a report that will probably go over a lot of the things that have already been reported.
Exhibits included, and that will also include a stack of recommendations.
Senator Grooms has, has said now multiple times, he does expect there to be a recommendation to remove Treasurer Loftis and, and what that looks like does that happen?
To be determined.
But we do expect that to, to be part of it.
We've already seen, the treasurer get out in front of it with, I'm going to call it an op ed over a news article or a, just a statement, basically pointing the finger back at the panel saying that they're going over, going at him, for reasons that don't make any sense.
So.
Gavin> And if there's an impeachment, Jeffrey, I mean, talk about that, that calendar we were talking about real quick.
Jeffrey> Well, then the camera pans back to the governor's office, who the governor said this week that he doesn't think Loftis needs to go.
So we've got to squeeze in that, too if they want to do all this.
Gavin> Well, we'll be keeping everyone in on this one.
Thank you, Maayan Schechter and Jeffrey Collins.
For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.
Be well, South Carolina.
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