♪ opening music ♪ Welcome to "This Week In South Carolina."

I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week we continue our look at the legislative session that kicked off on Tuesday, and we do that with an exclusive interview with House Speaker Murrell Smith, who spoke with me and South Carolina Public Radio reporter Maayan Schechter On January 9th, during our live taping of the South Carolina Lede Podcast.

I opened by asking Smith to give us an overview of his position and what it entails when it comes to governing the 124 member House chamber.

Yeah, well, first, let me say it's an honor to serve the citizens of South Carolina in that position.

I'm obviously a representative.

I'm elected from district 67 in Sumter County.

And, I had the pleasure of being elected as speaker in 2022, a little bit of the term in 2022 when the former speaker resigned and then, I started my own term thereafter.

But the speaker is a unique, unique, position in South Carolina.

And I can tell you what I always tell people is, the one thing that I've learned quickly about that is I gained 123 new constituents, and they are a whole lot more needy than my constituents back in Sumter County.

And so, you obviously have to deal with members.

And that is, the House is, obviously you've got employees and people who staff committees and work in the operations of the House.

And the speaker is the head of the operations of the House, but, you're delegated to the clerk and a lot number others to handle.

And then I have to preside over the chamber.

I have to wear a purple robe every once in a while.

I don't look real good in purple.

And then also, I make committee assignments, and that's probably one of the most important things.

And, and every piece of legislation that is introduced is, I have to assign it to a standing committee and determine what standing committee would have jurisdiction over that, and do that.

And then, you know, we also have to deal with, some H.R.

issues every once in a while.

Fortunately, it's not the member so far in my tenure.

And hopefully it'll stay that way, but, you know, it's a lot of responsibility.

But at the end of the day, it's an honor.

And what you, I heard Adrienne mentioned in the beginning, is I'm the 61st person that has been Speaker of the South Carolina House of representative since we became a state.

And that's, you know, you think about that.

That's an honor to be one of 61 people who served.

And, you know, I always want to make sure that the institution is served with honor, integrity.

And that's one issue that I really tried to make sure of that we are really concentrating on maintaining the integrity and the decorum in our institution.

Mr. Speaker, we're at the start of the first year of a two year session.

You've got a lot of priorities this year.

We'll dive deeper into them.

But, could you just give us quick one to two sentences if that works, of what your top priorities are for this legislative session?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> Yeah, I think first and foremost, Hurricane Helene is we're going to have to work on making sure that we fund that appropriately.

That upstate, especially in some of our western areas, were devastated by that, probably some of the worst damage that they've seen in the history of this state.

And so we got to make sure that we repair that immediately.

And obviously there's a FEMA match and I think we're trying to work through that.

The good news is that at the end of the year, Congress passed a relief bill, and we're trying to dissect that right now, determine what how much money's going to come from there.

But first and foremost, we need to clean up and repair ourselves from Helene.

Number two, another issue, and I've talked about a lot, and we'll talk about it more detail, I presume.

But I think, tax relief is a big issue.

South Carolina has the highest, income tax rate in the in, in not in the country, but in the southeast and one of the highest in the country.

And, you know, we can talk about low tax state.

We are a low tax state.

And that's something I'm very proud of.

But when you look at, when we're competing, we're competing with our neighbors and we're competing with people all over the country for jobs and industries and employers to come and move here.

And when they Google South Carolina and you see that 6 percent, 6.2 percent in tax income, rate in North Carolina is now at 4.45 percent moving to 3.99 Georgia similarly is moving below 5 percent.

It's time for us to be competitive with our neighbors, because our neighbors are who we compete with for jobs and for industries in this in this, southeast region.

Recently.

<Gavin Jackson> And, Speaker, when we're talking about, you know, what state economist are forecasting for budget growth, they're projecting strong revenue growth in one time dollars, while also acknowledging that the revenue is about to stabilize.

And we're come up that sugar high from all those, you know, all those big spending bills from Covid 19 and such from the federal government.

But how does this shape your approach to where you think the budget should go?

Obviously, you're not over the budget, but in some ways you are in some ways.

So how do you see where revenues are going affecting the budget this year?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> Well, I think the revenues are continuing to increase, as we have $540 million of new recurring money out of a $14 billion budget.

And other states right now are really having to make cuts in their budgets.

Their revenue is really trailing off, and some states are in the negative.

In South Carolina, fortunately, is not that right now.

We, right now, we have continue to see growth.

We have seen continue to see jobs, we continue to see revenue.

And, and that is because of our economy and our economy is something that has really been resilient.

But we are fortunate and unfortunate in the same term of having a lot of people are moving here and locating their businesses here.

And that's great.

And, you know, as long as people are continuing to move here and job creation is still occurring here, that I think we have a promising future.

But with that is going to be more infrastructure, more things that we're going to have to deal with, as we are growing state.

<Maayan Schechter> You talked about the income tax rate cut.

What rate would make you happy?

What would you like to see the legislature do this year?

And on top of that, some Senate leaders have said that they'd like to see a more holistic approach.

Now, what is included in that holistic approach remains to be seen.

Do you think that there is an appetite to look at everything as well?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> I think there's an absolute appetite to look at everything as well.

We've done that in the past.

And what you find is that when you weigh that down with a holistic approach, then it really dies under its own weight at some point, because it accumulates more, people who are opposed to it.

That's why what we're looking at is going just to the income tax right now.

We need to have an overhaul of our entire tax system.

It's antiquated.

It's time for us to reform that.

But right now we need to look at the income tax because it's a competitiveness issue for us.

And what I would like to do, I, I would like for it to be at zero.

I mean, I do not think that I don't think we have to tax income, but right now we need to be competitive with our neighbors.

And that means less than our neighbors, our tax rate.

So I would look in the three to four percent range, start with having triggers like every other states do, and then bringing it down, eventually to zero.

<Maayan Schechter> So multiphase.

[Yes] Gotcha.

<Gavin Jackson> As we say, 'cause we've seen holistic approaches to reducing taxes and analyzing taxes in the past, and it doesn't seem like it ever goes anywhere.

What do you think the speed bumps are?

And do you think everyone's on the same page Now to actually make some movements on that?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> Well, I think everybody agrees we need to lower our tax rate.

The devil's in the detail.

And you know, we have been working on this for a couple of months now.

And it is not an easy task.

There are a lot of road bumps, speed bumps in the road, as you say.

And, and we're trying to work through that.

And, you know, the goal is to flatten the tax and not have a progressive income tax, but have one flat rate.

And you have to broaden the base.

I mean, right now, 42 percent of South Carolinians do not pay income taxes.

And that's because where on the federal, taxable income, you start off a federal taxable income instead of your A.G.I., and the federal government then basically dictates tax policy to us, to which we have to follow.

And so I think we really need to make that switch to, adjusted gross income, and we need to continue to push down that rate.

<Gavin Jackson> But then Speaker Smith, when we talk about that and we change the tax structure here and we change how money gets into the budget, I mean, are there any concerns that we're already not funding enough for the state agencies to what they need?

How do you make up that shortfall?

<Speaker Murrell Smith>You take this out of growth and we've had good growth over the years and you put these triggers in when you can afford it, when you having years like currently, we are at 6.2 percent and wish to go down if we have growth, revenue growth of more than five percent.

And so that lets you still be able to fund government and be able to reduce, taxes.

<Maayan Schechter> Another big issue that we're going to see this year is obviously the debate over school choice expansion, which y'all already had this year, but the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.

The Senate has started, sort of a miniature debate.

They say it's going to be the first thing out the gate this year.

But they want to pay for these private school vouchers using state lottery dollars.

Is that something the House is going to agree with, you think?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> I think the House is going to analyze anything that can move the issue forward for education savings accounts and for choice.

I think, you know, obviously, our body has been very strong advocates for school choice.

And now, whether the lottery revenue is a sustainable, mechanism moving forward, I have some concerns about that.

But, you know, at the end of the day, you know, my biggest concern, right now is we have families and 5000 children that are now enrolled in school, and all of a sudden, had the rug pulled out from under them by the Supreme Court, and now they have in the middle of their education, educational year with their, children, have to make a choice.

Can we leave them in private school or do we have to remove them and put them in a new school, mid school year?

And so I think, you know, the lottery may be a way for us to plug a short term gap, but long term, lottery revenues are continuing to tapered off because of the high from Covid.

And not everybody's buying lottery tickets anymore.

And so, so I think we need to be careful about that because we've made certain commitments to our to the colleges and to the schools, into the technical schools, which are very critical for the success of our, state.

<Maayan Schechter> But likely any bill that winds up passing the governor signs into law.

We'll have to probably go back before the state Supreme Court.

So anything that y'all plan to pass would probably pass this year?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> Yes, I think so.

And the Senate is taking the lead, which is fine with us in the House.

And we've had discussions with them and we'll be ready when they send it to us to act quickly.

The Speaker Smith, talked to us about energy reform and utilities and and the need for this growing demand for energy in the state.

Obviously, we've been seeing a lot of growth with advanced manufacturing in the state.

Data centers moving here.

We saw the governor earlier today.

He was talking about the the South County economic development.

He even mentioned coal being a solution to help feed this demand.

I don't think that's going to happen after what we've seen.

So many of these plants go offline.

But, you know, there's talk about bringing V. C. Summer back that nine billion dollar boondoggle.

I mean that's something that, you know, we're seeing up in, Three Mile Island when Microsoft is talking about bringing that reactor coming back online.

So walk us through the situation here with this demand for energy in the state and where we are right now, and the need for more of it.

Well, right now we're at a critical juncture of almost not being able to service the energy needs of South Carolina.

And like you mentioned, we've done a great job of recruiting industry, but they're high end users of power.

And we have, when you grow in a population as well, they're more demand for power.

So you know, we'll see how it works out for us over this next few days.

We're going to be in the 20s for a sustainable period of time.

if the sun doesn't come out, we're going to have some problems.

[laughs] So I hope we'll have rolling blackouts.

But people don't understand how critical this issue is right now.

And we are having to buy power from Georgia and from North Carolina, and that is not what we need.

We need to be self-sufficient.

And so, you know, I'm not here to say there's one magic bullet or silver bullet that's going to solve the problems, but we need to invest in anything that creates energy.

I'm an all for all above approach with that.

And so I think that's what we need to do.

Georgia just cost him a lot of money, but they completed their Vogtle nuclear reactors who had the same problem we had with their contractors.

And they are looking to start up two to four more of those and to help keep up with the demand in Georgia.

And so I really hope we take a hard look at restarting these, nuclear reactors.

I would like to see that with it not putting the taxpayers or the ratepayers at risk.

They're, you know, you mentioned Microsoft.

There are a lot of, private, investors who would want to do that and assume that risk.

There's money at the Department of Energy for loans to try to restart nuclear right now.

So I think that we need to take a measured approach to everything, and we need to make, incentivize and create more generation.

And we also need to make that come online much quicker.

We have a burdensome regulatory environment.

We need to reform that, that's going to be reformed at the federal level with the new administration coming in.

And we need to do our part to make sure we can do that in South Carolina.

<Gavin Jackson> And we saw the Senate deal with all those, meetings in the off session ever since you guys tried to get that bill through.

Last year is a heavy bill.

It's a big bill that they had to read through.

But why is it so incumbent upon the legislature to do something?

Why isn't this just something that we can leave up to, you know, the private industry to take care of?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> Well, we South Carolina, is per our constitution, is the one that regulates, utilities.

And we grant service areas to the utility.

So we are basically in charge of the power system in South Carolina.

And we and we delegate that authority down to the Public Service Commission and then we, grant service areas.

And then we also have the electric cooperatives, which are created by statute.

So we are, we need to be setting the policy for South Carolina, and for that to be carried out by those that we delegate those responsibilities to.

Another issue that, you've had as even like a personal priority passion to get through that did not survive this past year, I want to mention is a bill that got very close to the governor's desk, because, you know, that would have consolidated the six state public health agencies into one office.

And that bill died you due to a procedural move by the hard line House Freedom Caucus.

A similar bill has been filed this year.

Do you see that going through?

Will we have a consolidation law signed by the governor this year?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> Well, I hope we have a consolidation law, because for those who who oppose consolidation, that is probably one of the most fractured health care delivery systems that we have in the country.

And I can't tell you the number of times that you have dual diagnosis.

You have people who are who are, have disabilities and special needs services and some who have mental health services, and they overlap or even with Department of Social Services to some degree.

And what happens is when they need treatment, it is the finger pointing.

Well, that's really not our job.

It's their job.

And so, not having a a system that you can deliver for the needs of the citizens of this state only makes only harms the citizens.

It doesn't harm the legislators or the government, it harms people who need health care.

And so I'm very passionate about that.

You know, we got caught up into, you know, a bumper sticker politic, the name of health czar.

And we were creating powers and for all the Covid that we had.

And I don't think anybody in the General Assembly wants to create someone that can lockdown, you know, South Carolina or that can mandate vaccines and things to that effect.

But the end of the day, that was a very small part of it.

And I do think that there's a push in the Senate and a will in the Senate to consolidate, and there's a will for us to consolidate.

We would like to stay out of, you know, of how, of having this debate all over again about mandates and vaccines and things that effect.

There's a medical freedom bill that was working his way through the Senate, and we'll probably be dealing with that at some point.

But we need to segregate those two issues.

We need to make sure we consolidate and provide the best health delivery service that we can in this state, and then we can deal with the medical freedom in another bill.

So we will see what happens there and what it looks like.

The governor now is advocating that we, just give him the appointments and he'll do that and certainly we'll try to consider that.

But I think ideally we would like to consolidate.

<Gavin Jackson> And Speaker Smith, we have about five minutes left.

We have a couple more questions, but I want to follow up a little bit about that when we're talking about that bill and how that got objected to and we're talking about the House Freedom Caucus.

You're talking about 124 people, including you in the House chamber.

A lot of personalities.

A lot of divisions in some respects.

You guys do have a supermajority as Republicans, but there's about 17 members of the far right House Freedom Caucus who were challenged for your speakership.

You obviously, got reelected easily.

But I want to I want to ask you if there's some similarities there, because I feel like we're always talking about differences, but where there's similarities, where can you guys work on things, whether it's, you know, close primaries, reducing taxes, you know, ending joint and civil liability, the sexiest topic that we could talk about.

But, is there a common ground and how do you how do you navigate that?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> There is common ground.

And they have a new chairman this year, and he is a policy guy.

And he is, I think, committed to trying to make South Carolina better.

And I've had discussions with him.

And you know, we're trying to find common ground with him and his caucus, as we are with every other caucus.

We got families and caucuses.

We got Democrat caucuses.

And, you know, we are trying to, the thing that I like about South Carolina is, you know, we're not Congress.

We don't hate each other, and we don't say let political divisions and ideology separate our friendship.

And, you know, we try, we know each other, we as a small state.

And so I want to make sure that, you know, I try to govern by collaboration.

And that's with our work, with anybody who wants to work to make South Carolina better and who wants to be reasonable.

And, I think that hopefully we'll have a chance to kind of put the gamesmanship down and the rhetoric and, and let's concentrate on policy.

<Gavin Jackson> And I want to follow up with that by looking into Washington, too, where, you know, we have you have the trifecta for Republicans.

You have the House, the Senate.

Now you have the White House.

You supported President Donald Trump.

And throughout the primary process, you're up in New Hampshire with him.

You're close with him.

We have a lot of other folks who are close with him in the state, too.

You also have Senator Lindsey Graham, who's over the budget committee.

Senator Tim Scott's over the Banking committee.

A lot going for South Carolina.

So how important is this relationship going to be with Washington for the next couple of years?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> Oh, I think it's critical.

And I'm so excited about the new administration coming in because what we're going to have, first and foremost, all the lawsuits.

And in South Carolina, suing the, federal government will probably stop.

So they'll save us some money on legal bills.

But also, I mean, you think that what they're going to do is, is states are the best incubators for good ideas, in my opinion.

And I think that what I understand is that they are going to return some of the power back to the states and let the states dictate the policy, not send money with policy and with conditions, but let, continue the money that comes in here.

And and don't worry about dictating how you spend it, where you spend it, and what programs you have to implement to spend it.

Let us let you all make the decisions for What's best for South Carolina, because what's best for South Carolina's not going to work in California and in any other state.

So I think we've got a golden opportunity here for the next two years to work with administration, to work with our senators and our House of Representatives, and to try to make sure that we do what's right for South Carolina.

<Gavin Jackson> We have about two minutes left here.

So I want to ask you just really quickly, some top priorities that we could see maybe immediately moving out of the House.

Obviously, we're talking about education, the Senate, what could we see moving quickly out of the House?

<Speaker Murrell Smith> I think you'll see energy come up first.

And we passed that bill overwhelmingly last year and got pretty much the same body.

And so I would expect that we be able to have a similar vote.

So I think that's going to be the first bill that we, you will see on the floor.

And you know, as you know, we have a, with session and starting a new session, that work's going to happen in the first few weeks in committee.

So we get the bills to the floor.

So, I think that's going to be the first bill that you'll see on the floor.

<Gavin Jackson> And then also just, getting a focus on infrastructure as well.

And that's going to be all through the budget, I assume.

<Speaker Murrell Smith> That's a budget, issue.

There's a wait list of ideas that we have on reforming the procurement process and how we can speed up some of that.

And I think you'll see some bills introduced or that may have already been introduced to help improve that process.

But at the end of the day, we have to continue to grow our infrastructure.

As someone who went and watched the South Carolina Gamecocks play in Orlando at the Citrus Bowl and spent four hours and ten minutes trying to get out of South Carolina on I-95, I sure hope we start widening I-95 sometime soon.

[laughs] <Gavin Jackson> Alright.

That's House Speaker Murrell Smith.

[laughs] Thank you so much for joining us.

<Thank you> [audience applause] It was the first week of the 126 South Carolina General Assembly that gavelled in Tuesday at the Statehouse in Columbia, and will continue to meet Tuesday through Thursday until May 8th.

Here is a short recap of the first week.

The cameras were rolling at noon on Tuesday as the 126th session of the General Assembly gavelled in at the Statehouse in Columbia.

<Statehouse announcer> Members and guests please rise as we land prayer by chaplain, to be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

<Gavin Jackson> All 46 senators and 134 House members were back and filing hundreds of bills this week, but the main focus of House and Senate leadership is on energy generation needs, tax reforms and education.

Where in the Senate, the school voucher bill using lottery funds to skirt the state's constitutional prohibition on public dollars funding private schools, kicked off debate, which started on Wednesday in the Senate.

About 30 private colleges in South Carolina that access those funds.

So, it's not, the court says that's different.

That's not a problem in, Edison.

The Edison court says you can do that because that money's not part of general tax revenue.

That's money that was not appropriated from the taxpayers.

It's different.

It's not public funds under the terms or under the definition of the Constitution.

<Gavin Jackson> The need for more energy generation in the state is also a focus of a major bill going through the House.

There's even talk of reviving the nine billion dollar V.C.

summer nuclear plant expansion boondoggle.

Santee Cooper does not plan to be the owner, nor do we intend to be the operator of whatever comes there.

We are, though, we do believe there are groups out there that are interested in potentially completing the work at V.C.

Summer.

<Gavin Jackson> The promising tone of the week shifted after a forensic audit on the 1.8 billion dollar accounting error involving the comptroller general, auditor and treasures offices was released.

The governor and legislators weighed in.

We hope and that the those investigators will understand what happened.

And because it was an accounting error and no criminal conduct, no, no wrongful intent, no intent to make an error at all.

We we suspected where it originated.

That's what we publicized.

We've introduced legislation, at least with the, auditor's office, and we expect to release or introduce some legislation fairly soon that would follow some of the recommendations of the forensic auditing team.

I just filed, articles of impeachment to begin the process of removing our current treasurer, Curtis Loftus, from office.

What we have discovered is years of sweeping accounting errors under the rug in hopes that they would just disappear.

We have currently to date spent millions of dollars because of his errors.

We spent hundreds of thousand dollars each month on lawyer fees and auditor fees, and to correct these issues it's going to cost us even more.

And I think we've got to go through this and we've got to find out who made mistakes and why they made mistakes.

And we have anecdotal, evidence of that.

But we need to hear from the players in this to find out what and why all this occurred.

<Gavin Jackson> Treasurer Curtis Loftis said his office will comply with recommendations as necessary.

I want to reassure you, the citizens of South Carolina, that you can be confident that the state's money is safe.

<Gavin Jackson> This will be an issue that dominates the coming weeks of session, as a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation remains ongoing and could negatively impact the state's credit ratings.

Next week, lawmakers will be in perfunctory session as they hold committee hearings to get bills on their respective chambers calendars for debate.

S.C.E.T.V.

is committed to keeping you informed of the state legislative process.

And to do that, I encourage you to check out the State House Gavel, our blog on scetv.org/news that keeps you up to date Tuesday through Friday on meetings, action, news, and all things Statehouse.

You can also catch the South Carolina Lede podcast every Tuesday and Saturday.

And of course, tune into "This Week In South Carolina" on air or on youtube.com/SouthCarolinaETV For South Carolina E.T.V.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.

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