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Last year, we warned you about H.3305, a bill that would shield politicians from their critics. Lawmakers called it the “South Carolina Public Expression Protection Act” and sold it as free-speech protection, but a closer examination proved otherwise. Instead, it would open new legal doors to punish nonprofits like ours for exposing corruption. It passed the House in March of 2025, then sat in the Senate for over a year waiting on a third reading.
Over a year later, on August 25, 2026, the Senate dusted off H.3305, gutted it, and inserted around $350 million in earmarks. On the same day, the Senate passed it 30 to 6, and the House passed it 96 to 15.
It appears the South Carolina legislature was receiving so much scrutiny for spending your money on their pet projects that they had to write a blank check in the budget (where earmarks are usually carved out) and instead came back later to insert the rest of them into a random bill.
Did they really think we wouldn’t notice?
In our previous article, we explained this plan in detail after reviewing some of the most ridiculous carveouts that you are going to fund against your will.
The main FY 2026-27 budget passed on August 11th without the earmarks, and Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister told reporters the separate earmark plan had fallen apart and lawmakers were “better just to punt it to next year.” That lasted two weeks.
Priority Order Tells On Them
The appropriations are “listed in priority order,” and “Item (1) must be funded first and each remaining item must be fully funded before any funds are allocated to the next item.” In plain terms: the projects at the top are the ones the authors care about most, and the ones at the bottom are the first to lose out if the money runs short.
For example, the Department of Education sits at number 1. The Citadel sits at number 2, for a $100,000 parking lot. The South Carolina Department of Transportation shows up at number 16, and again at number 51.
Roads are not the priority. This is the same DOT we hand more money to every year, the same agency legislators just handed more revenue and power. If fixing roads were the point, DOT would not be sitting halfway and three-quarters of the way down the list, behind a $100,000 cadet parking lot. This is on top of the already $240 million the Citadel is receiving through the state budget. Keep this priority order in mind as we will come back to that parking lot.
Reviewing The List
Our team reviewed these projects, and here is some of the line items that stand out the most.
$1,491,418: The one that ties back to data centers…again. Myrtle Beach Cable Landing Site Prep. Our readers know this one. We flagged it in The Pork Report at $7.5 million, tied to DC BLOX, the fiber company building a subsea cable landing station in Myrtle Beach whose customers include Meta and Google. A cable landing is the front end of data center development, and “site prep” dollars are public money smoothing the runway for private investment. We have covered this plan since 2023, and we will continue to monitor it.
$6,000,000: A city stadium on the state’s tab. City of Mauldin Multipurpose Stadium. Who plays there and why is the state general fund building a municipal sports venue? If Mauldin wants a stadium, Mauldin has a tax base. This is a local project with no business riding on state money.
$3,508: Laptops. The Pine Ridge Police Department got $3,508 for laptops. Set aside the amount for a moment. The fact that a line this small made a statewide priority list of $350 million tells you there is no consistent standard for what qualifies. If $3,508 in laptops clears the bar, there is no bar.
$8,045,000: The Congaree Riverfront District, funded twice. The state is paying for this Columbia project through two separate lines: $5,000,000 through Commerce to the City of Columbia and another $3,045,000 through USC. The project’s own website lists the estimated cost as “to be determined through the Master Plan process.” In other words, they will see how much they can pull from state taxpayers first, then go back to Columbia’s taxpayers for the rest. A project that cannot tell you what it costs has no business asking you for $8 million.
$1,000,000: A nonprofit, routed through SLED. SASSGO, “The Banks,” a 501(c)(3). This is the same group that sells tickets to annual galas in Columbia’s Bull Street District. We want to know what a state law enforcement agency is doing writing a seven-figure check to a private nonprofit.
$500,200: A fraternity’s nonprofit building, routed through the police department. Omegas of Spartanburg, Inc., a building renovation filed under “public safety” and funneled through the Spartanburg Police Department. The group’s own site shows a 2025 charity golf tournament. Here is how these deals work even when the renovation is real: state money covers the building, which frees up the group’s own money for everything else. Why is this a state expense and why is it routed through a police department?
$700,000: More drones for Columbia. City of Columbia Air Drone First Responder Expansion. Here is another line item for surveillance hardware for another city. This brings up a question we continue to ask: why do you pay city property taxes if the state is going to subsidize the city’s operations anyway?
$500,000: A camera system for Rep. Justin Bamberg’s father. The Bamberg County Sheriff’s Office got $500,000 for a camera system which was requested by Rep. Justin Bamberg for his father, Sheriff Kenneth Bamberg. We flagged the family ties back in the Pork Report; however, more information has surfaced in the county since then.
Since 2025, in secret, the City of Bamberg has been working on dissolving its own police department and handing municipal law enforcement over to the Bamberg County Sheriff’s Office. According to a July 21st letter from Mayor Corey Ramsey, reported by The Times and Democrat, the target date is July 1, 2027. This letter was addressed directly to Sheriff Bamberg and a handful of county officials.
So…the sheriff’s office is set to absorb an entire city’s policing, and a sitting legislator, the sheriff’s son, just secured half a million dollars in state money to outfit that office with a surveillance system, which most likely will be Flock considering the rest of SC’s police departments. Is that camera system supposed to take over the job of the department that is set to be dissolved in less than a year?
The city has kept this whole thing quiet and plans to continue the secret until it’s set in stone. On August 10th, during the last city council meeting, Mayor Ramsey took nearly 20 minutes in the beginning to make it clear that the local government will not discuss the disbandment in public. When asked if residents would get an update, Ramsey said they would not speak publicly “no sooner than that meeting”,” a September 15th session, and would not commit to speaking after it. When asked whether constituents could attend, Ramsey made it clear no one was invited, “particularly a governing body.” His reassurance to the public, in his own words: “there is no concern that we need to bring to the public at this time. We are safe, we are well taken care of, and we can say that assuredly, because Sheriff Bamberg is sitting right there.”
Translation: shut up, sit down, and take it.
$5,000,000: Money for a school that already exists. Spartanburg County’s Daniel Morgan Technology Center. The school is already up and running, and already funded through Property Tax Relief Act and the Education Finance Act. Its financial statements are supposed to be posted online, but are nowhere to be found online. The districts that govern it say the statements are supposed to be posted online, but we have not seen them anywhere. Our team has reached out to the school’s director for these documents and will update this report if we receive a response.
$100,000: the parking lot ranked number 2 in the state’s priority. Back to the Citadel. Out of every line in a $350 million bill, a cadet parking lot at a state military college that already operates on a budget in the hundreds of millions is, according to the people who wrote this list, the second most important use of your money. Not decreasing your taxes. Not giving back your surplus.
Who Got the Most
We broke the earmarks down by county, dividing each county’s total earmarks by its population instead of using raw dollars, so you get dollars per resident.
Sumter tops the list at roughly $195 per resident, more than anywhere else in the state. It is also the home county of House Speaker Murrell Smith, the most powerful man in the House.
Georgetown County came in second at $149 per resident, and it is notoriously blue. That is the point. Earmarks are not a red racket or a blue one, they are an incumbent racket. The money follows power and proximity to leadership, not your party.
“The Currency of Corruption”
The sharpest description of this whole extended session came from Rep. Jordan Pace, chairman of the SC Freedom Caucus, who told The Nerve: “Earmarks are the currency of corruption.”
Before the passage of H.3305, Senator Lee Bright spoke truth to power on the floor of the Senate. If the state has surplus one-time money to spend, the honest move is to send it back to the taxpayers or at least send it down to the counties and let them decide. But Bright hit the nail on the head: if the money went to the counties, the state legislators would not get the credit for delivering it.
This is the entire game your elected legislators play every year. At a minimum, they are collecting credit. Ribbon cuttings, press releases, goodwill back home with local government officials. Earmarks are how an incumbent buys reelection with your money, and they brag on it as “public service.”
Peeler’s “No Nonprofits” Claim Debunked
To add insult to injury, Senate Finance Chairman Harvey Peeler told the Senate that “no nonprofits will receive direct funding.”
Peeler is attempting to play word games by using the word “direct.” Technically, the nonprofits are not getting a check with a state seal on it. It’s even worse than that. The money is funneled through state agencies and local governments, which are directed through the earmark to then give that money to the nonprofits. SASSGO gets its million through SLED. The Omegas of Spartanburg get their half-million through the Spartanburg Police Department.
Republican leadership is adding an extra step this year so they can stand on their soapbox (or in this case, in the well) and tell you that the sky is not blue. Peeler called it a “good faith agreement,” which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The Constitutional Dilemma
The South Carolina Freedom Caucus was the only group to push back on this bill that both Republicans and Democrats were carrying to the finish line. Chairman Pace and his members threw procedural objections and amendments at the bill and managed to delay it, though not to stop it. They argued that jamming the earmarks through a strike-and-insert on a year-old bill is “an end-around” of the normal budget process and sets a precedent to allow leadership to run the whole budget this way next year if no one objects now.
The other issue brought up by Pace was the fact that H.3305 never received its individual three readings. Article III, Section 18 of the SC Constitution states that no bill becomes law until it is read three times on three separate days in each chamber. When you strike out an entire bill and insert brand new content into a shell that burned its readings as a different piece of legislation, you have to ask whether the new content ever got the readings the constitution requires.
Ways and Means Chairman Bannister’s closing pitch on the floor was that “this body should congratulate itself” for its work and that every project on the list had already passed one chamber or the other at some point.
It did, but as vastly different pieces of legislation.
Governor Henry McMaster signed H.3305 on September 1st with no vetoes, stating that “…we have worked over the years to make the process for reviewing them more transparent and accountable to the taxpayers of South Carolina.”
Republican leadership in South Carolina is no better than a snake oil salesman who treats their constituents worse than a cheap prostitute.
Credit Where It Is Due
It would be easy to read all of this and conclude the whole building is rotten. It is not. Twenty-one legislators voted no, 15 in the House and 6 in the Senate, and put themselves between your wallet and this bill while the room cheered it on. The backbone of that resistance was the SC Freedom Caucus, led by Chairman Jordan Pace, the same members leadership steamrolled with a cloture vote and a string of tabled amendments. They never had the numbers to kill it. What they did instead was drag it into the daylight. Remember that when your incumbent tells you there was no other choice. There was. Twenty-one voted the correct way.
What’s Next
Leadership is promising to “revamp” the earmark process next year, and the Senate is already saying the state should walk into next year’s budget with roughly $1 billion in excess in another surplus to spend because of consistent overtaxation. It has become clear that this is a pot of money legislators intend to protect.
Here is your homework. The Senate passed this earmark bill 30 to 6, and the House passed it 96 to 15. Those votes are not close at all, which means the odds are that your legislators voted yes. Find out how yours voted, and if they did vote yes, confront them about it. Start looking for an opponent to vote for instead, or find someone to primary them.
On the bright side, we did stop the original anti-critic bill. That in itself is a win.
This report was made possible by the research team at Palmetto State Watch.