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After the longest stretch our legislators have gone without spending money in recent memory, the party is back in town. On Tuesday, August 11, the South Carolina House and Senate return to Columbia for a single legislative day to vote on the FY 2026-27 conference report. The same budget that blew 70 days past adjournment, left the state running on a continuing resolution for most of the summer and started a brand new fiscal year with nothing new on the books is now supposed to clear both chambers in one afternoon.

The Deal Negotiators Struck

Six people cut this deal behind closed doors in late July: Senate Finance Chairman Harvey Peeler, Senator Tom Davis, and Minority Leader Brad Hutto for the Senate, and Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister, outgoing Majority Leader Davey Hiott, and Rep. Jackie Hayes for the House. Three big fights we warned you about in The Pork Report have been resolved and have become much more sinister.


Related Post: The Pork Report: What’s Holding up South Carolina’s Budget

Property tax “relief” got a haircut. The Senate spent the spring pushing to triple the Homestead Exemption for homeowners 65 and older, from $50,000 in assessed value up to $150,000. The last deal landed at $75,000, with vague talk of expanding it later. FITSNews put the actual relief around $82 million, well short of the roughly $250 million the Senate started with. And nothing in the deal stops your county or city from simply raising millage to claw back whatever you save. Our analysis? It’s small a number dressed up as a win and local governments get the final say.

Scout Motors is still getting its bailout. The roughly $150 million for the Department of Commerce to cover cost overruns at the Scout site is still in the plan. It is just parked until an audit of the project is finished, per Nick Reynolds with the Post and Courier. Our readers will recognize that audit as the one Proviso 117.107 already handed to the Legislative Audit Council, as previously reported. Scout has already pulled more than $1.3 billion from South Carolina taxpayers in devious ways. Judging by this budget, the General Assembly is nowhere near finished handing over the rest.

Related Post: Richland Co. Councilman Derrek Pugh Secures Sweetheart Position with Scout Motors

The earmarks got pulled out of the budget and snuck into a different bill. The more than $300 million in House member earmarks we documented in the Pork Report were stripped down to a single dollar in the conference report. Go through the document line by line and you will find those projects still sitting there, each one funded at exactly $1. The Oconee Memorial Hospital request we flagged is in there at $1. So is Senator Peeler’s Project Green Landing in York, at $1. So is Senator Davis’s Arts Center of Coastal Carolina, at $1. The South Carolina Policy Council counts roughly 100 of them and projects the real total will land around $309 million once the separate bill drops. That single dollar is a bookmark. It holds the line open so the real number can be filled in later, once an ad hoc committee that has not been named, has not been scheduled, and has no published criteria decides who gets what.

Like a magician, legislators will pull the earmarks out of one budget line and move them into another vehicle nobody can see yet.

Those Who Plan to Vote No (So Far)

The SC Freedom Caucus says it will vote no on the state budget, raising two constitutional flags:

1) Article III, Section 18 requires three readings on three separate days in each chamber, and only one floor day is scheduled.

2) Article IV, Section 21 ties the governor’s line-item veto to bills “appropriating money,” so if the earmarks eventually ride a joint resolution instead of an appropriations bill, the caucus argues a future governor could lose the power to strike them line by line.

Senator Lee Bright took to Facebook to let his constituents know that he will be voting against the budget and urges everyone to contact their legislators, telling them to vote against the conference report as spending is out of control.

Spending Continues to Grow in Creative Ways

According to the proposed documents, the state’s budget comes in at a whopping $44,404,959,459. The state general fund makes up $15,699,103,018, while the federal fund nearly matches at $14,036,525,486. All other funds total $14,670,202,154. On top of that, the FY26-27 Summary Control Document leaves $378,612,834 unappropriated, and $377,741,635 of that, nearly all of it, is nonrecurring one-time money. This is most likely the money pot waiting to backfill the earmarks once the separate bill drops.

As referenced by Reynolds’ article, a few other items were ignored: a one-year fix on liquor liability insurance for bars and restaurants, the Freedom Caucus push to clear long-vacant state jobs, and a ban on solar facilities near schools that was written in response to the Silfab contamination in Fort Mill. All three were ruled out on House rules.

What To Expect & What You Can Do

The vote is scheduled for Tuesday, August 11. The earmark fight is far from over, as it is just moving to an unknown committee. Between now and then, contact your senator and your representative and ask them which bill is carrying the leftover earmarks. If you want to take a bigger step, tell them to vote against the conference committee report, which is full of outrageous budget lines, and for once to save taxpayers money by not growing the budget. Then watch how they vote.