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The South Carolina General Assembly have filed over 1,000 bills and counting this session. It is mind-boggling how many similar terrible bills have been filed and fast-tracked over the past month. These are some of the hearings we are keeping an eye on this week:
Energy: Tuesday, February 18th, 2PM in Room 105, Gressette Building
Senate Judiciary Committee is hearing S.12, a bill that authorizes Santee Cooper to build another jointly owned power plant with a private company. S.12 is written similar to the failed VC Summer nuclear plant that ratepayers are still paying the price for. This bill is extremely vague and has no fiscal impact so there’s no way of knowing how much it will cost South Carolinians. To learn more about this bill, read HERE. See the agenda HERE.
Financial Status: Tuesday, February 18, Upon Adjournment of the Senate Finance Committee in Room 308, Gressette Building
Senate Constitutional Subcommittee that has the Department of Administration, State Treasurer’s Office, and the Office of the Comptroller General on the agenda. This subcommittee is expected to bring up the continued topic of the financial status of South Carolina.
Tort Reform: Wednesday, February 19, 9:30AM in Room 105, Gressette Building
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on S. 244. See the agenda HERE. This bill focuses on tort reform in South Carolina and has created quite a stir among small businesses and trial lawyers.
Universal School Choice: Wednesday, February 19, 30 Minutes after Adjournment in Room 110, Blatt Building
House Education and Public Works Committee – S. 62. See the agenda HERE. This is the massive school choice bill that was recently passed by the SC Senate. For more information, click HERE.
Election Regulations: Thursday, February 20th, 9AM in Room 317, Blatt Building
House Regulations, Administrative Proceedings, Artificial Intelligence, and Cybersecurity Committee – State Election Commission is trying to bring back regulation changes that we killed last year. Many of these regulation changes are illegal and unconstitutional. See the subcommittee agenda HERE. To learn how you can stop these regulations, read HERE.
Government Centralization: Thursday, February 20th, 10AM in Room 308, Gressette Building
Senate Medical Affairs Committee – S. 2 is a watered down version of this year’s health czar bill (H.3613) that restructures agencies without an unknown fiscal impact statement, modifies the governor’s emergency powers, legislates on vaccinations, alters pharmacy regulations on mental health, and more. To say the least, this bill is all about centralizing power. When this bill was in subcommittee, Senator Kimbrell railroaded one concerned citizen who raised these issues.
See the agenda of the Committee HERE.
Tort Reform: Thursday, February 20, Upon Adjournment in Room 105, Gressette Building
Senate Judiciary continued Subcommittee on S. 244. See the agenda HERE.
If you plan to contact these committees with your concerns or attend/watch the committee live, make sure to double check the schedule on scstatehouse.gov as these committees tend to change times/instructions until the very last second.
To be sure, there are bad laws that need to be replaced or repealed, the latter being preferable. But, please, over a thousand bills for a population a little over 5 million? Just be aware that there is little legislation that enhances our rights, liberties and quality of life. Most laws that are enacted serve to take more of our money, take more of our liberties or just give government more control over us. We must be better informed about the people we elect and what they are doing (to us) in Columbia. Government officials, elected and appointed, need to understand that government exists for our benefit, not the other way around. Be informed, be active, be vocal.