The Nerve

Remember when we told you last year that lawmakers were pulling $3.7 billion off-budget? Those funds were the “Other Funds” (fines and fees) for South Carolina’s public colleges and universities, and included all tuition revenue. This wasn’t a spending cut: the House simply removed those funds from the budget and added a proviso (which the […]

This week, Sen. Dick Harpootlian called for an audit of the past ten years of economic incentive packages – a monumental task given that there is no system of transparency or accountability for these taxpayer-funded incentive packages. This week’s throwback is a pair of stories – one from eight years ago, detailing this very point: […]

This week, the Department of Commerce released its cost-benefit analysis of the proposed taxpayer-funded incentives for the Carolina Panthers. The analysis is all of two pages and contains very little truly helpful information – for instance, only four assumptions are listed: the number of jobs, the payroll amount, the direct investment amount, and the percentage […]

This week, the House passed two bills dealing with Santee Cooper: one that creates a legislative oversight committee for the state-owned utility, and one that instructs the Santee Cooper joint study committee to oversee the process of selling it. The problem with both bills? That neither oversight nor the selling process is the role of […]

A WCSC article published yesterday reported that the Department of Motor Vehicles routinely sells personal information (such as driver’s license numbers, addresses, phone numbers, crash reports, traffic tickets and current license statuses) to nearly anyone –  from bulk data companies to lawyers. As disturbing as this is, the DMV is not the only government entity […]

State lawmakers have borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars to benefit specific companies — which the state constitution prohibits. Taxpayers are promised the debt will pay off in jobs and investment, but there is little evidence that’s true. In fact, as the Nerve reported in 2010, many companies that receive incentives shut down completely.  Lawmakers […]

Lawmakers have now created two separate committees to explore the sale of state-owned utility Santee Cooper. One of those committees (formed by the Senate) met last Tuesday and requested to spend roughly $193,000 to gather more information before taking official action. In light of this reluctance to move toward a sale, it’s important to remember […]

In the next couple of weeks, the House will “debate” the budget passed last week by the Ways and Means Committee, so it’s a good time to remind everyone that this is not the way the budget is supposed to come together. Last fall, the SCPC research team shared a detailed overview of what state […]

  To Our Readers: The Nerve will not be publishing this week and early next in observance of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Thank you for all your support this year; we are planning many hard-hitting stories for 2019 to hold politicians and other public officials accountable. So stay tuned!

Lawmakers are against wasteful spending – in the counties By HANNAH HILL In a House Ways and Means subcommittee meeting this week, state lawmakers expressed great concern about the responsibility of county spending practices. Let’s be clear: County spending habits are technically no concern of the state, from a jurisdictional perspective. However, the law requires […]