The Nerve

By RICK BRUNDRETT A legislatively controlled committee has given five-figure pay hikes to a group of state agency heads, and a new law empowers the panel to recommend raises next fiscal year for certain statewide elected officials. The Agency Head Salary Commission (AHSC) on Thursday– the start of the new fiscal year – approved the […]

Update: S.C. House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington, on 12/4/18 informed White that he would be removed from the Ways and Means Committee, according to a prepared statement from White on 12/5/18. White was transferred to the House Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee. Rep. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, was appointed to replace White as the Ways and […]

  By RICK BRUNDRETT South Carolina’s tourism department for months kept secret from the public its plans to buy an island owned by billionaire Ted Turner for what the agency director touts will be a “premium experience” for tourists. Beaufort County and school district officials joined in the secrecy surrounding the taxpayer-funded, approximately $5 million […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Another year, another taxpayer-funded plan to study pay hikes for top South Carolina officials. Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, has introduced a bill authorizing the State Fiscal Accountability Authority to hire out a study of the salaries of the state’s nine constitutional officers: governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, adjutant general, comptroller general, treasurer, […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT One of South Carolina’s most powerful lawmakers would gain even more control under a just-passed House bill purporting to reform an influential screening panel in the aftermath of the failed V.C. Summer project. House bill 4378 would automatically put Senate President Pro Tempore Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, or his designee on the proposed […]