‘I don’t call them earmarks’: SC lawmakers restore $153M in spending vetoed by McMaster
Funding for more than 200 projects that the governor axed last week has been restored.
Despite Gov. Henry McMaster calling for project descriptions and a competitive grant process when it comes to legislative earmarks, lawmakers overrode the governor’s vetoes in a series of overwhelming votes, restoring about $152.5 million in pet projects in the budget year which begins on Thursday.
The earmarks include some priorities listed by McMaster himself when he made his executive budget proposal earlier this year.
McMaster has called for more transparency in the earmark process, including description and justifications of the projects and how recipients intend to spend the money they receive.
State Rep. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, said from the floor that information is available on request.
“If they want more information, certainly there’s nothing that anyone is trying to hide and we’d be happy to provide that to them, and if that’s the way they want it moving forward, we’ll certainly comply with that,” Smith said. “We want to work with the governor and make sure that we are transparent, and that people understand these earmarks.”
While on the House floor, Smith added the process the override process is not adversarial and many of the governors suggestions were included in the final budget adopted by the General Assembly.
The State newspaper for more than a year investigated how lawmakers directed money to projects with little or no debate.
After outcry over the public disclosure of earmarks included in the budget, lawmakers vowed to disclose earmark requests and the names of lawmakers asking for the money.
The Senate earlier this year passed a rule that required earmarks be published along with the sponsoring senator and the name of the organization receiving the money.
Ahead of budget votes this year, lists of earmark amounts, organizations receiving money and the lawmaker sponsoring the request were publicly released.
“Last year when we had the discussion about the earmarks I promised to the body and to the public that we would be transparent and those earmarks that we would make sure that each member who requested the earmark was listed, and it will be on a sheet that will be handed out to the public and that’s what we did this year,” Smith said.
Lawmakers included the earmarks into categories, which forced McMaster to veto them in batches instead of individually. Lawmakers restored them in batches on Tuesday.
The 226 earmarks vetoed by McMaster included $19 million for the Greenville Cultural Arts Center, $15 million for the Sumter Opera House and $9 million for the Columbia Convention Center, down from an original request of $19 million.
Other earmarks in the budget plan included $1 million for the Florence County Sheriffs office to buy body cameras; $2 million for the SC Aquarium in Charleston; $4 million for the Mother Emanuel Foundation to help build a memorial for the 2015 mass shooting; $1.5 million for Shot Pouch Greenway and Swan Lake Iris Gardens improvements, and $2 million to carry out permitting needed for a planned Jasper Ocean Terminal Port.
The earmarks also included $2.5 million for tornado disaster reimbursements and $238,000 for Laurens County Office facility renovations.
State Sen. Nikki Setzler, D-Lexington, defended the spending as being helpful to the areas where the money is allocated.
“I don’t call them earmarks,” Setzler said. “I call them community improvement investments.”
In McMaster’s veto message, the governor called for a competitive grant process administered by state agencies to distribute money used for earmarks.
State Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort said it’s the General Assembly’s role to appropriate funds, not the executive branch, and objected to McMaster’s idea
“I think it’s anti-transparent,” Davis said.
