VP Kamala Harris’ Myrtle Beach, SC visit to cost taxpayers thousands. Here’s what we know

Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to Myrtle Beach Jan. 6 may have been brief, but it will probably end up costing the city and county thousands of dollars in law enforcement and emergency services protection.

A total cost estimate for the visit, in which Harris appeared at the the Hilton Myrtle Beach Resort to give a keynote speech at the Seventh Episcopal District African Methodist Episcopal Church Women’s Missionary Society annual retreat, was not readily available from the city of Myrtle Beach and Horry County.

The Sun News has requested the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. Those requests were still not completed as of Friday morning, nearly a week after Harris’ visit.

However, based on news reports of a president or vice president’s visit to a town or city in the last decade, such trips have cost between $5,000 to $10,000 in extra expenses.

It is estimated that Harris was in Myrtle Beach for about 2 hours Jan. 6. She arrived at the Myrtle Beach International Airport about noon and began speaking about 1:30 p.m. She arrived back at the airport a little after 2 p.m. to fly back to Washington, D.C., according to White House reports.

But her travel to the Myrtle Beach location required the shut down of highways, including Highway 17, off ramps and side roads leading from the airport to the Hilton Myrtle Beach Resort and back to the airport after she spoke.

There were 52 Horry County Police Department personnel who worked Harris’ visit, according to county spokesperson Mikayla Moskov. It is unclear if all those were police officers.

The entry-level salary for an Horry County patrol officer is a little more than $49,000, according to the county.

It is unknown how many Myrtle Beach personnel were involved. However, the starting salary for a certified police officer is $60,174 and for a police recruit, $57,657, according to the city.

It is unclear if Horry County or the city of Myrtle Beach will request reimbursement for Harris’ visit.

Whether the government is reimbursed for visits of sitting elected officials depends on the visit.

For security reasons, the president, vice president and First Lady will use military aircraft when they travel, as well as vehicles provided by the U.S. Secret Service. However, cities often provide law enforcement and emergency services to maintain public safety and at the request of the Secret Service.

When a trip is for an official function, the government pays for all costs, according to the Congressional Research Service. When a trip is for political or unofficial purposes, those involved must pay for their own food and lodging and other related expenses, and they must also reimburse the government with the equivalent of the airfare that they would have paid had they used a commercial airline.

The policy doesn’t say anything about reimbursing the city or county governments.

While Harris’ visit wasn’t promoted as a campaign stop, it did come less than a month before the S.C. Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 3. Harris is running for president.

Some cities do not ask for reimbursement for such visits.

A message asking if the city of Myrtle Beach and Horry County have policies in place for such visits or will ask for reimbursement were not immediately answered Friday morning.

But the costs of these visits can be pricey for cities, which comes at the taxpayer’s expense.

When President Donald Trump visited Lebanon, Ohio, in 2019, the city sent the government a bill for $16,191 for police and other public safety costs, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity. It was never paid.

In Sioux City, Iowa, President Barack Obama’s visit in 2012 was projected to cost the city roughly $10,000 in law enforcement, according to the Sioux City Journal.

Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Portsmouth, Ohio, in 2020, cost taxpayers more than $4,600 between police and fire services, according to the Portsmouth Herald.

Harris is not the only candidate to visit the Myrtle Beach area recently. Four presidential candidates have stopped in the area since last March. In October, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis campaigned in Myrtle Beach and Murrells Inlet and Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley held a rally at Horry-Georgetown Technical College last March.