By admin 
South Carolina budget leaders have reached a gentlemen’s agreement to provide roughly $350 million for lawmaker sponsored community investment projects, commonly referred to as earmarks, even though they left the State House on Aug. 11 with no plans to return.
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The projects were kept out of the annual state spending plan that was approved earlier this week by Gov. Henry McMaster because a six-member conference committee could not come to an agreement on how much to spend on projects, leaving sour feelings between the two chambers. Lawmakers left more than $377 million unappropriated when they passed the more than $15 billion budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year with no plans to return to Columbia before the November election.
But House Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister and Senate Finance Chairman Harvey Peeler continued having discussions on how to resolve the impasse.
Now the Senate will gavel in at noon Tuesday. The House will follow at 1 p.m. with plans to vote on a supplemental appropriations bill to allocated dollars for lawmaker directed spending. The bill will be done through a strike-and-insert on a House-passed bill that is sitting in the Senate waiting for a third reading. If passed by the Senate, it will return to the House for a vote.
Lawmakers do not expect to take up any of the 14 budget vetoes McMaster issued. He still can line-item veto parts of the planned supplemental appropriations bill, which could motivate lawmakers to return to Columbia again.
When the General Assembly was last in session Aug. 11, much of the day was spent with the two chambers blaming the other.
“It’s the relationship between the House and the Senate. It had to come to a head, and I’m hard-headed enough to make it come to a head, and now the work was well worth the challenges,” Peeler said.
As part of the framework of the deal, senators will have about $130 million worth of earmarks. House members will have about $220 million, which is down from the more than $315 million they had pushed for.
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The Senate wanted the House to come down to $175 million.
House projects that were $300,000 or less will not be reduced. Money for police, firefighters and first responders projects by the House also did not get cut. The remaining House projects over $300,000 will be cut by roughly 39%. Senate projects won’t be reduced.
The deal also includes an agreement going forward for the House to include its projects in its first version of the budget rather than waiting for the spending plan to be returned from the Senate, which includes earmarks. This has been a long-standing point of contention by the Senate.
“I think it’s a good compromise. We addressed the concerns they had about the way the House handled projects this year for next year, so we won’t be in the same spot, and we adjusted the amounts to be more in line with without sacrificing any particular person,” Bannister said.
Also, future budget writers will try to keep the pots of money for House and Senate community investment projects in balance with one another.
“If (Peeler) wants to have similar amounts of money or similar treatment of House members and senators, that’ll be up to him in his budget because he’ll see H1,” Bannister said. H1 is how budget writers refer to the first version of the budget as it goes through the legislative process.
Future earmarks also will exclude direct funding to nonprofits, a longtime issue as questions have arisen on how nonprofits have spent earmark money.
Bannister and Peeler also agreed to pass a continuing resolution as early possible next year to prevent the state government from shutting down in case of another budget impasse.
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“This is a good faith agreement,” Peeler said.