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My bill that would allow corporations to amend their articles of incorporation to elected benefit corporation status has passed favorably out of the House and should be debated in Senate committee next week.
By electing benefit corporation status, a corporation can establish a culture of corporate responsibility by supporting what it deems to be a “public good.”
For further information, see The SC Benefit Corporation Act.
Tax reform took a major step toward reality this week as the House Republicans ushered through three major pieces of our comprehensive tax reform package – returning $143 million to working families and small business owners.
This was “Crossover Week” in the General Assembly. Crossover is a May 1st deadline that means a bill originating in one body must be received in the other body by the Deadline to receive normal consideration for that year’s session. This establishes a set workload for each body going into the final weeks of the session. Legislation can be considered after the deadline, but the receiving body must take a 2/3 vote to be able to even take up legislation sent after the deadline.
Crossover Week is a busy week as everyone in the House wants to ensure their legislation has a chance to at least be heard on the floor of the House. We debated more than 60 pieces of legislation this week, which resulted in three long days on the House floor.
But enough about “How a Bill Becomes a Law” and back to the tax reform laws approved this week.
We hoped to accomplish a little more on the tax reform front this year, but approving these three bills is a major step forward in our goal of statewide comprehensive tax reform. The Caucus built bi-partisan support for cutting taxes on small businesses, cutting income taxes, and streamlining our sales tax exemptions. This was excellent work for the first year of this process.
The three bills approved this week were submitted by the Republican Caucus Tax Reform Study Committee, which met throughout the off-session in 2011 to study the tax code and make recommendations that could become actionable legislation. Seven pieces of legislation were drafted (several had duplication for procedural reasons). The three that came to the floor this week were:
From the first meeting of the study committee, we stated that major, systemic reforms don’t happen overnight, and the Caucus will continue to study and refine these proposals and re-introduce them next year.
The three bills now head to the Senate, and early media reports were skeptical of passage. I’m proud of the proposals the committee made, and I’m looking forward to continuing the fight until we get these common sense reforms signed into law. I hope conservatives throughout our state will make their voices heard for tax cuts.
The South Carolina House has worked for five years, and with two governors, to create a Department of Administration and reform the executive branch. Last month, the South Carolina Senate approved a dense, 100-page “Department of Administration” bill that replaces one agency with a new one every 10 pages.
Now, it is no secret that the House and the Senate frequently spar over legislation. In this case, the question is whether the medicine is worse than the sickness. We are extremely pleased the Senate tried to eliminate the Budget and Control Board. We are not pleased that the elimination wasn’t complete and the Senate split it into 10 different government agencies.
That is not reform. That is growing government. There is no way to spin it otherwise.
Here are the facts. The House has approved Department of Administration legislation three times in the past four years. This is the first time the Senate has approved it. The Senate amended our legislation with a 99-page amendment that was still being written the weekend after the Senate approved it. The Senate’s legislation creates a new Budget and Control Board, and leaves the existing one intact.
It has taken the House a month to unpack the massive amendment, and what we found was a new RINO: Restructuring In Name Only.
The Budget and Control Board still exists under the Senate’s plan. Not only that, but there is a new “bond review” board that consists of the Governor, the Comptroller General, the Treasurer, a Senator and a House member. Or, put another way, pretty much the same people who currently drive the Budget and Control Board.
The national credit rating agencies recently reaffirmed our state’s AAA credit rating – something the Obama Administration can’t boast – but those same agencies warned that if the Senate version goes through, that rating could be in jeopardy.
In addition to the fiscal integrity issues, the Senate’s 10-agency plan contains other accountability oversights and gaps. The Senate created the Procurement Oversight Board, assigned it board members and departments to oversee, but failed to give the agency any authority to run itself or execute actions. That leaves decision making authority back with the old Budget and Control Board, which was never officially eliminated in the Senate’s bill.
House Republicans are working to re-craft the legislation to put at least 85 percent of the old Budget and Control Board into the Department of Administration and truly dissolving the rest of the old board. We want to give the Governor true authority over the executive administration of our state. We will promote efficiency by reducing the number of agencies, maximizing the scope of the Department of Administration, and eliminating the Budget and Control Board.
One nugget tucked away in the Senate’s plan is moving the agency that provides independent fiscal impact statements on legislation under the control of the General Assembly. If that’s not the fox guarding the henhouse, I’m not sure what is. The House’s version will ensure independence for the Bureau of Economic Advisors, strengthen the Inspector General and State Auditor’s offices, and safeguard our AAA credit rating.
As Governor Haley pointed out to House Members in a meeting last month, the Senate’s 10 government agency version of DOA reform has major flaws. By creating so many new and overlapping agencies, government will become less accountable and less efficient – something that is hard to imagine. I believe that the House can truly eliminate the Budget and Control Board, and do so in a way that provides real accountability and doesn’t create 10 government agencies.
At the same time, there are several functions of government that should not be influenced by the political whims of one person. For example: Putting everything into the hands of the governor would allow that person to single-handedly make sweeping changes to state health care coverage (such as expanding coverage for abortions) or making unilateral changes to the state’s retirement system.
Like any other major government reform, this will take time to achieve. The House has been working at this for four years. We’re pleased the Senate tried to eliminate the Budget and Control Board – a reform we never thought would actually pass the Senate – but we simply cannot put a rubber stamp on legislation that grows government as swiftly as this current bill.
Unfortunately, much misinformation was communicated about the school choice bill from public school administrators to teachers.
This misinformation resulted in a few teachers emailing their legislators out of fear. Some of the more common concerns that we heard was that the school choice bill was a “voucher” program, which it is not. Another concern was that this bill would result in teachers being laid off, which is not true. The House passed a budget earlier this month that raised the base student cost and prioritized an increase in teacher salaries.
Public school administrators fear that increasing the ability of parents to control the education of their children will expose the weakness of the education systems that they control. It was right for the teachers to email us. It was wrong for the administrators to be less than truthful to them.
Tax reform also indirectly entered into the school choice debate. Opponents of the school choice bill argued that the state was funding independent schools by allowing parents to deduct the cost of tuition. They must remember that taxes belong to the people first, not to the state.
The concept of the ultimate ownership of tax dollars will be discussed again as the tax reform bills make their way through the House. These bills will force legislators to reveal their true loyalty – they will either support the people who pay the taxes or the people who spend the taxes.
The House passed a school choice bill this week that I fully supported. The purpose of the bill is to -
The bill extends the following deductions/credits -
