Budget Done. Roads Next. And Someone Just Kicked a Hornets’ Nest.
- Alpha Strategies
- Apr 27
- 6 min read
ALPHA STRATEGIES | LEGISLATIVE SESSION UPDATE | WEEK 15
Week of April 20, 2026 | South Carolina General Assembly, 126th Session
The Senate passed its budget. The House moved through major calendar items. A near-total abortion bill cleared committee, with a Republican breaking ranks to oppose it, and landed on the Senate floor. Hemp regulation is back in the Senate after a long House floor fight.
Here is what Week 15 actually means.
THE SENATE PASSES ITS BUDGET, AND LOADS IT UP
After three days of floor debate, the Senate passed its budget with broad bipartisan support. The Senate Finance Committee Chairman characterized it as a plan to keep more money in taxpayers' pockets while funding the core operations of state government. A small number of Republican members were the only no votes.
The House and Senate agree on more than they disagree. Both chambers fund a starting teacher pay raise that aligns with one of Governor McMaster's final budget asks. Both fund a state employee pay raise and increased state health plan costs. Both allocate funding to implement the income tax reduction already signed into law. Both put significant one-time money toward the new MUSC cancer hospital. And both, quietly, declined the Commerce Department's request to cover Scout Motors site overruns in Blythewood. That silence is its own message.
The disagreements are where conference gets interesting.
The Senate added significant funding for their separately passed homestead exemption expansion for residents 65 and older. They also embedded near-identical language in a proviso in case the House never passes the standalone bill. That is not hedging. That is contingency planning with a political message attached.
The House included substantial budget funding for Captain Sam’s Spit, the long-litigated coastal land on Kiawah Island. The Senate Finance Committee did not include it. Conference is going to be interesting.
Then there are the provisos, which are where the real policy lives when everyone is pretending to talk about something else. Among what the Senate added during floor debate: monthly water-use reporting for commercial data centers and a ban on state incentives for data center recruitment or expansion. A reallocation from Commerce to Agriculture for farmers hit by drought and rising input costs. A requirement that schools install mobile panic alarm systems. A restriction on state funds going toward student-athlete NIL contracts. A suspension of the liquor liability minimum insurance requirement. And, again, another push to raise legislators' in-district expense pay.
What did not make it in: free school breakfast, which was tabled on a close vote despite being included in both the Governor's executive budget and the House version. The narrow margin sets up a likely return in conference.
THE HOUSE CLEARS THE DECKS
While the Senate debated its budget, the House used the week to empty its calendar, setting the table for a major SCDOT roads bill debate.
Charter school accountability (S. 454) advanced through the House Education and Public Works Committee on April 21 with significant amendments. The bill seeks greater oversight and transparency for charter schools and their authorizers.
Eviction records (H. 4270) cleared second reading in the House by a 77-23 vote on April 23, with third reading anticipated this week before the bill heads to the Senate. The bill would remove eviction filings from the public index five years after final disposition, or after filing if no disposition is recorded. Its Senate companion, S. 983, has already cleared Judiciary with amendment, but they are not the same bill. They are in the same policy neighborhood with different addresses. Whether the chambers can align before sine die is an open question.
Governor's salary (H. 5018) cleared the House on a 97-10 second reading vote on April 23, received third reading the next day, and is now in the Senate. The bill puts the governor and lieutenant governor's salaries under the Agency Head Salary Commission, consistent with other statewide elected officials.
School safety (H. 5201) was reported favorably out of the Education and Public Works Committee on April 16 and was teed up for House floor action this week. The bill establishes a multi-jurisdictional school safety task force, requires districts to develop emergency operation plans, and provides for SLED oversight.
H. 3650, which increases penalties for knowingly discharging firearms at occupied structures, advanced toward final passage with House action on Senate amendments.
And then there is hemp. Two bills were on the floor this week. H. 3924, the regulation framework that passed the Senate in March, came back to the House with Senate amendments and got a full floor fight on April 22. The House sent the bill back to the Senate with its own changes. Separately, H. 4758, the outright consumables ban, was returned to House Judiciary. Not killed. Just formally acknowledged as stuck. H. 3924 now sits in the Senate, which must decide whether to concur with the House amendments or request a conference committee. Until the Senate acts, hemp is unresolved.
S. 1095: ON THE FLOOR, AND RUNNING INTO A WALL
Tuesday night in Charleston, the Republican candidates for governor stood on a debate stage and answered whether they would sign S. 1095, the near-total abortion ban moving through the Senate. Only one said yes: Congressman Ralph Norman. Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette said it goes too far and that she would veto it.
That debate happened the same evening the Senate Medical Affairs Committee advanced S. 1095 to the floor.
The committee vote was largely along party lines, with one exception. Republican Sen. Tom Davis of Beaufort voted no and stated publicly that if the bill is taken up for floor debate, he will filibuster it. Davis has used the filibuster before to stop a similar bill in a prior session, and he supported the existing six-week framework when it was enacted. His position is consistent and on the record.
S. 1095 would replace South Carolina's current six-week framework with a prohibition beginning at clinical detection, eliminate exceptions for rape, incest, and fatal fetal anomalies, reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol as Schedule IV controlled substances, and create new criminal and civil exposure for physicians, pharmacists, and healthcare providers. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Richard Cash, R-Anderson, has indicated he will continue pushing within the Republican caucus. With less than three weeks left in session, the calendar pressure is real.
The honest read: this bill is serious, it is on the Senate floor, and it is going nowhere quickly. But going nowhere quickly and dead are different things with less than three weeks left on the calendar.
WHAT CAME IN THE DOOR THIS WEEK
The introduction sheets for April 20-24 are worth reading past the obvious.
From the Senate:
S. 1130 would subject political party officials, state and county chairs, to South Carolina's ethics, campaign finance, and lobbying laws. The bill drew broad sponsorship from Republican senators upon introduction. Referred to Judiciary.
S. 1140 would require probate judges to hold a law license or have a defined level of probate office experience, and adds continuing education requirements for clerks. Referred to Judiciary.
H. 3408, the foreign adversary land bill, has worked through the legislative process this session and would prohibit companies owned by U.S.-declared foreign adversaries from acquiring an interest in agricultural land in South Carolina.
From the House:
H. 5569 would create the SC Farm Aid and Resiliency Grant Fund, drawing from the Contingency Reserve and administered by the Office of Resilience, to support farmers dealing with drought and rising input costs. Referred to Ways and Means. The Senate simultaneously moved funding from Commerce to Agriculture in the budget. Two chambers, same crisis, same week. That kind of bicameral alignment does not happen by accident.
S. 915, the Medicaid false claims bill, crossed over from the Senate this week with substantial sponsorship and landed in House Judiciary. It creates tiered violations, stiffer penalties, and authorizes Attorney General administrative subpoenas. Healthcare organizations with Medicaid exposure do not need to be alarmed, but strong enforcement tools shape behavior whether or not they are used aggressively.
One more, and this one is not complicated: both chambers adopted resolutions honoring Coach Dawn Staley and the USC Women’s Basketball team, second straight NCAA Runner-Up finish, fifth consecutive SEC championship. The resolution inviting the team to address a joint session is in Senate Operations and Management.
WEEK 16: THE ROAD FIGHT
When the chambers return Tuesday, April 28, S. 831, the SCDOT modernization bill, is among the most consequential items awaiting House floor action.
This is a substantial piece of legislation. It moves the SCDOT Secretary to a gubernatorial appointment, creates a Coordinating Council for Transportation and Mobility, authorizes public-private partnerships, expands tolling authority, raises EV and alternative fuel registration fees, and adds a tax on public EV charging. It also creates a framework for transferring maintenance of non-essential state roads to local governments.
That last provision is the one that keeps county officials up at night. The Senate version made those transfers mandatory under certain conditions. The House version made them voluntary. That is a fundamental question about who maintains South Carolina’s roads as the state grows, and who pays for it.
The House amended S. 831 in Ways and Means to align it with H. 5071. The floor debate is the reconciled version of both chambers’ proposals.
THE MATH
Sine Die. Three weeks. Nine days. May 14 at 5 p.m.
Alpha Strategies tracks South Carolina’s legislative process week by week to help organizations understand not just what happened, but what it means and what is coming next.
Comments