Executive budget focuses on small businesses, education

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The budget, released today, would also put $500 million in the state’s reserve fund while allocating $60 million for high-demand job skills training and $30 million for broadband expansion.

“By being careful and conservative, freezing new spending and holding state government steady at last year's spending levels, we have been able to avoid cutting services, raising taxes, or borrowing money,” McMaster wrote in a letter to the General Assembly. “Today, South Carolina has a small portion of that $1.8 billion surplus remaining and we are in a stronger financial position than virtually every other state in the country. That's because we were thinking ahead. Now, we must continue to think ahead.”

The small business grant program would provide for funds to be administered by the S.C. Commerce Department “in the same manner as the federal CARES Act funds,” according to McMaster’s statement. The $35 million directed to education, combined with the budget’s lifting of the current suspension of teacher step salary increases, would allow school districts to resume all scheduled step salary increases, McMaster said.

The budget (.pdf) also would invest $48 million in expanding full-day kindergarten programs for 4-year-old children from lower-income families across the state, provide funding for school nurses and resource officers, and boost higher education assistance for students who qualify for federal financial aid and for those who attend historically Black colleges and universities.

“Access and affordability to higher education for every South Carolinian is essential to ensuring that our state has the trained and skilled workforce to compete for jobs and investment in the future,” McMaster said. 

McMaster’s budget also would provide $13 million for law enforcement, public safety and first response agencies recruitment and retention and eliminate state income taxes on the retirement pay of military veterans and first responders.