VAL GUEST (STATE LEGISLATURE) CHECKS IN 5/4/26

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to the show. You know this when you come in.

SPEAKER_00 0:03

I do, I do. Good morning. How are you, sir? Good, how's that baby? Um, she's so good.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Yes. Actually, I think she is. I think she is.

SPEAKER_03 0:15

We get a lot of comments that it's a good mix between you two, leaning towards mom. And the other one we get is she looks a lot like her sister. Yeah, she does. Which is really cool, and Nicolina just beams with pride. How old is she? Uh Nicolina is seven and a half, almost eight. Oh, sweet. And then uh this one is not almost eight. So she'll tell you that if you ask her.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

She'll tell you that if you don't post that.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

And the baby is four months almost five months.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Yep, I remember. I was in here the week before she came.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

She is so happy, baby, smiley. That's exciting. And loves her sister. She smiles even more than a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

She loves her auntie Liz. Yes. She lets me hold her.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

That's good. She has good taste early in her life.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Anyway, uh, we are here with State Representative Val Guest, District 106, uh, in that surfside.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Actually, because it's Star Wars Day when Liz leaves, I have to whisper to the baby, she is not your mother.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Yes, may the fourth be with you. All right, Val. So you are um not even in the primary, but we had to suspend you um for 45 days as per FCC. But we said, hey, you can come in for one interview. And uh, you know what? Because you're running in you'll be in the November ballot.

SPEAKER_03 1:30

Right, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Um, so we, you know, so we didn't want to skip all that time.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

He gets another interview then.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Yes, of course, yeah, during that 45-day period. But I just wanted to um ask you, like, what are the things that you are most proud of getting done either on your own or with the team of the state legislature in in your past, what is it, four years now?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Right. I'm just finishing my second term. Um and uh we have two weeks left in this session, so six days, but who's counting? And um we probably have to come back in either late May or early June to finish the budget. So we will have to meet one more time to finish that up. But you know, we've really worked hard to reduce taxes. Uh every year I've been here, they've gone down. Uh this year we have taken a huge step in changing our tax brackets, and we've got a where everyone's taxed, fly tax, but it allows us to reduce taxes this year from six percent to five point two one percent, with the goal to continue going down until we eliminate our state income tax. So that but we're not doing it by raising taxes in other places. That's the goal. You know, you know, so it's not gonna be overnight. Some people say just do it, and I'm like, well, we don't we can't just do it, but what we're doing it by our growth, which we everybody knows, South Carolina's one of the fastest growing states in the country.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

They also know that Rory County is probably the fastest growing county in the country.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

But by this growth, we're able to cut in certain areas because we're increasing our tax um we're increasing the amount we take in because we have more people to pay it.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

And that allows us to reduce taxes across the board and eventually we hope to uh eliminate state income tax altogether.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Can I um just interject uh uh interject a concept here? Because we talked about impact fees that counties can do and all that.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Um, but there is something like down in Florida that, you know, I was helping my son look for a place, and there are places that have CDD fees, um new developments. They take out a um 30-year bond and they apply that to your taxes. Um it might be like$2,600 a year for 30 years that you have to pay extra for being in a new development that covers all the infrastructure around, and then after 30 years, there's a smaller amount, and it's a maintenance of those infrastructure roads and whatever they need to build, even the community center, um, that those people that are accessing that development, so so it's you know, they had talked about the Yankee tax that you know you pay this one-time fee when you change your license over whatever. But that is like it's it should be for the new infrastructure in particular, not just everyone that moves here. It should be for people that are buying brand new homes. So they have these CDD fees, so it's like um any house like built after a certain time has some kind of CDD fee. The other thing that they have there was they postpone the homestead. So you would need to live there as a primary for one year before you qualify.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

So these are things that help us capitalize that kind of make sense to me, that help you capitalize um on people that are moving here for those all the benefits that we offer, which is low taxes and you know, things like that. You know, property taxes are much lower.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yes, there's no question.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

There's no question about that. But it puts a burden on the rest of us when we're buying existing homes that don't require, you know, all this impact that um you know that's gonna be on the backs of all taxpayers. You know what I mean? It's just a concept.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Uh it is a g I understand that. I'd have to look into that better to understand totally, but 'cause that's kind of the problem with development. Well, that uh I that's part of it. But you also have to look at when we when we allow these people to develop these huge neighborhoods, you know, the the the developer needs to put some skin in the game.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

And make sure that you know th when they add 300 homes that we have the roads and the infrastructure to move 300 new families around our community. Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

So I mean I think to you know what you're looking at looks like a devel uh a a neighborhood that's already developed and s and now we're gonna add a it's no this just felt like brand new developments because all those people moving in are using our services, you know, like schools, we have to build schools, you know. This is a huge influx of people.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

The reality is it's it's it's a tax and it's gonna fall to the homeowner, whether we put it on the developer to put it on the front end, or you add it to the person buying the home, and then they have to pay a a larger amount of so to me I I'd I'd rather do it on the front end where don't get me wrong, the developer's gonna send it to the buyer. Of course, it's gonna be a good idea. The buyer's gonna pay it. I mean, we'd like to say they're not, but they're gonna pay it. So I mean, I I I understand, I mean, you know, it's just you get into the same place two different ways. But you know, we do need to make sure when we do development that we do it smart, that we look at the infrastructure, that we make sure it can support what we're building. I mean, that's the biggest problem that we have.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

But we can't even have a say because this has already been approved in so many ways. A lot of things have been approved that are gonna haven't been built yet.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Right, that's true. And and I was gonna say that's uh one of the other things I've got that we've we're we've been working on. We just did a total um study on our DOT. And we have uh we're going to make some changes in our DOT. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

What did you see that was an issue?

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Well, just the the time frame that it takes to get things done. And the prices go up during a lot of the red tape. We're trying to cut through some of the red tape. So things that would take three or four years, we can get done in a year. So we're uh you know working very hard. We're gonna some of our interstates, which we don't have any yet, but some of the interstates around the state have uh imaginary I-73. Have um issues with uh they have it up in Charlotte where they have a a lane that you can pay extra and kind of an HOA toll road? Yeah, well it's you can say that. But what we're gonna do is whoever d builds it, yeah, they get the money from it. We put no money in it ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

I go back to Star Wars. These are the not the roads you are looking for.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

No, I agree, I agree. But that's one of the things that we're gonna allow for some of these to get things to do.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

So you build it and you you police.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

You collect it, and then when you've when you've made your money, then the state gets it.

unknown 8:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

So it's we're not having to put any money in it. It gets developed, it helps traffic move.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

These are just some things we're trying to do, innovative, uh, just trying to uh Yeah, because some other sometimes other states figure stuff out before we do, and vice versa.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Yeah, well, there's no question about that, but I won't comment on that.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

There are solutions in other states.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

But yeah, I mean I remember 40 years ago I had uh family that lived up in the Charlotte area, and they were they were talking about how awful Charlotte was that they were 30 years behind at that time.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

But they were growing by leaps and bounds back then, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

And they've done much better. Uh I have a a daughter that lives up in that area, so I go up there uh some. But so we just gotta, you know, so we do have uh we've done some DOT work, and I think it's gonna be a good thing. Things are gonna get done quicker. These small projects, instead of being put on the back burner because they're on some other project, they're gonna be able to go knock those out a lot faster than than what uh they've done in the past.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

So one more question, and we're speaking with State Representative Val Guest. Did you have anything on the budget blankets text line?

SPEAKER_03 9:42

We did have a question. What is your view on medical cannabis? If you could just tell us yay, nay, or are you still thinking?

SPEAKER_02 9:50

Where is that in state legislature?

SPEAKER_00 9:52

It's interesting. Uh the federal government just reclassified marijuana as a uh class three drug, taking it off the making it easier to get, making it not illegal, but it puts it in a category like if you get Tylenol with codeine in it, you still have to have a prescription, but you can get it at your drugstore. So I believe that medical cannabis is going to be a hot topic when we get back up there next year.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Uh a lot of people are mad at Trump for doing that.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

The big thing we're dealing with right now is uh the hemp drinks. We've talked about that.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Yeah, you brought that to our attention. How far did we get?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

So the Senate sent us a bill, we sent them a bill back that banned it. So we're going to have to go to conference. So we'll have uh what they call a conference committee.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

How did the Senate feel on it? Kind of in the same lane?

SPEAKER_00 10:47

They got close to banning it, but did not. And they want to set up age requirements and allow it to be sold in convenience stores and liquor stores, which I have a problem with because it it potentially hurts our a lot of the local um drug stores, they have the uh they have the gummies, which are the the um CBD, the Delta Nines, which are legal. Um and it it potentially hurts them and their ability to provide for their customers. So I I I I'm not real happy about that. Okay. And I'd like to see us put an age on it, come back and fix it, and put it where it belongs. And if we where do you think it belongs? I I it's uh there's some good benefits to some parts of it. So if we're gonna have it, it needs to be through drugstores.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

You know, let these people that are trained at medical schools how to do things if we're gonna have it. Personally, I don't like it. Yeah, but but I know a lot of people are uh you know, say it's good, and I think everybody knows people that use it.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Yeah. I mean, you know, yeah, it's just they're also useless when they're using it.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

But that's just you know personal stuff. So I gotta figure out what's best for the be the people in District 106.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

That's the So I wanted to ask you, because we're almost out of time. Redistricting.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

What's the word on the street?

SPEAKER_00 12:18

We're not gonna, I don't think we're gonna get to that this year. Um we do it every 10 years.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

Um even though McMaster said maybe we should reconvene and get this done.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Even though McMaster says Okay Um I mean it could potentially we could end up with be careful what you ask for, you might get it. We might end up with uh democratic uh because it makes the other districts more competitive and they might lose. That's correct. That's correct. We it's a lot closer in maybe not the seventh where we are. We're talking, you know, but there's some other areas of our state that's a lot closer than what it is.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

To Democrat control.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

I mean, it wasn't that long ago the Charleston district had a Democrat.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

That's right. And they're very close to getting it now because they're mad at Nancy.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

And they they've got a lot of people running for that race. It's unbelievable. There's like eleven Republicans.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

That's a race to watch. I gotta pay attention to that.

SPEAKER_03 13:13

I think my postman's running too.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

But there's like eleven Republicans running, and I don't and there's three or four Democrats running. Um so you don't know. I mean, that's a district that that if you start redistricting, it could be an automatic uh you know, blue district and not red.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

All right. Val guest, um, I know you're not on the ballot on June 9th, but you will be in November.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Um, anything uh else you want to say?

SPEAKER_00 13:42

I just want to let everybody know. I do have some dates real quick. Uh primaries are June 9th. Uh I know I don't have one, but we do have a big election coming up for governor, uh, attorney general. Uh we need to get out and vote. The uh early voting starts May 26th. Uh the last day to register is May 8th, and the absentee requests have to be in by May 11th.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

All right. So there you go. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

If I can help, just let me know. You can reach me at uh my cell phone is 843 222 4131.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

All right, thank you so much. Uh we appreciate your time. Thanks, guys. State Representative Val guest. We'll see you after the election sometime.