TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
SCPOLICYCOUNCIL.ORG (THENERVE.ORG) SAM ARRON STOPS BY 9/8/26
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Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for joining us today. All right. So you guys have been really focusing in on these ear markets, the process of the ear markets. First, let's get a little background about them. How did it end up for this budget session? And what do you all suggest?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so this whole budget cycle has been uh very different. Uh how it normally works is uh whenever the House drafts their first, you know, uh bite of the apple on the budget, they include their earmarks, they send it over to the Senate. Senate will amend both the budget and the earmarks and then propose their own and then send it back, and that sets it up to where, you know, there's some bargaining on like which figure we're gonna go to uh when when we spend, are we gonna choose the Senate figure or the house or somewhere in between? Well, this time the House did not send over their earmarks whenever they had that first draft. So this led to kind of a lot of conflict, and uh what ended up happening is they passed a supplemental appropriation bill, uh spending a little over $350 million in earmarks.
SPEAKER_01How is each amount determined? Because it's different for every legislator, right?
SPEAKER_02That's correct. So the normally how the earmarks process works is uh, or excuse me, how the budget process works is an agency makes a request to the executive budget office and then they do it to the ways and means and the Senate finance, and that's kind of how they they get their figure about. The ear march process is separate because rather than the budget request originating from the agency, it originates from a lawmaker. So it's whatever the lawmaker requests. So they could request for 50 million or they could request for 200,000. It's really just whatever they feel like, and they just have to provide uh adequate justification to at least the chairman. But the the problem with that process is we don't actually get to see what those earmarks requests are until like well after they've actually been requested to the chairman. So there's not enough uh time because there's not enough transparency to legitimately scrutinize these and say, should we be spending you know four million dollars on renovating the town of so-and-so? Um so that's kind of where we are now.
SPEAKER_01And does anybody vet the project or the bid that they've accepted for that as part of the earmark process? Or do are they asking for the money and then going for the bids for like the paving or whatever building of a rec center or whatever?
SPEAKER_02Um it's not it's not specified in the earmark who the contract is gonna be. So the the payment just goes out to you know whatever town or municipality or or whatever, they just get the the the funds and then go through the bank process. So it's uh part of the problem.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was just gonna say so. This is this is uh making it a complete perfect situation for all sorts of uh what I call Mishka franjiska that can go on uh behind the scenes and you know uh paying buddies back or getting a kickback or looking good for certain people and friends and brother-in-laws or whatever it may be.
SPEAKER_02I feel like Yeah, that's that's totally correct. And uh what what we noticed this year that I think just tells you almost everything you need to know is that initially the total request amount was like $460-something million dollars. That's how much both chamber lawmakers asked for. But then when we get to this conference committee and there's you know debates between the House and the Senate of like, we want this and we want that, we don't want you all to get this, but we want this, they they immediately cut out every earmark that was funding a nonprofit. So that means that your and mine and all of your listeners' taxpayer dollars were going to go to just you know arbitrary nonprofits that you know somebody who is a lawmaker thinks is is is beneficial and they think they deserve it, which maybe they do, but uh you shouldn't be subsidizing nonprofits with taxpayer funds. That's that's clearly out of bounds and beyond the reasonable scope of what government is here to do. Um, so so that tells you that you know there's at least like somewhat of an awareness of like maybe we're using some of this in some ways that we shouldn't.
SPEAKER_01And then the whole thing with the $1 placeholder. Has that ever happened before? And tell us, give us the background on that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh I've heard that it's happened before. I wasn't able to actually independently verify that. Um, the the issue that we we saw is you had an initial budget that then was passed by both chambers with all the individual line items that were for these earmarks, rather than having how much money was supposed to be spent in the budget on that earmark, it just had a dollar. So then they went back and figured out how much money they had left over and then decided how much they would spend on earmarks. Um, but I I in general, I would say that we're kind of against that kind of move. I don't think that the budget should be a series of do-overs. I think you know you should try and get it done the first time, and if you can't get it done the first time, though that's what the continuing resolution is. But you shouldn't just be doing it over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01All right. None of this sounds good to me. Um is there anybody inside the legislature that is speaking out or sounding the alarm about this or a movement to not take any earmarks, you know, to make noise about it, other than you at the you know, the South Carolina Policy Council?
SPEAKER_02You know, there uh it's interesting. There have been calls from just about every area in the government. I believe the governor said something about it. We need a a process for this. I know that members of the conference committee on both the House and the Senate side made the acknowledgement of like we need to codify some sort of process so we don't have this problem in the future. So, you know, that's that's what we think they need to do as well. There needs to be a codified year mark process that says, you know, each request needs to include the legislative sponsor's name, the date requested, the amount requested, and a detailed description of what the project is and how it this money is going to be spent. Like, how does this benefit the state? Why, why is that something that state tax dollars should go to, as well as the the full name of the recipient? So if you had those things, then then it would at least uh at least you would you would then have a way for the public to look at and be like, hey, maybe I don't really like that, and I think that they shouldn't happen, and they could you know reach out to their representative and say, I don't like this, why is this happening? You know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. So uh we're speaking with Sam uh Aaron, the research analyst for South Carolina Policy Council dot org. So tell us what is your main thing now with talking about earmarks, and you know, you've touched upon a lot of what should happen. So have you um come up with a specific protocol that you think they should follow?
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, I mean I I really don't think it's that complicated. Like the issue right now is there does end up being uh you know a list that gets published on the SAOS website, but it's not really in a timely manner. Like it gets published, you know, uh a couple of weeks after the year mark requests have actually been proposed. So the problem is that then it's like too late in the process for you to adequately, you know, say this is not good spending, but this is. And then in addition to that, you can't really make a whole lot of conclusions because there's no detailed description. You know, it'll literally just have on on the item there, it'll just say utility relocation, building enhancement, upgraded equipment. And it's like, I'm sure some of that is is legitimate and necessary, but how do I know? Because there's no actual information being provided to you know the taxpayer.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Well, here's the thing, you know, I know that we are, you know, our representative Val Guest said, Oh, we're gonna do the repaving of 501 bridge, you know. I'm pretty sure that's um by um, you know, important. We need that. But why is is it being why does it have to go this route? Why can't it go the official route, how we get all the other roads paved?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean it's it's a perfectly good question. That's kind of one of the questions that that I posed in our most recent uh report on the website at SCPolicyCouncil.org. Uh when is it appropriate for the state to fund these things? Like, because I think that you know, if a municipality wants to make a downtown area nicer, why do the taxpayers of South Carolina have to pay for that? That sounds like the city needs to devote their own revenue to it. So like it's not to say that local governments should never receive state funding, you know, for stuff like roads. Uh I mean, of course, state dollars are going to go towards roads, but I think that there needs to be a broader conversation amongst the legislature about what sort of projects that are being done by municipalities or localities or whoever, what sort of projects should even be funded through state dollars? Because I mean, I I think there's some egregious examples, particularly as I mentioned earlier with like the nonprofit. Like we all just immediately agreed, yeah, that shouldn't be funded with state dollars. So are there more things that kind of fall into a similar category that we can say, eh, you know, local governments need to raise their own revenue to do this? I think that's like part of the conversation that's missing right now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Well, um anything else that is coming down the pike that you want to share.
SPEAKER_02Uh no, I don't think so. I think that uh, you know, we're we're kind of buckling down here. We're trying to make it through the end of the year. We've got a couple more uh big time reports in the in the hopper, but you know, I'll I'll keep you updated on those.
SPEAKER_01All right, very good. Sam Aaron, go to SCPolicyCouncil.org. Follow his articles there. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02Yes, man. Thanks for having me.