COLUMN: Legislative Happenings - Bills would bring companies, jobs to S.C.

It was another full week for the General Assembly. Thirty-seven judges were elected for the Supreme Court, circuit courts and family courts and as administrative law judges. It ends a long process that the judges must go through and the Legislature must decide.

The full Senate Finance Committee passed out several bills to the Senate calendar, and those measures are up for third reading in the Senate next week. One bill creates the South Carolina Existing Manufacturers’ Retention and Growth Fund at the South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (SCMEP). Under this bill, contributors to the fund would be eligible for a nonrefundable tax credit against those contributions. The bill as drafted called for credits of as much as $4 million effective immediately.

To balance the need to help small manufacturers with general fund constraints, however, the bill was amended at the full committee and adopted. The amended version reduces the credit from $4 million to $2 million. This will be phased in over three years, with the first-year impact capped at no more than $750,000, and the credit sunsets five years from the date the credit is fully phased in.

Furthermore, the bill adds annual accountability for how the funds are spent, ensures taxpayers can’t “double dip” — that is, claim a tax credit and tax deduction at the same time — and defines a small manufacturer as one with 250 or fewer employees.

SCMEP is a nonprofit organization serving as a consultant to small and mid-size manufacturers and is an affiliate of the US Department of Commerce. It was created in 1989.

Also passing from Finance to the floor and up for third reading in the Senate next week will be a bill that amends the Local Option Tourism Development Fee passed last year. This would enable Myrtle Beach to, by all accounts, “save” the tourist season by enabling advertising dollars to attract out-of-state tourists.

Last year’s bill provided that after three years, a portion of the penny tax would go back to residents in the form of property tax relief. This bill, because the penny was so successful, accelerates the property tax relief by one full year, to year two rather than year three. This is a tax-friendly bill. It ensures the transparency of the penny and how the proceeds are spent by requiring a quarterly report to be placed online.

Another bill up for third reading in the Senate adds a sales tax exemption for nonprofit companies that research and test the impact of natural hazards such as wind, fire, water, earthquakes and hail. This is related to that “one-of-a-kind” facility in Chester that will basically build structures for the purpose of “destroying” them to test them and ultimately improve safety.

You might recall that the Senate and the House passed these provisions last year, but have been locked down. The exemption is similar to the one already provided to manufacturers and will apply to raw materials used to build the test structures, etc.

There is a clawback for South Carolina if the company doesn’t invest at least $20 million during the next three years. The legislation also contains an exemption against property taxes for facilities meeting the same criteria for the sales tax exemption as I have described.

You can see that all of these bills if passed could not only bring companies into South Carolina, but also produce jobs. That is my main concern.

— McGill can be reached at his home address, 601 Longstreet St., Kingstree, SC 29556, or at his legislative office, P.O. Box 142, Columbia, SC 29202. Call him at (843) 355-7217 in Kingstree or (803) 212-6132 in Columbia, or e-mail him at yanceymcgill@scsenate.org.