SC budget deal would raise teacher pay and expand senior property tax break

From WLTX

After weeks of deadlock, negotiators cut a late-night compromise: a $50,500 starting teacher salary, a bigger break for homeowners 65+, and earmarks cut.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina lawmakers have finally ended their weeks-long stalemate over a more than $15 billion state spending plan, but it still has several hurdles before it becomes law.

Budget negotiators reached a compromise late Wednesday night after weeks of negotiations. The agreement now heads to the full House and Senate, where lawmakers must vote to approve it before it can be sent to Gov. Henry McMaster.

“It takes care of the tax cut. Takes care of the teachers. It takes care of law enforcement,” said Rep. Bruce Bannister, R-Greenville.

The budget was supposed to go into effect at the start of July, but the chambers were at odds over whether to put surplus funding into more than $450 million in combined earmarks between both chambers, or a property tax exemption for seniors. The government has remained open since the start of the fiscal year through a Continuing Resolution, which keeps agencies funded at last year’s levels if a budget is not in place in time.

Under the new agreement, teachers would receive pay raises across the board, pushing the state’s starting teacher salary to $50,500. State employees would also receive a 2% raise, and the budget sets aside more than $3 million to provide free breakfasts in South Carolina public schools.

The compromise also removes earmarks to allow the budget to move forward, along with a $150 million request to cover cost overruns at Scout Motors.

Instead, lawmakers plan to create a committee to review each earmark request individually and place approved projects into a separate spending bill by the end of September.

“I’m hopeful that that group will do its work fairly quickly, and make recommendations in regard to the earmarks, recommendations in regard to the SCOUT payments, and they would be subject to a separate vote by the House and the Senate, almost like a separate appropriations act,” said Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort.

The agreement also includes a new compromise on property taxes. Lawmakers agreed to expand the homestead exemption, a property tax break for most homeowners age 65 and older.

The exemption would increase from the first $50,000 of a home’s value to $75,000. That’s less than the $100,000 exemption the Senate had originally proposed. Because the provision changes tax law within the budget, if a House member chooses to ‘call the rule’ and force the body to enforce it, it could take a three-fifths vote to approve it in the budget, Bannister said.

But many House members are willing to vote for it, if nothing else, to end the delay in this year’s state budget, Bannister said.

“There’s a lot of things in this budget that are going to make our members very happy, and they’ll stop hearing from their constituents that a [Continuing Resolution] wasn’t working for them,” Bannister said.

A date has not yet been set to bring lawmakers back to Columbia for final votes, but legislative leaders said they hope to reconvene within the next two weeks.

If the budget passes both chambers, it will head to McMaster, who has the authority to veto individual line items before signing the spending plan into law.

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Source: https://nathansnews.com/2026/07/sc-budget-deal-would-raise-teacher-pay-and-expand-senior-property-tax-break/