SC Legislative Update 5/27/20
By Ben Homeyer
The Senate Re-opening had multiple meetings today. The PPE sub met first with the bulk of the conversation being about the snap program and daycare.
The full committee heard testimony from members of the AccelerateSC group.
- Liability reform and safe harbor was a large part of the discussion. (everyone agrees some sort of consensus bill has to be drafted for anything to pass this year)
- Getting testing numbers up
- Having a 28 day supply in the state of PPE for all that would need it
- Five days early start to school for next year ($130 million price tag to do so)
- Summer reading camps ($47 million)
- For the funding component that will be sent to the GA a Grants administrator will be named by June 1. (1.9 billion in total federal dollars)
- $500 million for the state UI trust fund
- $800 million for Hospitals
- Lot of discussion on broadband. Need to spend $80 million on broadband by December 31, 2020 to qualify for more dollars for broadband.
- Spearman stated 100,000 households with students don’t have access to broadband
- Still have 7% of the student population missing
- SDE is getting $200 million which they can spend on a whole host of issues. Not just direct education
