Sen. Shane Martin, R-Pauline, pictured on Tuesday, March 31, 2026, proposed using the state budget to try and raise legislators' pay again, despite fellow senators saying last year they felt the budget was the wrong way to do that. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Senators want to use the state budget to raise their own pay. Again.
In a vote of 21-20, the Senate added a clause to the state’s $15.3 billion spending plan Tuesday increasing the monthly allowance legislators receive. The clause is similar to one senators adopted last year, which the state Supreme Court threw out as unconstitutional and some senators called the wrong route for a raise.
Legislative pay raise advances in SC Senate after court rejected last try
Like last year’s budget clause, the change would increase the amount legislators receive monthly to pay for costs that came from legislative work done outside the Statehouse from $1,000 per month to $2,500. For 170 legislators, that’s a total cost of $5.1 million annually.
Under existing law, legislators get a salary of $10,400 annually, plus the monthly allowance and a daily stipend for meals and housing during the legislative session.
This time, though, the $18,000 annual raise, doled out in monthly allotments, wouldn’t take effect until Dec. 1, after the November election.
That’s an effort to bypass the constitutional question that got the last raise tossed. The state constitution bars legislators from raising their own pay, so any increase would have to wait until after voters selected a new General Assembly, justices wrote, pointing to January 2027 as the earliest legislators could receive a raise.
But because senators aren’t on the ballot until 2028, Sen. Wes Climer — who filed the last lawsuit — questioned whether the clause would again be unconstitutional.
“This is an improper thing for this body to undertake,” said the Rock Hill Republican, who is also running for Congress. “The check and balance articulated in the constitution is that the people have an opportunity to weigh in before a legislative pay increase.”
Whether the budget clause might lead to another lawsuit is unclear, though Climer couldn’t be the one to sue this time. In the last case, justices said a legislator couldn’t sue over legislation they voted on, since that could invite litigation every time a legislator disagreed on a policy issue.
The clause still needs approval from the House, where all 124 seats are up for election this year.
Some legislators said last year they were fine with a pay raise but didn’t think adding a clause to the state budget was the right way to do it. Any increase in pay should go through the full committee process, allowing members of the public to give their thoughts, legislators said at the time. They included Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, who again voted against the clause Tuesday.
Sen. Shane Martin, who proposed both clauses, attempted the committee route.
A bill Martin proposed this year would pay legislators $47,500 annually for their combined salary and in-district allowance. That would increase after each election cycle, keeping legislators’ pay closer to actual costs without creating a regular political fight.
Legislators do far more work than their pay covers, and they haven’t gotten an increase in pay since 1997, Martin has said. Raising salaries could open up the Legislature to people of different professions instead of those who are “rich, retired or retained,” as Martin put it.
“This is a stopgap, just in case something goes wrong with that legislation,” the Pauline Republican said Tuesday.
His bill advanced to the Senate floor. But it’s unlikely to become law.
Just three weeks remain in the legislative session. The full Senate has yet to take it up. Even if the Senate approved it, the House could be unwilling to touch it just weeks from the June 9 primary contests.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
