Beyond temporary fixes: Addressing earmark secrecy in South Carolina

Update 7/2/2025: On June 25, 2025, Governor Henry McMaster signed an Executive Order requiring state agencies to disclose all official and unofficial funding requests from lawmakers to the Governor’s Office within 48 hours of the General Assembly ratifying the annual Appropriations Act. These reports are to be made public in response to FOIA requests. Agencies are prohibited from spending any requested funds without properly disclosing requests to the Governor’s Office. The order, also requires agencies to post spending details as outlined in this year’s budget bill and update their websites quarterly. Failure to do so can result in their funds being returned to the General Fund. 

Taxpayers deserve to know where their money goes, but state budgets often conceal spending in secretive earmarks with little oversight. The fight for budget transparency is not unique to South Carolina. It is present in all 50 state legislatures and the U.S. Congress, which banned earmarks from 2011 to 2021.

On May 28, the General Assembly passed the FY 2025-26 budget without any earmarks, a move that Gov. Henry McMaster said “may be progress.” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bruce Bannister said the exclusion is an opportunity to work toward solutions, signaling potential for reform.

While the optimism from lawmakers is a good sign, excluding earmarks indefinitely without creating a new system will create problems. Only permanent legislative reforms can ensure lawmakers spend taxpayers’ money responsibly for the foreseeable future.

Understanding earmarks

Earmarks are legislator-driven budget requests, which typically don’t originate from state agencies, often directing surplus funds to lawmakers’ handpicked local projects.

Unlike standard budget items, earmarks usually are slipped into budget bills with little public debate or scrutiny, eroding trust and risking political favoritism. The Nerve’s investigation into the FY 2023-2024 budget detailed how those requests from lawmakers evaded public oversight, revealing that the House and Senate sought a total of nearly $400 million and more than $314 million in earmarks, respectively.

South Carolina’s efforts

During the last three budget cycles, Gov. McMaster collaborated with lawmakers to publish earmark requests on the governor’s official website. The requests, however, were combined into a single, unwieldy document and remain uncodified, depending entirely on his initiative.

Lawmakers introduced two pieces of legislation this past session to address the lack of budget transparency. Rep. Rob Harris, R-Spartanburg, sponsored legislation based on the South Carolina Policy Council’s recommendation to publish earmark requests within 24 hours, including:

• The legislative sponsor’s name
• The date requested
• The amount requested
• A description of the project in question and how the funds will be spent
• The full name of the recipient entity

A separate bill introduced by Rep. Joe White, R-Newberry, proposed redistributing surplus funds equally among lawmakers for infrastructure, public safety, or K-12 education in their districts. Both bills stalled in committee, leaving taxpayers without any solutions.

With Gov. McMaster term-limited and the governorship open in 2026, hopes for a transparent earmark system are at risk unless lawmakers act. It is ultimately their duty – not the governor’s – to codify budget transparency.

Opaque state budget practices

South Carolina is not alone. The lack of transparency around earmark spending habits of state-level legislators is a nationwide issue.

For example, the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s 2024 Pork Report exposes various examples of wasteful government spending in that state. Similarly, in Nebraska, the Platte Institute reported that the state government there will spend nearly $3.5 billion of its general fund to subsidize local government spending.

Unfortunately, though, the typical lack of publicly available information about the recipients of earmark funding undermines accountability, making it difficult for organizations to educate the public effectively. And without lawmakers’ names tied to these proposals, citizens lack the transparency needed to make fully informed decisions about their local representation.

States pushing for reform

Lawmakers in other states have sought to combat earmark secrecy through legislation. For instance, Oklahoma Rep. Tom Gann’s proposed a bill in February 2024 that would have required state agency executives to report spending proposals from legislators or employees. Like South Carolina’s stalled legislation, it died in committee without debate.

In Michigan, a new House resolution requires detailed request disclosures with public access and bars earmarked funds from going to for-profit businesses. This reform, though promising, applies only to the House, echoing South Carolina’s partial measures.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy revealed that Michigan lawmakers continue to ignore their constitution’s two-thirds majority rule to approve earmarks. This violation prompted a lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Labor.

Breaking the status quo

In South Carolina, legislation establishing earmark-spending guidelines likely would be more effective than partial measures to ensure accountability, given that partial measures often fail to address mismanagement of taxpayer dollars.

Although the FY 2026 earmark-free budget, which takes effect July 1, represents progress, it is not sustainable. Congress’ decade-long earmark ban did not curb reckless spending; it merely hid it from public view. Instead, S.C. lawmakers should build a system to publicly answer three basic questions for taxpayers early in the budget process for every earmark request:

Where are my tax dollars going?

Who wants them to go there?

Why do they need my tax dollars?

South Carolina stands poised to be a national leader on budget transparency. State lawmakers should focus on building effective and sustainable reforms that other states and even Congress can emulate.