Study Committees: Worth it, or a waste of time?

In 2010, former state Rep. Michael Thompson, R-Anderson, highlighting the absurdity of study committees, proposed a bill to form a study committee studying study committees, dubbed the “South Carolina Study Committee Study Committee.”

Sounds silly, right? That was exactly the point.

Thompson’s satirical bill raises serious questions. Along with study committees, the legislature creates special, select, and ad hoc committees. What are they? What do they do? Do they produce meaningful legislation? Are they an effective use of legislative resources? The South Carolina Policy Council set out to find answers.

Study, special, select, and ad hoc committees are temporary groups created by the state legislature to investigate specific issues and propose solutions for the General Assembly to consider. Each consists of selected members of the House and Senate, legislative staff, and other members, including state agencies, organizations, and members of the public appointed by the General Assembly and Governor. Study committees must be proposed and voted on by the House while all other committees can be created by the House Speaker, Senate President, or chairman of standing committees.

The committees invite state agencies, policy experts, and members of the public to testify before them. Testimonies involve presenting data and proposing recommendations. At the conclusion of the committee, the staff publishes a final report for legislators to read. Members of the committee often identify potential legislation in said reports.

What do study committees actually produce?

In conducting our analysis, we reviewed all temporary committees listed on the statehouse’s website and video archive page since 2016 and kept track of all committee reports. This process kept the sample manageable and allowed us to match legislation with recommendations from the reports.

From there, we examined whether either recommendations from reports or findings from the committees appeared in subsequent legislation. We determined that a "successful legislative outcome" meant that the study committee's recommendations/findings were included in bills passed into law within 2 years of the conclusion of the committee.

We identified 52 temporary committees formed in the past decade. Of the 18 committees that published reports, 10 of them contributed to legislation that passed into law. These 52 committees met 244 times for a total of 509 hours. See the chart below:

For a complete chart of the individual study committees and their respective outcomes, click here.

The findings show that these committees can play a role in informing policymakers, particularly when the issue under consideration receives significant public or legislative attention. However, saying that temporary committees directly produce legislation is a tough sell. The further

removed a piece of legislation is from the committee, the harder it is to establish the connection between them. A bill may also address an issue without relying on a committee’s report.

It is important to note that this analysis does not determine the extent of a committee’s recommendations that made it into subsequent legislation. Additionally, legislation resulting from a study committee still goes through the normal legislative process, including committee hearings, debate, amendments, and votes, potentially duplicating the time and effort the study committee was at least partially intended to save.

“An exercise that doesn’t move the ball”

State Senator Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, is no stranger to these committees, having served on several. On the Senate floor April 23, 2026, he said, “I bet that of every one of [the reports] we get back, no one reads them.” He argued that study committees in particular are a waste of time and suggested that if the Legislature wants to do something about an issue, they should “introduce a piece of legislation in the normal order and have a subcommittee hearing where we the policymakers can debate.”

While study, special, select, and ad hoc committees can help legislators to become well-informed on a topic, they can often be counterintuitive to their stated goals—taking agency administrators, doctors, teachers, and other professionals away from their jobs, requiring them to prepare testimony and presentations while committee staff write reports instead of writing legislation. Hutto said that study committees are “exercises that don't move the ball.”

Even though these committees are not wholly fruitless exercises and have provided some value in the past with informing policymaking, both Hutto and Thompson have a good point: ultimately, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Study committees, along with the other temporary committees, end up being an extra, unnecessary, and time-consuming step in the legislative process.

If a study committee does not provide any additional value compared with the standard legislative process, it is difficult to justify the additional time and resources required. If standing committees have the same capabilities as study committees, lawmakers would be better served by using the standard legislative process without the additional hurdles of a study committee.

Lawmakers should consider whether they are creating too many committees without a clear path from study to action. Additionally, they should consider whether a study committee is the best process to inform policymakers. Instead, in most circumstances the Legislature would be better served by filing bills, debating the merits of a bill in subcommittee, and proceeding through traditional venues. It would save time, resources, taxpayer dollars, and ultimately produce more effective governance.

This report may be republished in whole or in part, provided that proper credit is given to the author(s) and the South Carolina Policy Council. 

Noah Miller is a research intern for the South Carolina Policy Council