COLUMBIA — Earmarks are back after a year with no pet projects for legislators in the state budget, but the Senate’s spending plan does not include often-criticized funding for nonprofits.
The $130.4 million included in the Senate’s $15.3 billion budget, which passed last month, instead sent money to cities and counties for 163 different projects that includes public parks, water and sewer upgrades, and improvements to police and fire departments.
Last year, pointing to skyrocketing spending and the desire for a tax cut, the lead budget writers in the House and Senate announced they would put earmarks, which legislators call community investments, on hold.
By definition, earmarks are allocations requested by legislators, rather than the state agencies the money flows through.
What are senators funding?
Three projects topped the Senate’s earmark list.
Each of the following is slated to receive $5 million: upgrades to Greenville’s Bon Secours Wellness Arena and the surrounding area, planning for Columbia’s proposed riverfront park, and improvements at a career and technical education school in Spartanburg.
That’s in addition to the $5 million earmark Bon Secours Wellness Arena received two years ago in an earmark sponsored by House Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister, a Greenville Republican, with the goal of drawing bigger acts and national championship games. But the local agency that owns and operates the 15,500-seat arena wants to further expand and renovate the arena, at an estimated cost of $282 million.
That will include a new outdoor amphitheater nearby, a new entrance and lobby for the arena and more parking, according to the master plan. Most of the funding will come from local tax dollars.
“It’s just going to add to what’s already a vibrant downtown, and it’s going to make it even better,” Sen. Ross Turner, a Greenville Republican, said of the proposal. Joining Turner in requesting the money were Democratic Sen. Karl Allen and Republican Sen. Jason Elliott, both of Greenville.
A project planned for Columbia’s riverfront is similarly meant to enhance the city, said Sen. Ronnie Cromer, R-Prosperity, who sponsored the funding alongside Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Hopkins.
The planned development along the Congaree River, which does not yet have a total price tag, is expected to feature a public park on nearly 100 acres of untouched land donated to the city. City leaders hope to entice restaurants and other businesses to the area as well. The $5 million from the state will likely go toward the extensive planning required, Cromer said.
“Columbia’s not a destination city,” Cromer said. “But once we get this riverfront development done, it will be.”
The expensive projects are nice, but sometimes the smaller funding amounts can make a big difference, especially in smaller, more rural areas, said Cromer, whose district includes all of Newberry County, where he lives, as well as parts of Richland and Lexington counties.
Cromer proposed six smaller projects, mostly for the more rural cities and counties in his district. Among those were $787,000 to combine emergency services in Newberry County and $500,000 to help the 1,400-person town of Whitmire replace a water main that burst at the beginning of the year, he said.
“We’re just trying to help those locations,” Cromer said.
Smaller towns often lack the tax base to pay for expensive but necessary projects, said Sen. Russell Ott, who represents parts of Calhoun, Lexington and Richland counties.
Two of his three requests also dealt with water systems, including $1 million for the city of Cayce to improve drainage, which will allow the city to match a federal grant, and $563,000 for Calhoun County to improve its sewer system, with the hopes of bringing in more housing, he said.
The earmarks show the difference between the state’s flourishing cities, which often ask for help to keep up with growth, and its struggling small towns, which usually request basic necessities, said Ott, D-St. Matthews. If legislators want to move away from earmarks entirely, they should first find a way to ensure local governments have the support they need, he said.
“It does highlight the critical need for infrastructure across our state,” Ott said of the list of earmarks. “We are just woefully behind in a lot of our areas.”
Why nonprofits?
Money for earmarks hit a high in 2023, when COVID-19 assistance allowed the total amount to reach $713 million. The total funding fell to $435 million for the budget passed in 2025, with about $160 million of that coming from the Senate side. Still, that remained far beyond what legislators put toward local projects in previous years.
Some praised the pause in local spending through a process that still lacks a thorough, public review. Others argued that local communities depend on that money, especially poor, rural areas that lack the tax base to fund projects on their own.
Some legislators worried the official halt in earmarks would bring back a secretive process that involved bundling projects together in vague line items with no explanation.
The Senate’s spending plan for 2026-27 proposes a middle ground that funds infrastructure and local government needs without sending money to nonprofits.
Although earmarks are one-time designations of funding, some nonprofits received state money year after year. Others had little financial history to back up their work, causing critics to worry about their legitimacy and whether they had the oversight to ensure the money was spent as legislators intended.
Among the charities that received about $90 million in the 2024-2025 budget were those supporting people with autism, United Way chapters and support groups for veterans. Also included were churches, nonprofits with ties to legislators, and some with few or no records supporting a healthy financial history, the SC Daily Gazette reported at the time.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, who helped push for an end to secrecy in the earmark process, said he would rather the budget not fund any earmarks again.
“I’m not an earmark fan,” the Edgefield Republican, who did not sponsor any earmarks this year, told reporters after the Senate’s budget passed. “I don’t think we should do them. But they’re back.”
If legislators are going to get funding for local projects, Massey said, he felt better about the money going to cities and counties, which have multiple layers of oversight for spending and laws about transparency, than to nonprofits.
Ott said he sees no reason to oppose nonprofits that follow the rules. He worried the Senate’s plan amounted to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
“There are legitimate nonprofits out there that are doing great work that are open and transparent,” he said. “I don’t think they should be prohibited because there were some that were questionable.”
But ultimately, Ott said he didn’t have a problem with cutting out nonprofits altogether as long as the rules stayed consistent for every legislator.
Ott questioned whether some other legislators might “get more creative” and find ways to slip money for nonprofits they supported into the state budget anyway, circumventing the process of justifying spending.
“I’d rather it be out in the open,” Ott said.
Whether the House’s spending plan will include earmarks for nonprofits is unclear. Unlike last year, when the chairs of the House and Senate budget-writing committees put out a joint statement celebrating a temporary halt in earmarks, the exclusion of nonprofits included no fanfare nor promises from either chamber.
The House is expected to add its members’ proposed projects into its second draft of the spending plan this week. Both chambers must still work out the final budget that will go into effect July 1.
“I hope the House will follow along with that,” Massey said of the Senate’s plan. “I’m not optimistic with that, but I hope they’ll follow along with that.”
“And I hope they don’t get too crazy with the total amount of money,” Massey added. “We’ll see.”
Top 10 most expensive Senate earmarks
$5 million: Renovations to the Greenville arena special purpose district, proposed by Sens. Ross Turner, R-Greenville; Karl Allen, D-Greenville; and Jason Elliott, R-Greenville
$5 million: Spartanburg County’s Daniel Morgan Technology Center, sponsored by Sen. Shane Martin, R-Pauline
$5 million: City of Columbia’s Congaree riverfront district, sponsored by Sens. Ronnie Cromer, R-Newberry, and Darrell Jackson, D-Columbia
$4 million: Development of corporate and individual hangars at the Greenville Downtown Airport, sponsored by Turner
$4 million: Renovations to York County’s Moss Justice detention center, sponsored by Sen. Wes Climer, R-Rock Hill
$3.75 million: Columbia’s The Station at Congaree Point, sponsored by Jackson
$3.5 million: Berkeley County’s Live Oak Complex, sponsored by Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Bonneau
$3 million: Marine transportation system for Beaufort and Jasper counties, sponsored by Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort
$2.5 million: Traffic mitigation in Easley, sponsored by Sen. Rex Rice, R-Easley
Source: Senate budget documents
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