Sen. Shane Martin, R-Pauline, tells reporters after a meeting in the Senate office building in Columbia, South Carolina, on Tuesday, March 31, 2026, why he proposed another legislative pay increase. (Photo by Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Legislators’ annual income would nearly double under a bill senators advanced Tuesday, saying their meager pay limits who seeks the job.
The proposal would raise legislators’ total annual pay from $22,400 to $47,500. It comes after the state Supreme Court found last year that legislators illegally increased their own pay with a clause inserted in the state budget.
For all 170 legislators, the proposal would require more than $8 million in taxpayer money.
The amount would continue to increase based on the rate of inflation, preventing legislators from going through the same fight every few years, said Sen. Shane Martin of Spartanburg County, the bill’s primary sponsor and chairman of the subcommittee.
Unlike the raise struck down by the court, the proposed increase wouldn’t take effect until January 2027, after the November elections created a new General Assembly. Justices advised that setting the start date after an election would make the move legal.
The five-senator panel voted 3-2 to advance the proposal to the full Senate Finance Committee. Martin was the only Republican to vote “yes.”
Legislators already reinstated their $1,000 monthly allowances, which were also thrown out under the Supreme Court’s ruling, but this was the first attempt to try again with a raise.
Legislators’ annual salary of $10,400 hasn’t changed since 1990.
In 1995, they got a raise with a $1,000 monthly allowance, called in-district compensation, as it’s supposed to pay for expenses incurred for legislative duties in their districts. During session, they also receive mileage for one round trip weekly as well as daily per diems to pay for food and hotels.
The total isn’t close to the actual amount legislators spend on their work, Martin said.
“We’re not trying to get rich down here, but we’re trying to be compensated and at least somewhat break even in our expenses,” the Pauline Republican said.
Martin, an engineer, also proposed the budget clause last year that would have increased the monthly stipend to $2,500, which would have made legislators’ annual pay $40,000. He upped the amount in the bill because inflation has caused prices to rise even more since then, though he’d be open to going back down to his original proposal, he said.
Keeping wages low deters people from running for office. Legislators are those who can afford the costs, Martin said.
“You’ve got to be rich, retired or retained to be down here,” said Martin, who owns an automative consulting business that works with NASCAR.
Sen. Wes Climer, who sued over the last pay raise, said he could never support a pay increase for legislators on principle. If the goal is truly to recruit more people from different backgrounds, the General Assembly would be better off changing its own schedule so people who work traditional nine-to-fives could show up, said the Rock Hill Republican.
“Fundamentally, I think if the goal is to increase the number of people who believe it is possible to serve, time is a much more powerful tool than is money,” said Climer, a financial adviser running for Congress.
Many of South Carolina’s legislators are attorneys, real estate agents, insurance salesmen or owners of other businesses that allow them to set their own schedule. During their regular session, legislators meet three days a week, from mid-January through mid-May. Special sessions through June to finalize the budget are typical, as are off-session committee meetings in the fall.
Legislators have a responsibility to ensure their pay is fair, replied Sen. Margie Bright Matthews, an attorney.
“If we don’t do it, then who would do that?” asked the Walterboro Democrat.
The biggest concern for senators Tuesday centered not around the amount in their paycheck but how much legislators would need to spend to increase retirement payments.
As proposed, the bill would require an additional $108 million for the General Assembly Retirement System, which pays pensions for legislators elected prior to 2012.
The money would support increases to pensions for retired legislators and payments for the 43 current legislators grandfathered into that system.
A 2012 pension reform law closed that program, which provided better retirement benefits. Any legislator elected after its passage could either join the state’s main retirement plan for public workers or an optional 401(k) program.
The bill’s increased cost to the South Carolina Retirement System is unclear, said Peggy Boykin, executive director of the state Public Employee Benefit Authority. But the bump would likely be small, since the formula uses a person’s top five years of earnings, even if they happen outside the Legislature, Boykin said.
Boykin did not say how many of the 127 legislators elected since 2012 are enrolled in the main retirement system.
Because monthly allowances don’t count toward the legislator-specific pension plan, the panel got around what Martin called a huge hole in the budget by splitting the way they get paid. Salaries would rise to $15,000, and the in-district compensation would make up the rest.
“My intention is not to put a big hole in anything for us to fund,” Martin said.
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Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
