This commentary by Palmetto Promise board chair Phil Hughes was originally published in the Post and Courier. From stem to stern, South Carolina’s lawsuit system is broken — and anyone who’s run a small business, owned a restaurant that offered alcohol or driven a truck knows it. Sky-high insurance rates, nuclear verdicts and the chilling
In 2025, live-streaming is a fact of life. Churches, political parties, sporting events, legislative bodies, and more are easily accessible online in realtime and for replay after the fact. But school boards across South Carolina still lag behind. That’s a huge problem. South Carolina citizens should have easy online access to watch their elected representatives
South Carolina’s electricity market is at a crossroads. Composed of utilities operating under a vertically integrated model with limited competition, the state faces growing pressure to reduce costs, find new generation, and ensure long-term grid reliability. While efforts like the Southeast Energy Exchange Market (SEEM) have introduced modest reforms among a subset of utilities in
This column by Palmetto Promise President & CEO Wendy Damron was originally published in the Daily Signal. South Carolina’s school choice program faced a crushing setback when the state’s Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional after hundreds of students had already started classes at new schools. However, a grassroots response has emerged to help families affected by the
Over ten years ago, Travis Brown wrote How Money Walks: How $2 trillion Moved Between States, and Why it Matters. In the foreword, legendary economist Dr. Art Laffer summarized it as a study of “the migration of working wealth as a direct result of personal income tax rates…” Based on IRS tax return data, Brown
For South Carolina schools and school districts, one of the most important goals is to do well on the SC School Report Card. This state school report card is built to evaluate schools based on their standardized test performance, teacher qualifications, safety, awards, parent involvement, and other factors. The Report Card aims to inspire schools
At Palmetto Promise, we believe in the power of ideas backed by strong policy research. That belief was put to the test and proven true when our July 2024 report, Small Modular Reactors: An Answer to South Carolina’s Energy Crisis, helped lay the groundwork for a major bipartisan breakthrough in Columbia. In recent months, both
One of the scariest financial burdens on the average American citizen is their trip to a hospital. Without protections for health care billing transparency, individuals often walk into a hospital to receive help, unaware of the hefty bill that will inevitably hit their mailbox weeks later. Take, for example, the case of Amanda Partee-Manders, a
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! You, our readers, have spent the last few weeks participating in a Palmetto Promise March Madness of sorts, choosing each week the policies you believe are most important for the state of South Carolina. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, given its victory in our bracket last year, Education Scholarship Accounts
UPDATE: Since this article was published April 16, the “magic amendment” passed the SC Senate and on May 1 passed the SC House. The bill as amended was signed into law by Governor McMaster in early May 2025. Today, April 16, is a momentous day for the school choice movement in South Carolina. After weeks
