The Legislative Session is (Mostly) Over. What Got Done?
For the 126th South Carolina General Assembly, Palmetto Promise tracked nearly 200 pieces of legislation. Our interest in these bills was guided primarily by the 20 items on our Palmetto Freedom Agenda. During the session, we tracked bills that aligned with the Agenda’s core principles, presented research about those policy issues on our blog, and, at times, testified before Senate or House committees. (A special thanks to our Spring interns for their help with research and legislative tracking!)
The 126th session is in “overtime” at this point, so our comprehensive analysis of the good and bad legislation will need to wait for now. But, here is an initial overview of what got done in 2025-26.
- Education was on the front burner all session, and the sheer volume of education legislation passed was significant. We will publish a special report on 2025-26 education legislation soon, but at the top of that list for the Palmetto Freedom Agenda was the passage of the bill that not only rescued the Education Scholarship Trust Fund (ESTF) from a bad Supreme Court decision but also expanded school choice eligibility. The legislature also mandated the live streaming of school board meetings, banned grade floors, and cleaned up the public charter school authorizer (sponsor) section of the state code.
- Free Market & Economic Opportunity saw not only a dramatic cut in the individual income tax but further collapsing of the individual brackets and taking back control from the feds on how state tax liability is calculated. A low, flat tax—1.99% or a 0% tax rate—is on the way if spending can be controlled and growth can be sustained. Industrial taxpayers also saw a property tax cut that will be a boon to jobs and economic development.
- Healthcare Freedom enjoyed incremental movement on telehealth and scope of practice reform, and a Palmetto Freedom Agenda surprise billing bill is currently in conference committee. Our other long-standing agenda item, the streamlining of duplicative state health agencies, was (finally) signed into law.
- Energy. The energy bill that passed in 2025 was mostly designed for the needs of large investor-owned utilities (IOUs), but SMRs, a subject of our groundbreaking research, were referenced. The General Assembly also called for the state-owned utility Santee Cooper to finish VC Summer Reactors 2 and 3 by turning the project over to the free market, which the utility subsequently did. Small victories, but victories, nonetheless. The potential Dominion-NextEra merger looms.
- In categories all by themselves were Tort Reform, DOT Reform/Infrastructure Funding, and Small Business Regulatory Freedom. The General Assembly passed major legislation that chipped away at the socialistic Joint & Several Liability concept, but more must be done in 2027. Long-overdue DOT reforms were passed that should attract private investment and reduce congestion in the nation’s fastest-growing state. Regulatory freedom, which we covered here and here, is in conference committee as of this writing, but we expect positive results that will provide better review of agency regulations and pull back from the disastrous Chevron deference.
That’s our initial report. Stay tuned for a more in-depth analysis after the whistle blows on the Overtime period. A part of that look back will be to spotlight the legislation passed by the House but not the Senate, and vice versa. Much was left on the table in 2025-26.
