Major initiatives by the General Assembly included a package of expansion incentives for new, as well as existing businesses, and some special inducements for job creation in rural areas. The two pieces of legislation, titled the Economic Development Industrial Cluster Act and the South Carolina Rural Development Act, along with the Enterprise Zone Act of 1995, provide incentives for businesses to locate in virtually every area of the State.
The legislature also moved to bring the State’s banking practices into step with federally-engineered changes by facilitating interstate banking, and it enacted legislation to make local telephone services available and affordable in the expanding telecommunications market.
In addition to actions directly related to business enhancement, the General Assembly took significant steps to shape an educational future which could support the State’s twenty-first century economic goals. Addressing issues all along the educational continuum, the legislature funded the State’s first full-day kindergartens for 16,000 at-risk children, authorized the creation of charter schools to advance local education reform, and passed sweeping legislation designed to overhaul the State’s higher education system.
The legislation, known as the Higher Education Quality and Accountability Act, institutes performance-based funding for the State’s colleges and universities, requires the clarification of each institution’s mission, and empowers the newly- restructured Higher Education Commission to enforce the newly-imposed measures. In another key action, the General Assembly retained the property tax relief initiative of a year ago, providing funding which will exempt all owner-occupied homes from the school operating millage in an amount not to exceed $100,000 of each home’s fair market value. During 1995-96, the program’s first year, more than 993,000 homeowners were served at a cost to the State of $207.791 million. Approximately $213.700 million will be available for the program during 1996-97, $84.360 million from 1995-96 supplemental appropriations and $129.340 million from regular 1996-97 appropriations.
The General Assembly also adopted legislation which would allow the Medical University of South Carolina to lease its hospital facilities to Columbia/HCA, one of the nation’s largest private health care providers.