Attorney General Allen Wilson asks subcommittee for $42.6 million in one-time and recurring budget requests

Attorney General Allen Wilson told the Constitutional Budget Subcommittee that his office is requesting $42,631,380 in new funding, including one-time capital and legal appropriations and recurring staff and retention dollars.

Wilson opened with a brief overview of his packet and said he would "give you the bluff, the bottom line up front" before walking committee members through individual requests. He described three headline items: $20 million in additional capital funds to renovate the Rembert C. Dennis building and consolidate the Attorney General's Office into fewer locations; a $15 million one-time allocation for the SAVES (Supplemental Allocation for Victim Services) program to shore up victim-service providers; and recurring funding of roughly $1.6 million to support new full-time positions and retention pay.

Why it matters: Wilson said the AG's Office acts as the state's law firm and that both capital needs and personnel shortfalls are driving the requests. He also characterized the SAVES request as a stopgap to prevent victim-services providers from shuttering while federal VOCA funding remains reduced.

Major requests and explanations

- Capital improvements: Wilson asked for $20 million in nonrecurring capital funding for the Rembert C. Dennis building and related Capitol Complex needs. He said the office has already appropriated $15 million to the project but that architecture plans show significantly higher per-floor costs and that the additional funds would be held in an account and spent conservatively pending the legislature's decisions about long-term facilities on the Capitol Complex.

- Legal-fee appropriation: The AG asked for $6 million in one-time legal-fee funding to cover two active, anticipated long-running matters. Wilson said $1 million of that amount is for defending the state and multiple agencies in litigation over H.4624 (the bill restricting gender-affirming care) and that the remaining $5 million is for a separate, complex securities- and related-security-matter representation for which outside counsel has been retained.

- SAVES (victim services) one-time funding: Wilson asked for $15 million in one-time funding to pass through to a range of victim-services providers across South Carolina. He said federal VOCA (Victims of Crime Act) funding has fallen by roughly 75% over five years and that providers have already cut services; the SAVES funds would be distributed to entities such as the South Carolina Victim Assistance Network and the South Carolina Children's Advocacy Centers.

- Recurring personnel and program requests (summary amounts):Wilson listed multiple recurring personnel asks totaling about $1.6 million and roughly 10 FTEs (seven requiring state funding and three requiring authorization only). Notable items included: - Address Confidentiality Program: $215,900 to fund two program coordinators to operationalize a law that routes official mail to protect victims' addresses. - Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force: funding for four positions (three funded, one federally funded), a request totaling about $342,430 to address large increases in cyber tips and pending predator-related cases. - Civil-attorney position: an additional civil attorney to handle increases in FOIA requests, sex-offender registry removal cases and South Carolina's 811 call-before-you-dig legal work. - State Grand Jury program coordinator: added staff to handle a large rise in open charges and subpoenas handled by the state grand jury. - Retention and merit funding: $850,000 sought to help retain attorneys amid competition from other state agencies. - VAWA program coordinator: request for FTE authorization (no additional funding requested) to expand youth-focused violence-against-women programming. - Proviso for ICAC counseling services: a request to provide counseling services for members of the ICAC task force and affiliated agencies who are exposed to traumatic child-abuse imagery.

Questions from committee members

Committee members pressed Wilson on the legal-fee request. He provided the committee with a previously transmitted letter and an accompanying spreadsheet that itemized invoices and projected expenses; he told senators the AG's Office had received but not yet paid invoices of roughly $433,000 and $398,000 in recent months and that the office had spent about $2.2 million to date on outside counsel for the securities matter. Wilson said the office selected outside law firms after interviews and that retained firms bill hourly.

On the H.4624 matter and the related securities investigation, Wilson said multiple state agencies have retained outside counsel and that some divergence of interests among agencies can require separate counsel. He characterized the securities matter as an "evaluation phase" that could evolve to litigation and said the work involves complex discovery and expert witnesses.

Victim-services detail

Wilson told the committee that the SAVES request is intended to keep victim-services providers from closing as federal VOCA grants remain diminished. He named organizations that signed the request and said the funds would flow through the AG's Office to local providers. He warned that when local victim-service providers close, "they're not coming back" quickly and that rural and marginalized communities are most at risk.

Numbers and performance

Wilson highlighted the AG's Office's recoveries and enforcement results, saying the office brought in approximately $67 million in recoveries last year (excluding the Master Settlement Agreement receipts highlighted in the notebook) and that since he became attorney general the office had brought in roughly $1.5 billion in recoveries. He also said the office currently employs about 84 attorneys, down from a normal staffing level of roughly 90.

What the office requested but did not receive a final decision on

Wilson said the figures he presented are requests; the committee did not take a formal vote on the Attorney General's budget items during the hearing. He offered to provide itemized invoice detail and other documents to any senator who requested them.

Ending

Wilson closed by noting the workload increases across FOIA, offender-registry removal, ICAC, state grand jury matters and victim services, and by reiterating that the SAVES funds would pass through his office to local providers rather than remain in the Attorney General's Office budget.