Criminal Justice Subcommittee approves proviso package, forgives 2013 Pacolette senior-center grant

The Criminal Justice Subcommittee approved a package of base and technical provisos and several funding adjustments during a brief proviso session. Members also adopted a new proviso forgiving a 2013 permanent improvement grant awarded to the town of Pacolette for a senior center renovation.

Speaker 3, in a presentation of Tab 3, described the new proviso requested by Representative Moss and summarized the grant forgiveness: "the senior center permanent and proud improvement grant awarded to the town of Pacolette in 2013 for the renovation of Pacolette And Mill Cloth Room is hereby forgiven." Speaker 2 moved to adopt the proviso, and the committee approved the motion by voice vote.

Why it matters: the votes finalize subcommittee-level language and funding alignment that will be forwarded to the full committee as part of the larger budget process. Several items approved on voice votes will change program funding and reporting requirements if the full budget includes the corresponding appropriations.

Speaker 3 also reviewed a set of conforming funding provisos in Tab 4, including a Section 59 proviso tied to the Attorney General for a complex criminal-investigation cooperating-witness assistance program and a prosecution-coordination proviso (60.3) that would conform if additional recurring funds are appropriated. As Speaker 3 described, "1,600,000.0 will be distributed on a per capita basis, and the remaining 3,400,000.0 will be distributed between the 16 offices of circuit solicitor on a pro rata basis." The funds were described as intended to cover maintenance, licensing and increased data storage needs.

On indigent defense and juvenile programming, Speaker 3 said the commission on indigent defense disbursement would follow a similar approach if funds are provided. For the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), Speaker 3 described Section 67.6 creating a juvenile arbitration community advocacy program; the transcript records the program amount increasing "from 60,000 to 120,000 per judicial circuit based on the services rendered." Speaker 2 argued the subcommittee has a responsibility to ensure juvenile services are funded and requested records showing "how much it costs for them to take care of a juvenile on a daily basis" before taking related provisos to the full committee.

The subcommittee also approved deleting a duplicated reporting proviso on employee retention and recruitment (transcript reference: 1 17.157), after Speaker 3 noted those reporting requirements are already collected centrally by the South Carolina Judicial Branch and publicly available on its website.

Formal actions taken (voice votes): - Adopted base provisos and technical amendments (Tab 1 and Tab 2). - Adopted new proviso forgiving the 2013 Pacolette senior-center permanent improvement grant (Tab 3). - Adopted conform-to-funding provisos for the Attorney General and prosecution coordination and related distributions (Tab 4). - Adopted deletion of the employee retention and recruitment proviso as duplicative (Tab 5). - Authorized staff (identified in the meeting as "Jane" and support staff) to make technical changes to conform proviso language to the subcommittee's actions.

The subcommittee concluded with remarks that agencies had requested more funding than available and that members will continue work to adjust funding levels before later committee consideration. Speaker 2 reiterated the request for juvenile-cost records prior to full-committee proviso consideration.

Next step: the proviso language and conforming funding recommendations will be transmitted to the full committee as part of the budget process; the transcript shows the subcommittee expects further work to reconcile requested funding with available appropriations.