Office of Regulatory Staff seeks 18 FTEs, outlines BEAD broadband plan and ERSA staffing needs

Andrew Bateman, executive director of the Office of Regulatory Staff, told the House Ways and Means Transportation and Regulatory Budget Subcommittee that ORS is requesting authorization for 18 additional full‑time positions and roughly $3.2 million in non‑general funds tied to recent energy legislation and the Electric Rate Stabilization Act.

"Of course, we're funded through gross receipts," Bateman said. He told the subcommittee the ORS team achieved more than $177,000,000 in savings for consumers last fiscal year through cases before the Public Service Commission.

Bateman said the 18 FTEs are divided by program and that only eight of those would be directly tied to ERSA; he emphasized hires would occur only after an entity elects into the program. "We don't plan on going out and hiring any of those FTEs unless or until an entity actually does elect into the ERSA," he said.

The ORS director also provided details about the state's proposal for the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. Bateman said the state's final BEAD submission identified about 20,400 broadband‑serviceable locations still unserved or underserved. He said the federal BEAD allocation to South Carolina totals $551,000,000, and the state's initial deployment plan would use about $42,000,000 of that allocation to serve the identified locations; the remainder would be categorized as non‑deployment dollars.

"About 48% of that is proposed to be solved through low earth orbit satellites," Bateman said, naming Starlink and Kuiper as examples, and adding that the remaining 52% is planned for fiber deployments by local Internet service providers. He noted federal guidance increasingly views some low‑Earth‑orbit providers as qualifying for permanent service, changing earlier assumptions that satellite would be only a temporary fix.

Bateman also recounted ORS coordination with utilities and the Department of Transportation during Hurricane Helene and ongoing preparations for an expected ice storm, praising interagency collaboration to restore utility service quickly and safely.

Representative Mark Willis and other subcommittee members pressed Bateman on staffing. Bateman said some vacancies are the result of funding source complexities—federal, state and gross‑receipts funding streams cannot always be interchanged—and that a post‑session proviso required agencies to evaluate and trim long‑vacant positions. "We were able to cut 5," he said, and added, "we've always taken a very conservative approach" to filling positions.

The subcommittee did not take votes during the hearing. Bateman said ORS stands ready to provide further detail to members who request it.