Last week, the Lexington Chamber gathered three key legislative leaders for the county and state to talk about what residents can expect to see at the Statehouse in 2022.

State Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey (R-Edgefield), state House Speaker Murrell Smith (R-Sumter) and state Rep. Micah Caskey (R-Lexington), chair of the Lexington County Legislative Delegation, were the featured speakers at the chamber’s annual Legislative Breakfast, held Dec. 16 at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church.

They discussed the issues that they will make priorities during the upcoming legislative session, which begins Jan. 10 and continues through June — keying on such topics as education, healthcare, criminal justice and economic development — and encouraged the audience to remain engaged with the state’s politics so as to not let the “crazies” with the loudest voices dominate.

Speaking first, Massey, who has served as majority leader since 2016, hit education and healthcare the hardest out of the three speakers, saying the former would likely be the first thing the Senate takes up during the coming session.

He emphasized the need to shore up both K-12 and higher education in the state when it comes to workforce development, though he didn’t specifically mention any areas he intends to target.

As to healthcare, he specifically spoke about the need to address the state’s Certificates of Need, required — as they are in 34 other states — for acquisitions, expansions and creations of healthcare facilities. Massey said the Senate would likely take up the issue next month and have a “lively debate about it again.”

Both Massey and Smith emphasized reforming the state’s bond system as a priority, as well as combating the rise of fentanyl in the state.

“We’re going to have to reformat that,” Massey said of the bond system. “All legislators have been hearing about that issue.”

“Catch and release is a problem,” Smith added during his remarks, saying discretion needs to be taken away from judges in this regard. “We cannot be letting people who committed crimes two, three, four times out on bond. Because if they don't learn the lesson one time they're not gonna learn it again.”

Smith was elected by his peers as speaker during the middle of last year’s session, succeeding Jay Lucas, who retired from the position.

Touting figures such as the $10 billion in 2022 capital investments into the state recently trumpeted by the Department of Commerce, Smith presented economic development as his central focus, emphasizing the need for site development — creating more industrial parks with utilities already set up for companies to move in — as the state looks to compete with Georgia and North Carolina.

“We've been mired in social issues for a while and we're gonna continue to have strong conservative issues that we're going to address,” Smith said, “but we need to focus on pocketbook issues, economic development.”

During the question-and-answer session at the end of the breakfast, Lexington County School District 1 Board Chair Anne Marie Green, one of six board members in attendance, pushed back on the new public education funding formula the state implemented last year, saying that it won’t allow the district to keep up with rising costs without passing that burden along to businesses in the form of higher taxes.

“I respectfully disagree that you don’t have enough money to educate children,” Smith said, adding that while Lexington 1 is run well, “there are school boards across the state that are dysfunctional,” and district-level reform is needed to fix the state’s education system.

All three speakers keyed on the need for citizens to be engaged, none more so than Caskey, who spent most of his remarks on what he jokingly referred to as a rant on the subject.

“If you don't get involved and share your opinions, other folks will,” he said, pointing to the 2020 rise of the “China virus” as the kind of unexpected issue governments face, and emphasizing that if you’re not involved they’ll make those decisions without you. “We do live in a world where people are able to amplify their voices, irrespective of the merit of those ideas. And I would encourage you all as informed citizens to be as informed as you can be.”

During the question-and-answer session, the legislators were asked how much the tension between the “crazy” people they referred to in their remarks exists within their party and how they will deal with that as they look to get things done at the Statehouse.

“South Carolinians voted for them, and they voted for them because they said something,” Massey replied. “They had issues that they thought this candidate reflected. You have to not only recognize that, but accept that. They're probably issues that they want to take forward that we all need to listen to. Because sometimes it's easy to say, ‘They're just crazy. They have nothing to say,’ when they have important issues that are being reflected from the populace.”