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Education, medical marijuana, pensions and tax reform on agenda at State House

The Minority Leader said legalizing and then taxing medical marijuana and luxury casinos would allow state leaders to improve education, infrastructure, and other needs without raising individual taxes.

Issues like education spending, medical marijuana, and sentencing reform could all be on the docket for the next State House legislative session.

Representative and Minority Leader Todd Rutherford said education funding is going to ring in the New Year as Democrats' top priority.

“We've got to make sure that education in South Carolina is first and foremost, Democrats have been working on that for years. And so, we were overjoyed to hear the speaker say that was one of our priorities this year for the entire House. So, I know we're going to get something done. It's just a matter of what exactly we do,” Rutherford said at his legal office on Tuesday.

But, that's not all his party has planned.

“Democrats have been pushing medical marijuana for years, we've been pushing luxury casinos. We have got to get more revenue in, we've got to make sure this state has money to spend on education, that this state has money to spend on priorities, its roads, things people care about on a day to day basis,” Rutherford added.

The Minority Leader said legalizing and then taxing medical marijuana and luxury casinos would allow state leaders to improve education, infrastructure, and other needs without raising individual taxes.

Across the aisle and chamber, Republican Senator Sean Bennett said they're focused on fiscal issues like pension reform and a new tax code.

“I would say overall comprehensive tax reform is a big issue that's come up that we started working on as a committee a few weeks and we expect that to continue through the session as well,” Bennett said.

The Senator said he did think there was interest from both parties on some issues.

“I think education funding in general is always topic of discussion, there have been some bipartisan conversation,” he continued.

Both men also said they'd be keeping an eye on the ongoing SCANA-SCE&G and Dominion Energy saga, as well as the state pension system.

Prefiling in the Senate is December 12, 2018.

Prefiling in the House is December 18, 2018.

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