Capitol Report
By Rep. Robert Q. Williams
S.C. House District 62
The House returned S.455, the “Armed Service Members and Spouses Professional and Occupational Licensing Act,” to the Senate with amendments.
The legislation establishes a protocol that allows the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation to expedite the issuance of professional and occupational licenses to spouses of military personnel transferred to South Carolina when the spouse holds a professional or occupational license issued by another state that has similar requirements.
The House approved S.401, a bill addressing transportation improvement project costs, and enrolled the legislation for ratification.
This bill relates to construction in the state highway system and provides that an entity undertaking a transportation improvement project shall bear all the costs related to relocating water and sewer lines within the S.C. Department of Transportation’s right of way.
The bill provides the requirements for utilities to be eligible for relocation payments. Public utilities are grouped into: (1) small utilities that have 10,000 or fewer water taps or sewer connections and serve a population of 30,000 or fewer; and (2) large utilities that have more than 10,000 water taps or sewer connections and greater than 30,000 in population.
The transportation project will pay 100 percent of the relocation costs for the smaller utilities.
For larger utilities, the project will pay the relocation costs but cap the amount paid by the project at no more than 4.0 percent of the original contract bid.
If a small and large utility are in the same project, the cap goes to 4.5 percent, but the small utility has all costs covered, which is subtracted from the 4.5 percent; any remainder goes to cover the large utility.
To be eligible for payment of the relocation costs, the public utility must meet the Transportation Improvement Project’s bid and construction schedule.
This involves public utilities early in the project planning and design and provides an opportunity to minimize and avoid relocation costs through project design. In addition, DOT must include metrics on utility relocation in its annual accountability report.
The House gave second reading approval to S.109, a bill making revisions to the S.C. Alarm System Business Act that include provisions for electric fences.
These electric fence provisions include height specifications, requirements for protective barriers and signage posted to provide warning, and requirements for these fences to be equipped with an energizer driven by a commercial storage battery that does not exceed an electric charge of 12 volts DC.
Electric fences shall be permitted on any property that is not zoned exclusively for residential use.
The House approved and sent the Senate H.4152, a bill to accommodate the plastic reclamation operations of businesses that can accept discarded plastics unsuitable for various recycling initiatives and use a gasification or pyrolysis process to heat these post use polymers and recoverable feedstocks to break them down and convert them into such useful materials as oil, fuel, waxes and lubricants.
