2025 Preview: Elections, New Leaders, and Potholes in Greenville

Curious what's in store for Greenville County in 2025? We break down the big changes coming in local elections, county leadership, and even plans to fix those pesky potholes. Plus, a look at the podcast's exciting year ahead as it approaches 100K downloads!

Links:

Joseph Bustos article

Palmetto Project

Transcript

Sponsor:
This episode is sponsored by Palmetto Project. Forty years ago, South Carolina leaders championed the idea that every social and economic challenge in our state could be solved through innovation. They believed in the power of new ideas to fulfill the promise of our home. Since 1984, the Palmetto Project has listened to and partnered with community leaders and members to transform our state through 330 public-private partnerships. Today, our programs address early literacy from more than 23,000 children through Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, civic engagement, and equitable access to healthcare through the only statewide nonprofit health insurance agency in the country, and more. Learn more at palmettoproject.org or at our Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Katy Smith:
Happy New Year, everyone. This is our first episode of 2025, and we are previewing what's ahead for local government, for our state, and for the podcast. I'm Katy Smith with Greater Good Greenville. And if you are listening to this later than January, I hope you are still sticking with your New Year's resolutions. You will be able to confirm whether we are right about these predictions or miss them entirely. Before Nathaniel DeSantis, our producer with Podcast Studio X and I start our conversation, I want to note that we encourage you to follow Simple Civics Greenville County on your favorite social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. And I welcome you to sign up for deeper content that we'll offer this year by clicking on the link in the show notes of this episode. And of course, we always welcome your support with a review on Apple or Spotify, a share of this episode or podcast to a friend, or a donation on our website to support the work.

Nathaniel DeSantis:
Happy New Year to everyone listening to the podcast in Greenville County and beyond. We're excited for a great 2025 and to discuss what people can expect in Greenville County and local civics in 2025. So that's basically the first question I have for you, Katy. What can we expect this year in local government?

Katy Smith:
It is a big year for local government because in Greenville County, we hold municipal elections in odd years. So half of the seats in each of our cities will be up for re-election. And just to remind everybody, that is Travelers Rest, Greer, the City of Greenville, Mauldin, Simpsonville, and Fountain Inn. We also will have our mayor of Travelers Rest seat up for re-election.

Now, you might be thinking, why does it happen in odd years? I'm not paying attention. I'm still kind of tired from the 2024 presidential election. Fair enough. I will tell you that we did a whole episode about how municipal elections work and the pros and cons of these odd year elections. So we'll post a link to that in the show notes, would encourage you to take a listen. But one specific thing that happens is that Greenville, the City of Greenville will have a primary election. And that is because the City of Greenville's seats are partisan. That is not the case with any of our other cities. So in March, people who are interested in filing to run for the City of Greenville will file with the election commission. And that is open from March 16th to the end of March. So that's when we'll find out who's coming up for running in the City of Greenville. And then there'll be a primary in June where the two parties will choose their candidates that'll show up in the ballot. And then all the rest of the municipalities will join them in November for the election. So we look forward to keeping you posted on that. That's a big thing that's happening.

Now, aside from election, we will be seeing a shift in power at the County of Greenville. There are three newcomers. We interviewed all of them in the podcast last year. We'll see Kelly Long coming in in Greer. We'll see Kurt McGahhey coming in District 21 in the kind of Pelham Road area. And we'll see Gary Collins in the Golden Strip area coming on board. Lots of folks suspect we will see a new council chairman come in. And we'll find out very soon if that's the case. The council elects its own chairman.

It is not like a mayor seat that the citizens elect, but council chooses who's going to facilitate their meetings. It's been Dan Tripp. A lot of folks expect that that will shift. So we'll see what happens there. Now, the new council members have expressed a lot of concerns about growth, which all of council shares. And they've also had concerns about transparency and lots of conversation about FILOTs, which stands for Fee in Lieu of Tax Agreements. We did an episode about FILOTs. They're kind of confusing and they're a strange little animal in South Carolina to help counties recruit businesses because of our odd tax code. I would encourage you to take a listen. It's a little bit old, but a lot of the facts are still relevant. But I anticipate that all of those will be hot topics of conversation by this new council.

The other local government body is the Greenville County School Board. And while there are new members on Greenville County Schools, there's not really a shift in power, just to put that term in air quotes. The balance is pretty much the same. There's a new face in District 19, which was previously occupied by Debbie Bush in the Berea area and Scott Klein coming in. But, you know, we expect for him to approach things in a similar way to Debbie. So things will probably be fairly similar in terms of the way that local body operates.

Nathaniel DeSantis:
Okay. So that's what we can expect from local government here in Greenville County. What about at the state level?

Katy Smith:
The state is interesting because we now have Republican supermajorities in both the House and the Senate. The House went to a Republican supermajority in 2022. And in this past election, Republicans gained four Senate seats. So they both have a supermajority, which might make it easier for them to execute on the priorities they have. Some folks do wonder, though, if there might be infighting that happens, because of course, even if they're the supermajority of Republicans, that doesn't mean that all of those Republicans see things the same way. So we shall see if it means they are really expeditious in the things that they want to get done.

Now, both bodies have said that school choice is a big priority. And what they really mean by that is vouchers. And they're really focused on using the state's educational scholarship account program for private schools. This, however, was struck down by the state Supreme Court recently, and actually was struck down also during COVID, when there was a desire to use some COVID dollars for private school. So I think both House and Senate leaders have talked about looking at how to revisit the use of vouchers and for school choice, as they call it. House members are really interested in reducing income tax.

Intend to continue to explore abortion-related policy, which has been a priority for many recent years. I'll direct you guys to the State newspaper's piece by Joseph Bustos on what to expect in state government. We'll link that in the show notes. It does a really helpful overview, some of which I just reported to you.

Nathaniel DeSantis:
And at Simple Civics, we tend to talk about both local and state government. So with that in mind, what can we expect from the podcast looking forward?

Katy Smith:
This is going to be a really fun year because we are able to both revisit some things we've done in the past now that we're a couple of years in, but go deeper on things that you all have asked about. So we will have a couple of episodes on ethics and campaign funding, which I know many of you are very curious about. So we'll bring on some people who can talk to us about that. Stay tuned for those episodes. As always, we will talk about how your government works. In fact, we'll have an episode on potholes, which is probably the thing that day-to-day irritates y'all the most. We'll be talking about exactly how do potholes get filled.

As always, we want to hear from you and what you want to learn about. We love hearing from y'all, whether it's on social media or whether it's through the website or emails that you send us about things you are curious about learning. So if you have a question about local or state government, or you think there's an issue we need to explore, whatever it is you want to learn, if it has to do with civics, let us know. You can shoot us an email at contact@simplecivicsgreenvillecounty.org. Again, contact@simplecivicsgreenvillecounty.org or just go on the website, simplecivicsgreenvillecounty.org.

We at Greater Good Greenville who offer this podcast to you are just delighted to partner with all of you who live here and beyond in caring about really smart civics. And so encourage you to stay in dialogue with us. And we look forward to informing you and engaging with you throughout this year. Another thing that we plan for this year is for you to hear more voices other than me. I know lots of you are curious about how government works. You have different perspectives than me. So I look forward to bringing on a couple of additional guest hosts to talk to officials and experts to teach us.

Later in the year, we will introduce you to your city council candidates like we've always done. We have interviewed, I think, close to 150 candidates for office since we started in late 2021. As I mentioned, we'll have Greenville City Council primary candidates in the spring, and then we'll have candidates for all the cities later in the fall, and we look forward to bringing them on. The last thing that we can expect, which I know you and I are really excited about, is that pretty soon into 2025, we will hit 100,000 downloads, which for a small local government podcast, I think is pretty awesome. And here I'm not patting us on the back, although yay us. I'm patting all of you guys who listen on the back, because this means that you care about your government, you care about your community, and you are tuning in to learn and be really informed voters, volunteers, elected officials, government officials, that matters so much. And so when we hit that 100,000 mark, that is work and listening by you and care from you. So I can't tell you how grateful we are for all of you. And we wish all of you a fantastic 2025.

Nathaniel DeSantis:
Well, it's going to be a great year, great content, great time for everyone to stay on top of local and state government. And we look forward to a great 2025.

Catherine Puckett: Simple Civics: Greenville County is a project of Greater Good Greenville. Greater Good Greenville was catalyzed by the merger of the Nonprofit Alliance and the Greenville Partnership for Philanthropy. You can learn more on our website at greatergoodgreenville.org.