The State (Sunday)
Over $30M seen for conservation under casino gambling plan
A South Carolina legislator who favors allowing a big casino along Interstate 95 is offering a plan to protect forests and farmland from development by using gambling tax revenues generated by the casino. State Rep. Bruce Bannister, who chairs the...
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Redistricting, abortion ban among key Legislature issues
What the state’s income tax system and an additional income tax cut will look like, whether lawmakers will be able to direct money for special projects in their district and will the South Carolina General Assembly will join the mid-decade...
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SC landowner protections pitted against pipeline needs
Rhonda Mcalhaney and her husband, Jay, host family dove hunts with their four grandchildren, all boys, on their properties in Hampton Counties. Mcalhaney also does conservation work, including prescribed burns and leaving the old timber uncut. She is...
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Midlands clock repairer one of few left in area
A life-long tinkering habit, a broken clock and a set of DVDS led Harold Macvittie to a busy post-retirement job with his own shop in the heart of downtown Chapin. “People don’t realize how many clocks there are out there. I retired to do this, and I...
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‘Culture war’ issues among SC bills filed for 2026
Requiring the Ten Commandments in schools, banning public diversity initiatives and restrictions on who can use which bathroom could all be topics of ideological battles waged in the South Carolina statehouse next year. Culture war issues, including...
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USC sues fan to claim 50-yard-line Gamecock ticket seats
Editor’s note: An original version of this story misidentified one of the law firms representing the University of South Carolina. The university is being represented by Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. A much-hyped nine-figure overhaul of the...
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Bluffs above Congaree National Park targeted for protection
The state is moving to acquire more than 450 acres near Columbia that feature an unusual stretch of high bluffs across from Congaree National Park, a potential acquisition that would add to a corridor of protected land with sweeping views of the...
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Does USC control its athletes' NIL agreements?
Are the University of South Carolina and its main booster club really separate entities? No, says a new filing by an open records advocate who is seeking to obtain agreements on how the state’s flagship university will divide up revenue among its...
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Force behind Columbia’s arts and parks dies at 92
March 9 is Susan Boyd Day in Columbia – proclaimed as such in 2022 by the City of Columbia to honor Boyd’s generous spirit and decades-long impact on the shape of the city through her and her husband’s charitable foundation. Susan Fair Boyd, the...
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GREAT EXPECTATIONS
The Demetris Summers story: A hometown football legend with so much promise, Summers was a convicted drug dealer at age 33. Now 42, he opens up about his past, including getting kicked off the USC Gamecocks, and his hopes for the future. Read the full...
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Corroded tire, speed led to fatal bus crash, report says
The right front tire that led a Lexington 2 school bus to swerve off the interstate and turn over, ultimately killing an eighth grade student, had been corroded by nails, an investigation by the S.C. Highway Patrol found. The bus had been inspected a...
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Can Rosewood sustain its charm amid growth?
Like the seasons, Columbia is everchanging. In recent years, the capital city has seen its skyline refreshed, with new apartment towers — many geared toward University of South Carolina students or young post-grads — climbing ever upward on corners...
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Trees fall, costs rise under plan to offset Scout's damage
The brilliant sunlight of a late summer afternoon barely made it through the forest of hardwoods, the thick canopy of trees causing deep shade on a landscape that farmers once stripped bare to grow cotton. Since cotton farming fizzled a century ago,...
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Lynching victim’s kin found, is exoneration possible?
It’s been a year and a half since The State re-examined a 135-year-old crime that left a Lexington County teenager dead. But that look at the 1890 lynching of Willie Leaphart — broken down in a series of articles and a multi-part podcast — left the...
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Homeowners push for say in Columbia development decisions
How much influence should neighborhoods, and their passionate residents, have over the future direction of Columbia? That question was at the heart of a Monday night candidate forum hosted by a new coalition of more than a dozen neighborhoods,...
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Charter school principal has lucrative side job
The principal of a prominent Midlands charter school moonlights as a consultant for the taxpayer-funded authorizer responsible for monitoring his school’s academic performance, legal compliance and stewardship of public dollars, documents show. Brian...
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James Brown’s estate feud delays scholarships for SC kids
When James Brown was a boy, he walked barefoot on the roads of Ellenton, South Carolina. He wore underwear stitched from burlap sacks and once was told to leave school because of the miserable state of his clothes. When the legendary entertainer died...
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Blythewood’s town-owned venue is losing thousands of dollars
Doko Manor was built to bring Blythewood together. Instead, it’s become a battleground. The town’s central indoor venue now serves both as the heart of allegations of mismanagement and abuse of power, and also as the host of contentious meetings where...
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Officials grapple with surging growth in once rural Chapin
Al Koon grew up in Chapin. Plus or minus a few years in the Midwest for work in early adulthood, the man who now serves as mayor spent his whole life in the suburb of Columbia, a rural lake town just up Interstate 26. Koon can still vaguely remember...
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Park reopens after renovation, tree loss controversy
After nearly 30 years without a major update, Columbia’s Mays Park near the intersection of Trenholm Road and Beltline Boulevard has reopened. The city spent nearly $1 million on new playground equipment, an updated splash pad, a new pickleball court...
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Volunteers rescue mural for late musician amid demolition
It was, at least, an occasion for Aaron’s friends to make music together again. There were chisels, rap-tap-tapping against the ground. Bricks rasping as they scraped against each other. Feet shuffling and the pounding of hardened red clay. All of it...
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A HOME, ALONE
Nearly five years after the city of Cayce gave the greenlight for a longtime real estate broker to place a preconstructed house on a small plot of land in one of the city’s most wellknown neighborhoods, the home sits vacant and decaying, and the owner...
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Dreher grads reach film industry heights with ‘Superman’
“Superman” is soaring once again, as the new movie centered on DC’S nigh-invincible hero has become one of the highest grossing movies of 2025. The film also served as a reunion between two graduates of Columbia’s Dreher High School, who have charted...
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SC shrimpers struggle with ‘shrimp fraud,’ rising costs
Cyndy Gay Carr moved home to Saint Helena Island in Beaufort County three years ago to help her family run Gay Fish Co., a generational seafood business that’s been in operation since 1948. Summer is their busiest season of the year. Their...
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Man struggles to breathe, dies after Irmo police use Taser
Irmo police say they used a Taser last month on a man who immediately collapsed and then died days later in a local hospital. Byron Jackson, 45, of North Augusta, died Wednesday, June 25, after being stunned by the Taser and arrested by the Irmo...
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Trump funding freeze could cost SC schools millions
School districts in South Carolina could miss out on millions of dollars that were expected to come from the federal government this year. An estimated $6 billion in federal education funding that would have been available to schools starting July 1...
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Police fighting gun crime at Columbia apartments
Estoria Wright says living in Columbia’s Colony Apartments is like being in prison. Besides frequent crime at the lowincome apartment complex, many residents can’t afford to leave the Colony for even short excursions, said Wright, whose daughter and...
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SC river ‘most contaminated’ from toxic forever chemicals
When researchers completed a national study of hazardous forever chemicals recently, they found that a South Carolina river had higher levels of pollution from the toxins than any other waterway they examined across the country. It was a troubling...
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With new state park, Lake Murray adds some swimming access
The opening of South Carolina’s newest state park has become a flash point for conversations about access to one of the state’s biggest lakes. With Pine Island scheduled to open to the public in October, lawmakers moved to add visitor restrictions for...
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Allen University is perfect place for new Emanuel 9 tribute
“YOUR BEGINNINGS WILL SEEM HUMBLE, SO PROSPEROUS WILL YOUR FUTURE BE.” — JOB 8:7 Before Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church and became North America’s first Christian bishop of African descent and the namesake of Columbia’s...
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Columbia conversion therapy ban threatens budget
The city of Columbia is staring down a “gaping hole” in its budget, and a difficult decision over an ordinance banning conversion therapy, a widely condemned practice meant to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. If the ordinance...
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Pine Island park on Lake Murray set for ‘soft opening’ Oct. 1
South Carolina’s newest state park has an opening date. Park officials on Wednesday updated the Lake Murray community on plans for Pine Island, which will now have a “soft opening” to the public on Oct. 1 after years of preparation. Initially, the...
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State money at risk, Columbia delays conversion therapy vote
The future of Columbia’s ban on conversion therapy, which the state Attorney General Alan Wilson has threatened legal action over, remains up in the air. The council voted to defer its decision to a later meeting after nearly two dozen people urged the...
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Park project cost nearly $2M more than reported
On a warm day in May 2024, Lexington town officials stood proud at the ribbon cutting for Virginia Hylton Park, nearly two years after closing the downtown park for a major overhaul. In the year since it reopened, visits to the park nearly tripled,...
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County halts demolitions, building in Olympia area
Residents complaining about 100year-old homes being razed and replaced in the Columbia-area neighborhood of Olympia are getting some relief: Richland County Council on Tuesday passed a 180-day ban on new construction and demolitions in the area. The...
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Old Lexington County hotel to house homeless families
Midlands advocates for the homeless have long focused on Richland County, where most of the region’s homeless populations can be found. But now they’re on the verge of making a serious move into neighboring Lexington County, where they say people’s...
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Five Points finds new balance of daytime shops, nightlife
Benjamin Franklin once said, “When you are finished changing, you’re finished.” And in Columbia, Five Points is never finished changing. For more than 100 years, the urban village just east of the University of South Carolina has been almost like a...
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13-year-old boy dies in school bus accident on I-77
A 13-year-old boy was killed when a school bus carrying students from Pine Ridge Middle School in Lexington County blew a tire and flipped on Interstate 77 while returning from a field trip in the Charlotte area, officials said. Traffic on I-77 in...
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Loved ones remember USC student killed in hit and run
Even at 21, Nathaniel Baker had already figured out so much about life. He knew that acts of kindness fill your soul. He learned you can’t control the things around you, but you can control your attitude. He had even discovered that you can give your...
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Columbia model train club defies the scorn for local rail traffic
A train sounds in the distance, and Columbia groans. A line of cars and trucks stack up, exhaust pipes fuming. Drivers fuming. People are late for dinner, for class, for band practice. Boxcars crawl past. Somehow even more follow. Two miles north, no...
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Columbia plans ‘world-class’ waterfront park on flood-prone land
There are those who look out onto the wooded and wild land along the downtown stretch of the Congaree River, untouched for over a century, and see an oasis unfurling across the fen below. Where there are currently undeveloped wetlands, they see...
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Car accident sent Lexington teen to hospital and took his leg
JJ Haselbarth doesn’t remember the accident. He remembers the sound of the jaws of life cutting through the driver’s side door of his wrecked car. He remembers the EMTS injecting him with drugs to numb the pain. He remembers the surgeon promising to...
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Autopsy shows executed inmate died with fluid in lungs
An autopsy report for a South Carolina man executed with the state’s lethal injection protocol raises more questions about whether the process is an unusually cruel and painful method of execution. Marion Bowman Jr. was executed on Jan. 31. The...
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SC gave $1.5 million in scholarships to ineligible students, panel finds
Around $1.5 million in taxpayer dollars was handed to families of students who were ineligible for state-funded tuition assistance, a report from the state’s Education Oversight Committee found. Nearly 1,000 students of the 2,880 approved for the...
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Trump says Canada, Mexico tariffs will begin March 4
Tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico would go into effect on March 4 “as scheduled,” President Donald Trump said Thursday morning, claiming that those countries were still not doing enough to stop the flow of drugs into the United States. China...
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When longtime Columbia eateries close, more than menus are lost
When it comes to restaurants, we often don’t want to let go. Sometimes we can’t let go. That’s because restaurants and bars — the good ones, the ones that find their way into our hearts — become more than places to get a meal. Certainly, we are...
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Trump moves to impose reciprocal tariffs as soon as April
President Donald Trump ordered his administration to consider imposing reciprocal tariffs on numerous trading partners, raising the prospect of a wider campaign against a global system he complains is tilted against the U.S. The president on Thursday...
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Buyers of historic Camden home sue over termite damage
Michael and Diana Garrett moved from Colorado to Camden in February 2022 after buying what they thought would be their dream home. The nearly 250-year-old house at 1413 Mill St. is said to be the oldest in Camden. Revolutionary War Colonel John...
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Mcmaster favors restart of V.C. Summer nuclear construction
Gov. Henry Mcmaster expressed support this past week for restarting a nuclear expansion project that was never finished after utilities charged ratepayers billions of dollars for its cost, then determined eight years ago that the effort was too...
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SC auditor resigns over $1.8B accounting error controversy
State Auditor George Kennedy III, who has been caught in the middle of the state’s accounting issues, including over whether a mysterious $1.8 billion existed, resigned from his job Thursday. Kennedy has been auditor since October 2015. In a recent...
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$33 million renovation hopes to fix Richland County jail
Entering the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, a visitor shows an ID and turns over car keys. Phones and other electronics stay behind in the car outside a fence lined with bales of razor wire. Bags are run through an X-ray machine, and the visitor’s...
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Feds warn oversight of school sponsors lacking
South Carolina charter schools could lose access to crucial federal startup grants if the state doesn’t step up its regulation of charter school sponsors, the U.S. Department of Education has warned. Federal officials notified the S.C. Department of...
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Trains carrying chemicals put Columbia at risk as city grows
On a bright winter afternoon, Mitchell Wright stood in the front yard of his home, not 20 feet across a dirt road from a tangle of railroad tracks. Wright, who was working on his car while enjoying time off, scowled as he thought about the...
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Columbia mill villages band together to preserve history
The Olympia Mill south of downtown Columbia was once the largest cotton mill in the world. Imagining the area bustling with workers may be hard to picture now. These days, the area is best-known for its student rentals. But it was once dominated by...
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Hunter-gatherer closing after 3-decade reign on Main Street
More than 3 decades ago, Kevin Varner spent a semester studying in Scotland. What no one could know at the time is that the visit would ultimately lead to Columbia history. Varner is the founder of Huntergatherer Brewery & Ale House, which opened at...
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DOT outlines 3 plans to split busy street from train tracks
Columbia leaders have for years dreamed of removing the dozen-plus railroad crossings on Assembly Street and through the Olympia neighborhood. Trains come through the crossings with little warning, stopping traffic at the tracks while the often long...
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Bike park, festival aim to boost visitors to Fairfield County
The rain has ceased, but the mist still clings to the hills outside Winnsboro. Riding around on an ATV, giving a midday tour of the new Rattlesnake Bike Park, a downhill mountain biking attraction with 14 trails and shuttle service that promises to...
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SC voters helping conservatives steadily gain ground in state
Since 1993 when he was Republican Party chairman for South Carolina, Gov. Henry Mcmaster and others have been working hard to get more Republicans in office. On Nov. 5, the governor and other Palmetto State Republicans achieved that goal by large...
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Table tennis draws fresh eyes to Soda City
The ball claps against the rubber back of a wooden paddle and whips across the table. Then it’s CRACK, thunk. CRACK, thunk. Back and forth and back – until the little hollow orb leaps off the table, earning the player on the other side a point. Table...
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2022 mall shooting suspect convicted of assault
A second man tried in the 2022 mass shooting at Columbiana Centre mall has been convicted of nine counts of aggravated assault, but jurors acquitted him of attempted murder. Marquise Robinson was one of three people charged in the shooting on Easter...
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2 new school board members may mean changes for Richland 1
The election of two newcomers to the Richland District 1 school board on Tuesday raises questions about the future of both Superintendent Craig Witherspoon and the Vince Ford Early Learning Center in Lower Richland. During the campaign, Richard Moore...
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Controversial Midlands tax is back on the ballot
It’s time for voters to decide if they want to keep the 1% Sales and Use tax used to pay for transportation in Richland County. For the past 12 years, the county has used the money from the tax to pay for major road projects, pedestrian safety...
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Homeowner accuses state of ‘gestapo’ tactics after huge fine
South Carolina’s coastal agency has fined a Charleston County couple $289,000 for what officials say is the illegal construction of a seawall and other work on the beach at the Isle of Palms, where storms and rising ocean levels are threatening...
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SC senator’s stance on beach management draws criticism
About eight years ago, with thenstate Rep. Stephen Goldfinch seeking election to the South Carolina Senate, a wealthy property owner agreed to hold a fund-raising reception in a grand beach house along Georgetown County’s eroding seashore. The...
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In wake of storm, SC officials discuss burying electrical lines
An unprecedented 1.4 million homes and businesses lost power when Hurricane Helene pummeled the Palmetto State, uprooting trees and power poles and inflicting catastrophic damage to South Carolina’s electrical grid. About a fifth of those customers...
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New poll shows Trump favored to win SC, but lead has shrunk
Former President Donald Trump maintains a solid grip on South Carolina ahead of the Nov. 5 election and remains the favorite to carry the state’s nine electoral votes, according to the latest Winthrop University poll. However, his lead in the state...
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