McNair’s Governmental Affairs Team is composed of experienced, knowledgeable, and success-oriented individuals. The numerous accomplishments of our Team in representing clients in the legislative and regulatory arenas, as well as before local governments, clearly demonstrate the advantage to retaining a group with our experience and knowledge.

Our Team members have strong relationships with members of the General Assembly on both sides of the aisle and are highly respected professionally not only in South Carolina but nationally. On the national level one member of our Team, Lynn Stokes Murray, is currently the Chairman of the Board of The Advocacy Group, an association of top lobbyists from across the country. Our Team members have a vast amount of experience serving in a variety of top staff positions in both bodies of the General Assembly. No one knows the parliamentary rules, which are critical to successfully concluding a legislative objective, better than our Team.

Retaining our Governmental Affairs Team means that not just one lobbyist is available for your issue but our entire Team. Moreover, our Team can call on any of our Firm’s lawyers to bring to the table legal knowledge and advice in developing solutions for our clients’ issues.

How we Get Things Done
When the business community sought a more accountable process for ensuring the improvement of South Carolina’s K-12 education system, McNair successfully assisted in the effort and got the Education Accountability Act passed.
When the state of South Carolina experienced difficulties securing sufficient financing for major road and highway construction and repair, McNair took the lead in helping to create the South Carolina Transportation Infrastructure Bank.

Legislative Monitoring

In addition to our outstanding team of lobbyists, McNair's Governmental Affairs Section provides a monitoring service, which is led by Vicki Walker and Candy Barrett. This monitoring service is offered to clients who need to track legislative and regulatory issues in the General Assembly.

As many issues demand professional attention in the fast-paced legislative arena, communication of these activities is critical to the success of our clients. Our legislative monitoring service is committed to providing the most timely, professional, comprehensive, and flexible monitoring service available. Our staff possesses extensive experience and knowledge of the legislative process and works both independently of and in conjunction with our lobbyists. The objective of our monitoring service is to communicate legislative or regulatory actions which impact the interests of our clients as they occur. Our monitoring program consists of a variety of services including:

• Weekly, detailed and updated legislative agenda;
• Weekly report of major legislative activity and issues of interest;
• Daily reporting of activity of important issues;
• Alerting of activity on issues;
• Access to a private, customized tracking website, which is updated daily with important legislative activity; and
• Final individualized “End of the Session” report.

In addition to monitoring activities during a legislative session, we monitor activities that occur between legislative sessions. The issues we regularly monitor include:

• Agricultural
• Alcohol Beverage
• Automotive
• Banking
• Business
• Corporate
• Education
• Energy
• Environmental
• Forestry
• Health Care
• Higher Education
• Insurance
• Internet
• Manufacturing
• Medical
• Nuclear Waste Disposal
• Pharmaceutical
• Political Subdivisions
• Public Utilities
• Public Works
• Real Estate
• Retirement
• SC State Ports Authority
• Solid and Hazardous Waste
• State Employment
• Taxation
• Telecommunications
• Tobacco
• Transportation
• Waste Management
• Workers Compensation

Our reporting service is always individually tailored to meet our individual client’s needs and interests. We are dedicated to providing our clients real-time, customized, professionally-accurate reporting of legislative activity. For more information about this service, or to subscribe, please contact cbarrett@mcnair.net or vwalker@mcnair.net.