COLUMBIA — When is a pay raise legally considered a pay raise?

That was the question attorneys took to the S.C. Supreme Court Oct. 22 in a challenge over the Legislature’s eleventh-hour decision to add a self-imposed pay increase into this year’s state budget that critics called unconstitutional .

The wording increased their in-district pay — the compensation they receive for incidentals outside of the five-month legislative session — by about $18,000 per year.

Opponents of the bump, including state Sen. Sen. Wes Climer, R-Rock Hill, who filed the lawsuit challenging his colleagues’ conduct, said the proviso violated Article III, Section 19 of the state constitution.

That article specifies "no General Assembly shall have the power to increase the per diem of its own membe

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