Businesses, leaders set sights on post-pandemic priorities for 2022.

This time last year, Lance Brown was still getting his arms ahead his new career path. Now, that path has become a bustling thoroughfare.

Brown, president and CEO of Columbia-based medical supply distributor Rhino Medical Supply, busily built relationships with customers and manufacturers after founding the company in May 2020. Now, he's focused on selling products.

"Anything under a hospital roof, we can get, and we've been selling," Brown said.

That includes crutches, in demand because of a nationwide aluminum shortage, nitrile gloves and at-home COVID-19 tests coveted by retail customers and wholesale clients such as pharmacies.

"We ship out all over the country, but we've gotten a heavy response from the state of South Carolina and local folks in the Columbia and Midlands area that are just doing pickups," Brown said. "Literally, about every 10 minutes, we have somebody come and do a pickup. There's somebody coming in now."

Brown's small business-success is what S.C. legislators and business leaders want to see more of as the state and the nation navigate a post-pandemic future.

The S.C. Chamber of Commerce released its 2022 Competitiveness Agenda earlier this month, calling for lawmakers to reduce both personal and property tax burdens and to inject investment into workforce development initiatives, among other priorities.

"Our No. 1 priority is tax reform and tax cuts," Bob Morgan, president and CEO of the chamber, said before the organization's Business Speaks dinner Jan. 12 at the Pastides Alumni Center in Columbia. "The state is flush with a $3 billion surplus, and we'd like to see cuts in the personal income tax rate. We'd like to see commercial property tax rates addressed, and we're hopeful that that will be part of the discussion as the session moves forward."

Legislators and Gov. Henry McMaster pledged to keep that momentum going. McMaster's 2022-2023 executive budget proposes plans for investing that surplus, along with $2.4 billion in coronavirus relief funds provided by the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion relief fill approved in March 2021.

"If we take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity by making big, bold, and transformative investments in the areas of education, infrastructure, workforce, and economic development, South Carolina will prosper for generations to come," McMaster wrote in a letter to the General Assembly.

The budget calls for a proposed 1% rate reduction over five years, from 7% to 6%...