COLUMBIA - Taxpayers are picking up part of the expenses tied to Statehouse caucuses, including Republican and Democratic groups whose primary function is to elect their partisans to the Legislature.

While taxpayer money and facilities may help Republican majority caucuses in the House and Senate, leaders of those groups say laws need to be changed to lock the public out of their meetings.

House Republican and Democratic leaders use office space they would have used anyway, House Clerk Charles Reid said. "I don't think it's a subsidy, no," Reid said. House members typically share suites of four offices with a large open area joining the rooms that can be used for a shared receptionist.

"Technically, we do not have an office," House GOP caucus spokesman Jason Zacher said. The top-floor suite the Majority Caucus uses is occupied by Majority Leader Jim Merrill of Daniel Island, Assistant Majority Leader Adam Taylor of Laurens and Secretary-Treasurer Alan Clemmons of Myrtle Beach. The fourth is used by Charles Cannon, one of the four staff members the caucus pays with money it raises.

Zacher said the caucus covers staff's salaries, benefits and parking spaces, and provides computers and telephone equipment and services. For his part, Zacher has office space in a second-floor suite.

Like Cannon, Kelly Adams, the House Democratic Caucus staffer, uses space in that group's suite. Minority Leader Harry Ott of St. Matthews and other Democratic floor leaders have space there, Reid said.

Reid said the Democratic Caucus does not pay for two extra phone lines in its offices, but the GOP caucus pays for its three extra lines. Neither caucus pays rent or utilities, Reid said. "It's always been done that way," Reid said.

"The media also gets state-provided space at the Statehouse," Zacher said.

Reporters work out of a small, seven-desk office tucked two floors above the Senate's chambers, and news organizations, including The Associated Press, pay for computers and telephones they use.

"It's apples and oranges," said Bill Rogers, executive director of the South Carolina Press Association. "The press is there to report on the General Assembly."

In the Senate, caucus staff do not have Senate office space, Senate Clerk Jeffrey Gossett said. However, two staffers with jobs tied to the minority and majority leaders do have office space.

Senate rules provide for two staff positions that do work for the Republican majority and Democratic minority.

Majority researcher Mark Harmon is paid $56,000, Gossett said. Harmon took that job this year. Susan DeWitt, the Democratic minority aide, a career Senate staffer before going to work for the Minority Caucus, is paid $72,500, Gossett said. Both are paid with state funds.

They are treated "the same as committee staff; the same as other research attorneys that work for the clerk's staff," Gossett said.

But Harmon and DeWitt are hired by the Senate's Republican and Democratic leaders. While they aren't working campaigns or doing political work, the work they do is available for senators' use in campaigns, Phil Bailey, director of the Senate Democratic Caucus, said.

If the Legislature decided caucuses should pay for utilities or space in the House or Senate, they appear to have the money to do so.

For instance, filings with the State Ethics Commission show the Senate Democratic and Republican caucuses and the House Republican Caucus raised more than $1 million for their operating and campaign accounts in 2005.