Not being given to throwing brickbats at blue ribbon legislative panels before they've even convened, we want to believe that some good will come of S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell's new special committee on property taxes. But given the legislative tendencies to address tax issues piecemeal and to pay undue attention to the howls of those who complain most, we have a bad feeling about the panel, on which two local legislators will serve.

Announced last week, the panel, to be led by S.C. Rep. Bill Cotty, R-Columbia, will study the effects of changes in the property tax. Harrell, R-Charleston, charged the committee with studying the effects that changes in current property-tax law would have on homeowners, businesses and local governments and on state revenues and economic development. S.C. Reps. Tracy Edge, R-North Myrtle Beach, and Vida Miller, D-Pawleys Island, will assist Cotty and 17 other legislators in this effort.

Why does this initiative give us heartburn? Three reasons:

Any change at all in the property-tax code would have a ripple effect across every local government budget and the entire state budget. But rather than ask Cotty's panel to look at taxation across the board, Harrell is making the property tax the star of the show. The other principal revenue sources for S.C. government, the sales tax and the state income tax, apparently will be investigated only tangentially.

Despite his broad charge, Harrell seems most interesting in greasing squeaky wheels. "Members of the House have heard loud and clear from our constituents," he said in announcing the Cotty panel last week. "They want something done about property taxes." That statement strikes us as, well, phony. The loudest complaints come from only a few classes of constituents: homeowners who live in areas, mostly along the coast, where market values are rising faster than they are inland, and commercial property owners, with whom the state's populist 1895 constitution saddles unreasonably high assessments. Any relief that the state grants the aggrieved parties inevitably would shift the property-tax burden to the owners of other taxable property.

Equally important, the property tax is the most meaningful source of revenue for cities, counties and school districts. The only other source of taxation that legislators have allowed them, pending approval from the voters, is local-option sales taxes. When legislators mess with the property tax, they also are messing with the hard-won independence of local governments, which begins and ends with the ability of councils and school boards to adjust their mill levies to raise enough money for local needs. Even if the state replaces the money that local governments lose via tweaks in the property tax, local governments still lose independence. The well-being of local programs depends even more on the beneficence of legislators.

We could have too bleak a take on Harrell's panel.

Perhaps Edge and Miller, who both have demonstrated ability for sage craftsmanship of legislative proposals and for attention to detail, can help panel members view the whole playing field of S.C. taxation.

The onus is on them and the other panel members to come up with recommendations that advance fair taxation - and that wouldn't create more losers than winners.