Lawmakers asking for property tax solutions

JENNIFER HOLLAND, Associated Press

COLUMBIA -- Mike Adams and his wife planned to finish their careers in a few years and enjoy retirement in their Pawleys Island home, but soaring property taxes are eating away at their bank account and big dreams.

"As long as we continue to maintain a place in the work force and we have cash flow, then we can some way or another pinch pennies enough to pay the property tax and remain in our home," said Adams, a beverage salesman. "But when you get on a fixed income and you have a budget that you have to stay within, then all of a sudden you're hit with an astronomical increase in any of the variables ... it blows your budget."

Adams, 60, and others clamoring for a tax break are counting on lawmakers who pledged this summer to find a remedy before more people are taxed out of their homes.

"This is the best shot we have at getting something done," said Adams, who has watched while efforts to bring relief were defeated in the courts or vetoed by the governor during the past few years.

The issue has divided the General Assembly for years, too, because altering the property tax collections shifts the burden to other sources of revenue such as sales tax or income tax.

"We either can study it to death and talk it to death or we can get in there and do something about it," said Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston. "There may be some repercussions from whatever change we do, but the repercussions from the system we've got are intolerable."

On Thursday, a Senate subcommittee will ask Charleston-area residents for ideas during one of several property tax hearings scheduled across the state.

Some of the proposals suggested so far would come with a price.

One would eliminate property taxes by raising the sales tax or other taxes, such as cigarette tax, to pay for government services. Twenty-nine counties already have adopted a local option sales tax to help ease property taxes.

Lawmakers also are looking at ways to generate revenue, such as imposing impact fees for new construction and a fee in lieu of taxes for certain manufacturing and commercial industries investing in South Carolina.

Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston, said coastal minorities are being hurt the most, as wealthy white people buy land owned by families since slavery and drive up property values.

"When these whites come in, they're buying up a whole lot of property, plantation property, and they're paying major, major money for it," Ford said.

One possibility would restrict when property values are reassessed to when land is purchased or when a major improvement is made. Also on the table is a plan that would limit how much the assessed value could increase over time, but versions of that proposal already have been tossed out by the South Carolina Supreme Court or vetoed by Gov. Mark Sanford.

Sanford says he's open to new tax proposals but wants lawmakers first to examine funding formulas for public education, which relies heavily on property taxes. He points to a pending lawsuit in which eight school districts claim the state's method of funding public schools shortchanges rural districts.

"The General Assembly, I think, is going to revisit these education formulas anyway," McConnell said. "But that should not hold back property tax reform."

House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, has appointed a committee to find a solution that is fair to homeowners and businesses.

"That does not mean that you would reduce the revenue to education or cities or counties," Harrell said. "The good news is we are all talking about how to deal with high property taxes."

Ford wants to reintroduce gambling in the state to generate tax revenue.

"It wouldn't cost the taxpayers nothing," said Ford, who has pitched the idea every year since the multibillion-dollar video gambling industry was banned in 2000.

Whatever is proposed, lawmakers expect an amendment to the state Constitution will help pave the way, but that will take a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate.

Business, education and government representatives who have an intense interest in property taxes threaten to divide lawmakers when they return to the Statehouse in January.

"We're going to have to use every political ability we've got to pass anything," Ford said.