Several local officials hailed council's action Tuesday as crucial to keeping the area's bus system alive and raising far more money for local roads and bridges.

"There is guarded optimism about an early election," outgoing Council Chairman Tim Scott said. "These are going to be very challenging times, but we felt we needed to exhaust all the options there are."

Council's vote came just days after officials learned of a state law that appears to require Sanford to schedule a new vote.

In November 2002, county voters narrowly approved a half-cent sales tax increase that would have been in place for 25 years and would have raised $1.3 billion for new roads, preservation of undeveloped areas and the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority. The S.C. Supreme Court later threw out the results because it found the ballot question's wording was biased to encourage voters to favor the tax.

Since then, county attorneys found a state law that says, "If for any reason the (election) is declared void by competent authority ... the (governor) shall, should the law not otherwise provide for this contingency, order an (election) or a new (election)."

Councilman Leon Stavrinakis moved that council ask the governor to set a date for a new referendum and to "take due consideration of the fact that the county's mass transit system will have a difficult, if not impossible, time operating past April of this year, and that it would be in the best interests of CARTA and the people of the county that a new election be set sometime in early April."

All discussion on the issue was held in closed session; council later emerged and voted yes.

Sanford spokesman Will Folks said Tuesday that the governor's position hasn't changed. "The Supreme Court has clearly outlined the problems they had with the ballot, and until those problems are resolved at the local level, to the court's satisfaction, there is really no involvement from this office."

Sanford might be forced to call for an election. County officials cited a 1939 Supreme Court decision that ordered Gov. Burnet Maybank to call for a new election after the court voided a school election in Spartanburg County.

But Sanford might have leeway in setting the date. State law says only that the vote should be "held at the time and place, and upon the notice being given which to him (governor) appears adequate to insure the will of the electorate being fairly expressed." State law normally requires sales tax referenda to be held in a general election.

Residents and elected officials who showed up Tuesday were optimistic a vote would come soon.

Audrey Gunter of West Ashley, who attended the meeting with her seeing-eye dog, said she was encouraged that council's vote would be a first step in saving CARTA. "The disabled public, we don't have the option of walking and riding bicycles like the general public has."

Charleston Mayor Joe Riley and City Council members Kwadjo Campbell, Wendell Gilliard and James Lewis all attended to show support for a new referendum. "County Council is certainly to be commended for acting with dispatch," Riley said. "This is what the public deserves."

Not all were as happy.

Charleston County Board of Elections and Voter Registration Chairman Roy DeHaven said a special election would cost about $100,000 -- money that's not in its budget. DeHaven, who opposed the first election, said he would recuse himself from any special election on the tax.

Legal challenges could follow.

"I think any fair-minded person who reads that statute can reach only one conclusion: It was drawn to allow the governor to call a special election when there's an empty seat somewhere. There ain't no empty seat," said lawyer Tommy Goldstein, who represented an opponent of the previous sales tax vote. He said his client likely would wait to see the ballot wording before deciding a next move.

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