This is the time of year when readers would be wise to take some of the verbiage coming out of Columbia with a grain of salt. With the end of the 2002 session of the S.C. General Assembly approaching, Gov. Mark Sanford and S.C. lawmakers are engaged in a political melodrama over money. Adding to the complexity of the show are partisan and ideological agendas making it virtually impossible for observers to predict the outcome.

As the melodrama unfolds, it is important that Grand Strand legislators - of both parties - focus on the weakness of one idea that appears to have gained legislative currency the past few weeks: raising the S.C. sales tax by 2 cents per dollar and devoting the proceeds to public education.

This proposal, if enacted, would be a killer - repeat, a killer - for the Grand Strand and particularly Horry County.

Yet, in a key Senate vote on the matter last week, Sens. Dick Elliott, D-North Myrtle Beach, and Luke Rankin, D-Myrtle Beach, picked the Democratic Party line over the interests of the folks back home and backed the sales tax increase. Also backing the proposal, which the Senate defeated, was Sen. Yancey McGill, D-Kingstree, who represents the Bucksport area of Horry County.

The sales-tax increase probably is not dead because it also has currency in the House. But if it comes back to life, it needs to be killed again.

A disproportionate share of the revenue from the increase would come from the Grand Strand. And because the state school-aid equalization formula regards Horry County as wealthy, Horry County Schools would get little of the new revenue.

Perhaps Rankin and Elliott, who know how to count, realized that the measure would go down and viewed their "yes" votes as a symbolic opportunity to show party loyalty. But their votes sent the wrong signal homeward on a bill that all area legislators should find loathsome.