Advice from both outside and inside the Beaufort County government indicate that it should drop the concept of a 15 percent cap on property reassessments.

A study done at Clemson University for the county shows that the cap would shift the tax burden from owners of the highest-priced homes to those owning more modest homes. Beaufort County Council heard this week that the county assessor's office concurs.

That should not only give pause to the County Council, it should give pause to state legislators. The House of Representatives passed two separate bills to limit soaring property values showing up on five-year reassessments of local property.

The problem in Beaufort County is that there is no more time to have pause. County Council has been wrestling with this complicated issue for two years. It already has delayed reassessment a full year. That is causing problems for the school district that needs the higher, more accurate assessments to fund construction needs.

Neither the County Council nor the legislature should proceed without knowing the outcome to a legal challenge to a reassessment cap in Charleston County. That has yet to be decided by the state Supreme Court. It would be foolish to act without that knowledge. The cost would be prohibitive to redo tax bills if that were mandated by the ruling.

County Council faces yet another red flag. It has a deadline of April 1 to decide on a cap in order for this year's tax bills to be processed on time.

Beaufort County and the legislature should forget the reassessment cap until they have a firmer grasp on the full consequences of the change. There has not even been a public discussion on the consequences outlined in the study by Clemson's Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs.

There must be options other than the cap that the county could pursue.

Perhaps property could be reassessed more often than every five years. This state requirement already has been reduced from 10 years to five years to be more accurate. In today's market, five years is too long a wait to have assessments that fairly reflect property values. When that happens, governments lose out on potential revenue.

County Council should use the one factor in this debate that it already controls: the tax rate. The tax base should not be artificially controlled, particularly when it simply shifts the tax burden from one group to another. Let the tax base be the constant and the tax rate be the variable. That way, people would pay proportionately across the board.

If the legislature is concerned about the rising local tax burden, it should quit pushing the cost of services -- such as road construction and school programs -- to the local level.