COLUMBIA, S.C. - The buses may soon stop in Charleston after the state Supreme Court threw out a half-cent sales tax passed last year by Charleston County voters.

The tax, earmarked mostly for transportation items, asked voters desiring "traffic congestion relief, safe roads and clean water sales tax" to vote yes.

The justices nullified the vote Monday because the wording of the ballot appeared to favor passing the tax.

The decision means the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority likely will have to begin cutting service and may have to shut down the buses entirely, authority Chairman Patterson Smith said.

The authority has serious money woes after taking out a $3.5 million loan shortly after the tax was passed last November to keep the buses going. Proceeds from the new tax were supposed to pay the loan off.

"We are looking to see who our friends are," Smith said.

The authority is bringing in executives from the two private companies that help run the bus system to talk about what can be done in the short term. "They tell me the system will operate tomorrow," Smith said Monday.

In the long term, Smith plans to ask the County Council to appeal the ruling as quickly as possible. County Council Chairman Timothy Scott did not return a phone message seeking comment.

"If CARTA's finances do not change, we will have to begin a graduated shutdown with proper public notification," Smith said.

More than a dozen local elected officials sued over the sales tax after it passed by 865 votes out of about 100,000 ballots cast, concerned about the wording of the question.

The justices were unanimous, with Chief Justice Jean Toal writing that the county could advocate the tax before Election Day but had to provide an objectively worded question at the ballot box.

"The voter instructions here appeared calculated to persuade and ultimately mislead voters into voting in favor of the tax by obscuring the fact that a vote for clean water was a vote for increased sales tax," Toal wrote in the court's decision.

The issue should have never come before the court because County Council was told the ballot question "would not fly," said Trent Kernodle, an attorney representing several sales tax opponents.

After reading the question four months before votes were cast, the county Election Commission told officials the wording was not neutral. The council agreed to reconsider, then voted to keep the original language.

"It's sad because they had an opportunity to fix it," Kernodle said.

Merchants were supposed to start collecting the tax in May, but the high court stepped in a few weeks before, saying there would be no way to refund money collected if the tax was overturned.

The tax was expected to raise $1.3 billion in the next 25 years to build roads and bridges, pay for public transportation and buy undeveloped land for parks and forests.

The mayors of Mount Pleasant, North Charleston and Charleston also supported the tax and the municipalities filed briefs on behalf of the county.

A similar tax put on the ballot in 2000 failed by about 900 votes.

The county could apparently try to get the tax passed again. The justices only nullified the results of the 2002 election.

Opponents of the tax also sued over a pamphlet printed by County Council listing projects to be funded by the tax that was handed out at polling places.

The justices didn't rule on the pamphlet, since they said the wording of the ballot already invalidated the election. But they did ask lawmakers to clarify whether local election officials should be able to hand out information at polling places when candidate campaign literature is banned.

"Nevertheless, we can find no logical distinction which would allow partisan campaign literature drafted by a government entity to be distributed within 200 feet of a polling place on Election Day when the same literature distributed by a private party would not be allowed," Toal wrote.