A cartoon on today's page accurately reflects the state of affairs in Columbia on property tax relief. Even some of the strongest advocates in the Senate have come to the realization that there's little chance of homeowner relief this year. That's primarily because anything meaningful will require a two-thirds vote of each legislative body.

The Senate finally passed a measure last week that would allow each county to hold a local option referendum, but it's a far cry from the original version advocated by Charleston Sen. Chip Campsen. Indeed, Sen. Campsen tells us he voted for it only to allow the conference committee a chance to try its hand at a resolution. The problem, he said, is that it requires that any relief granted by a sales tax increase to be across the board for all classes of property. Generally, that requirement would result in a sales tax increase so high that voters would never approve it, he said.

The House-passed bill calls for a statewide two-cent sales tax increase that would be used to remove all the property tax from single- family homes. But Sen. Glenn McConnell, president pro tempore of the Senate, says previous court rulings tell him that the House bill would require a two-thirds vote, as did the measure that passed the Senate. The votes in the Senate over the past few weeks say that support for such a statewide increase just isn't there. It is, he said, "reality time."

According to Sen. Campsen, property tax relief isn't viewed by many senators as a statewide problem. In counties where property values aren't escalating as they are along the coast, there is little interest in a substantial statewide sales tax increase. The matter is complicated by the fact that some senators are concentrating on equity in school funding and want to tie that to any property tax change. Sen. Campsen says those concentrating on the school funding problem are willing to hold property tax relief "hostage" until the equity issue is resolved.

Sen. McConnell does believe a proposed constitutional amendment that caps real property reassessments to 3 percent per year after 2007 will make it on the ballot. That measure has gotten the needed two-thirds vote in the Senate and is in the House.

The senator also says a bill establishing a study committee on property tax relief is in the making. That's a measure we've been advocating all year. Property tax relief is far more complicated than tort reform, for example, and that legislation took several years of debate before passage. The same goes for equity in school funding. The inequity in existing funding formulas speaks to the extent of that problem.

This session should have been a wake-up for all those who sought so-called simple solutions to the property tax problem. All the alternatives and their consequences, intended and otherwise, should be thoroughly analyzed by outside experts before changes are proposed. If legislators finally have come to that realization, that's progress.