Senate puts off vote on tax bill

Supporters get chance to show

By Seanna Adcox

The Associated Press

COLUMBIA - Senators postponed a vote to send their property tax relief bill back to the House until Tuesday in hopes that more legislators would show up who support the measure.

"We've lost a lot of our members," said Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens. "If we don't have the votes for the motion period, then we'll quit for the day."

The request Monday evening to carry over debate initially failed 18-18 - indicative of how the issue has divided the Senate for weeks - before enough senators eventually agreed.

The property tax relief proposal given key approval late Thursday includes a half-cent sales tax increase statewide, to 5½ cents, to cut county operations on homeowners' tax bills. It also gives voters the choice on a county-by-county basis of increasing the sales tax further to cover the school operating portion of their property tax bills.

The Senate must give the bill third reading before returning it to the House, which approved its own plan in February. A conference committee would then attempt to work out the differences in the two plans.

"As divided as this body is, do you think when we go to conference we'll even get a bill this year?" asked Sen. Jake Knotts, R-West Columbia.

Some opponents of the Senate plan still hope to throw out Thursday's approval and start that process over. Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, said he hasn't given up on proposals that would reform both property taxes and education funding.

"I'm not prepared to go through another three weeks of this," Martin said. "Please do not force us to go back and undo second reading."

Senators did commit Monday to the state taking over the operating cost of all public schools by 2009. The Senate voted to add the clause to its property tax relief package.

During several weeks of floor debate, senators repeatedly killed proposals that would substitute property taxes for increased sales taxes while also giving the state full responsibility of funding school operations. Proponents said that would make school funding more equitable statewide. In killing the measures, opponents said they were too complicated, too expensive and needed further study.

Hutto's amendment gives the General Assembly a three-year deadline to decide how the state would take over paying for school operations statewide. It says school districts can collect property taxes only for capital projects and debt after June 30, 2009. Martin argued lawmakers shouldn't bind themselves to a deadline, and the $2.4 billion concept is too expensive to try to do "in one shot."

Though senators killed a similar proposal last Thursday, they adopted it Monday, partly because some of the opponents weren't there.