A panel of House members has approved the outline of a plan to eliminate nearly all property taxes for homeowners by raising the state’s sales tax to 7 cents on the dollar.

The sales tax increase would generate an extra $1.2 billion — enough to cover the break on owner-occupied homes and eliminate sales taxes on groceries.

The property tax proposal would cost $700 million. But homeowners will still have to pay about $112 million in annual borrowing costs tied to bonds school boards, counties and cities have issued. And they’d continue to see service fees, such as garbage pickup, on their tax bills.

The Property Tax Ad Hoc Committee on Wednesday adopted nearly all the proposals House Speaker Bobby Harrell made public earlier this week.

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SUMTER

• Boy, 9, suspended for taking gun to school

A 9-year-old boy at Alice Drive Elementary School in Sumter has been suspended for bringing an unloaded handgun to school on Monday, a district spokeswoman said.

According to a police report, a student told principal Debra Thomas that another student had a gun in his book bag. Thomas searched the book bag and found a .32-caliber revolver.

“From what we’ve gathered, the student had no intention of using it, but circumstances as to how he got it or why he brought it are unknown,” district spokeswoman Shelly Galloway said.

The boy has been suspended, pending a disciplinary hearing.

NORTH CHARLESTON

• Charleston Southern pitcher dies after fight

An 18-year-old freshman pitcher for the Charleston Southern baseball team died after an argument with another student came to blows, authorities said.

Grant Ringenberg, 18, of Apex, N.C., was kicked and hit in the face and fell into a coma during a fight early Tuesday, police said. He died Tuesday afternoon.

The other student, Dan Thomas Davis III, was charged with murder, North Charleston police said. Davis is from Barnwell, officials said.

Police said an ongoing argument over Ringenberg’s girlfriend apparently led to the fight.

• Tanger Outlet Center to open next fall

A new Tanger Factory Outlet Center will create more than 900 jobs at some 90 stores in North Charleston when the facility is completed next fall, officials said.

The Greensboro, N.C.-based real estate investment trust plans to invest about $50 million in the center, Tanger spokesman Mike Buescher said.

ROCK HILL

• Student quits Winthrop after race column

The student who wrote a controversial column about race for Winthrop University’s student newspaper has left the school.

Christine Byington, 20, said Tuesday she filed paperwork to leave after considering her options last weekend at her family’s Greenville home.

She told The (Rock Hill) Herald by phone Tuesday that her leaving “had more to do with how my whole semester was going” than the reaction to her column published last week in The Johnsonian, the student-led weekly newspaper.

In that column, Byington, who is biracial, criticized minority scholarships and organizations devoted to blacks. She said equal treatment should be given to all races.

Contributing: The Associated Press