SINCE HE started campaigning for governor in 2001, Mark Sanford has had a disturbing fixation on the income tax, seeming to believe that it would be somehow responsible to jiggle that around without considering the implications it has on the entire state and local tax structure. So it was remarkable that last week, Mr. Sanford injected a much-needed note of balance into the rapidly escalating movement in the Legislature to cut property taxes.

Amazingly, the governor didn’t appear to be trying to shift the debate back to the income tax. Instead, Mr. Sanford seemed almost to be calling for comprehensive tax reform.

The Associated Press reports that Mr. Sanford urged lawmakers to study how to fund education in South Carolina before they start messing around with property taxes. “I think, unfortunately, the caboose is leading the train on this one,” Mr. Sanford told a Columbia Kiwanis Club. “You’ve got to look at what’s the driver of this train. The reason property taxes are there is because of education.”

That, by the way, is the message city leaders are trying to get out as they prepare for what they fear will turn into an attack on local governments’ authority to levy taxes. (A logical assumption, since the state doesn’t collect property taxes, and local governments are forced by state law to rely primarily on the property tax for funding.) As the Municipal Association of South Carolina reminded city council members in an e-mail last week, 60 percent of property taxes go to fund public schools. “We will not solve the property tax problem until the state legislature solves the school funding problem,” the e-mail said. “Funding schools is a state responsibility.”

And that message, in turn, hearkens back to the much-ballyhooed but ultimately ignored Quinn-Sheheen proposal to overhaul the school funding system by reducing property taxes, increasing the sales tax, lifting some sales tax exemptions and making other changes to specialty taxes and to the formulas by which the state sends tax money to schools.

That proposal never got a real hearing in the House, but that too could be changing, now that House Ways and Means Chairman Bobby Harrell has become House Speaker Bobby Harrell.

Mr. Sanford’s cautionary note came on the heels of Mr. Harrell’s announcement that he had created a special House committee to explore the same issues a special Senate property tax panel is spending the summer reviewing.

It’s disturbing that Mr. Harrell’s stated goal for the 20-member panel is limited to finding “a fair solution to property tax issues.” But there’s reason to be optimistic as well.

First and foremost, whether he always acts that way or not, the new speaker very clearly understands the danger of limiting any tax debate to just one of the legs of South Carolina’s three-legged tax stool. Years and years of doing just that have left us with a tax system that has been added onto and taken away from so many times that it has become incoherent. No one can really say whether it is regressive or progressive, whether it provides incentives for those behaviors we want to encourage or for those we would rather discourage, whether it properly balances the tax burden between businesses and individuals, the young and old, rural and urban residents, and on and on. We can’t even say whether it is balanced in the best way to weather economic storms.

Mr. Harrell personally has done a great deal of research on comprehensive ways to reform the tax system, and has floated some creative plans.

Second, the speaker appointed Rep. Bill Cotty to chair his special property tax panel. That’s important because Mr. Cotty is one of the most independent-minded members of the House, he has a solid understanding of the complexities of tax law and of the major pitfalls of simplistic changes, and he has a great deal of respect for local government autonomy.

Third, Mr. Harrell has expanded the discussion beyond the confines of the Ways and Means Committee, which has too often acted as roadblock for comprehensive reform efforts. As his office noted in a news release last week, “it became apparent during last session that this issue needed a House-wide approach.” That change has allowed him to include, among others, the two primary House proponents of a comprehensive effort — Reps. Kenny Bingham and Jim Merrill.

Having the House and Senate separately tackling property tax reform already offered the potential for a healthy kind of one-upmanship that could lead to responsible reform. (Of course, it also could produce the unhealthy one-upmanship that degenerates into irresponsible pandering.)

By throwing down the gauntlet, Mr. Sanford could further push the pendulum toward a plan that looks at the entire tax system. After all, his comments immediately put Mr. Harrell and Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman in the bizarre position of having to defend their funding of education against the man who has been widely perceived as an opponent of public school funding. And to the extent that they are forced to acknowledge that any property tax-only “solution” will reduce school funding — and that they thus must come up with a way to counterbalance that — the prognosis is much improved.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.