COLUMBIA - A homeowners group began airing radio ads Tuesday to spur the state Senate to stop talking and start voting on property taxes.

Senators did vote - twice - during more than six hours of debate Tuesday, though they still lack a plan. Senators voted 25-15 to kill a proposal they'd debated since last Thursday. An attempt to kill the House's property tax plan failed.

Senators voted 20-20 to table the House plan, surprising many who assumed it would be easily defeated since senators have criticized it for months. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer broke the tie with a "no" vote.

"This indicates a deeply divided Senate," said Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston. Still, he said, the votes showed progress.

Debate will continue Wednesday on the House proposal.

Meanwhile, nohometax.org, which claims to have 250,000 members statewide, paid about $10,000 to run ads on AM radio stations in Columbia, Greenville and Charleston.

"Unless the voters scream bloody murder, or vote me out, this is a dead issue," a fictional senator says in the ad. "I'll need to get calls, letters, e-mails and personal visits from the public before I change my stance. The people can speak up or pay up."

The one-minute ads will air about 15 times a day through Thursday. The Legislature generally meets Tuesday through Thursday when in session.

The group also sent letters to some senators, pledging to campaign against anyone who votes down a property tax relief plan.

Senators debated the issue on the floor last week after nearly one year's worth of meetings, yet took no vote.

"They're going to spend a bunch of money telling half the story," Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head Island, said about the ads. He has participated in property tax meetings since last summer and crafted one of the proposals. "Groups like that hurt themselves," Richardson said.

The issue is so complicated, it must be dealt with deliberatively, he said, not passed just so lawmakers can say they did something. Threatening letters from nohometax.org will not change his thinking, he said.

Sen. Dick Elliot, D-North Myrtle Beach, compared the property tax debate to punching a balloon. "When you give relief on one side," the tax burden shifts to another, he said.

A big part of the debate is how the state would fund education under any plan that swaps property taxes for increases in other taxes.

The current education funding system leads to inequities between poor and affluent districts, said Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Camden. He wants to make sure disbursements from a tax-swap plan would benefit poor, rural districts.

"There's no way we're going to pass property tax reform if we don't deal with education funding," Sheheen said. "They are intimately related."

"We're disappointed at the lack of focus that the Senate has shown," said nohometax.org volunteer Lanneau Siegling of Sullivans Island. "Property taxes didn't just pop on the radar screen this week. Anybody who hasn't studied the issue by now needs to come on back home and send someone else."

The House, whose members face re-election this year, passed a property tax plan in February. The plan would remove 85 percent of local government's operating costs off the tax bills of owner-occupied homes and raise the state sales tax by 2 cents, to 7 cents. It would eliminate the sales tax on groceries.