Rep. Rick Quinn, R-Columbia, recently came to the Grand Strand in hope of persuading local leaders to support his proposed transformation of S.C. school finance. It's a better deal for Horry County than local skeptics think, Quinn said.

After careful analysis, we respectfully disagree.

Essentially, Quinn's plan, House Bill 4411, co-authored by Rep. Vincent Sheheen, D-Camden, and co-sponsored by Rep. Tracy Edge, R-North Myrtle Beach, would phase out school property taxes statewide. School districts, cities and counties would lose the power to implement 1-cent local-option sales taxes. The S.C. sales tax would increase from 5 cents to 7 cents. The personal property taxes on cars and trucks would end, but the sales tax on car and truck sales would go up. Dozens of sales-tax exemptions would go - but, interestingly, dozens more would remain in place. The sales tax on food would drop to 2 cents per dollar. In a bid for the support of Gov. Mark Sanford, state income taxes would drop an average 15 percent.

Quinn and Sheheen would set a state budget of $5,000 per pupil, with extra weighting for kids in special-education classes. They would set up a school trust fund from which the state would dispense school aid to local districts and on which the state could earn interest. S.C. teachers would get an immediate $100 million raise.

Why this plan now? In part, Quinn and Sheheen are anticipating an unfavorable verdict from Clarendon County Circuit Court, where a lawsuit challenging the current S.C. school-finance law, the Education Finance Act, is at trial. A group of impoverished S.C. school districts argues that the EFA accords them too little money to guarantee their students the legally required minimally adequate education. Their case is strong.

It would be appropriate for the General Assembly to address this problem in advance of a verdict. But as an analysis of the Quinn-Sheheen bill by Horry County Schools shows, this approach to school-finance repair is really about shrinking, over time, the state's financial commitment to public education.

Within only a few years, the Horry school district budget would shrink more than $20 million - and the Horry County Board of Education would have no way to make that money up. Gone would be the board's ability to sustain Horry County's incredible school quality improvements with timely expenditures of local money.

The loss of the 1-cent local option sales tax also could be locally disastrous. Consider just one example how: If Horry County wanted to extend Road Improvement Development Effort road building to new projects, one possible source of income, a local sales tax that sunsets over time, would be gone. There are few other options for raising local money necessary to extend RIDE.

Last but not least, there's tourism damage. Most hotels, attractions and restaurants would enjoy property-tax cuts (as would owners of all taxable property). But adding 2 cents to the sales tax would increase the cost of a Grand Strand vacation, making our venue less attractive than competing destinations in other states. This strikes us as a bad idea. Besides, the Grand Strand already contributes a disproportionate share of the state's sales tax revenue.

Read as charitably as possible, this bill amounts to a killer for Horry County. Our legislative delegation would be well-advised to oppose it vehemently.