THE FOLKLORE is that the cigarette tax hike died last year because the governor strong-armed Democratic senators, who then led the Senate to vote it down.

The truth is that no vote was ever taken, because of parliamentary procedure gone bad. And the lobbying is on to make the same thing happen again this year with the cigarette tax, and likely with plans to eliminate a handful of sales tax exemptions as well.

A repeat of last year's farce can be accomplished only by the lieutenant governor and the Senate once again ignoring the clear meaning of state law and subverting the democratic process.

One of the most important duties of the presiding officers of the House and Senate is to act as referee when legislators argue that the rules of parliamentary procedure are being violated. In the overwhelming majority of cases, they rule correctly on these points of order. Sometimes it's a close call, and you can understand why an honest person would rule either way. On rare occasions, the presiding officers make rulings that are clearly wrong, but which coincide with their own personal agendas. (Nick Theodore's famous ruling, in a 1989 election of DSS board members, that a majority isn't actually a majority comes to mind.)

For that reason, there is an override procedure: A legislator can appeal the ruling to the full body, which then votes whether to sustain or overturn it.

So there's no chance of mistaken calls, right? Wrong.

Last year, cigarette tax opponents raised several points of order when Sens. Verne Smith and Darrell Jackson proposed adding a provision on the state budget to increase the tax. Most significantly, they argued that state law prohibits legislators from raising taxes as part of the budget bill.

Then-Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler, who opposed the cigarette tax, sustained that point of order. There was absolutely no basis in law for Mr. Peeler's ruling.

What state law prohibits is "any general tax increase" or "new general taxes" in the "permanent provisos" of the budget bill.

The law defines general taxes as "tax increases and new taxes which apply to over fifty percent of the population as a whole." Since just a quarter of the population smokes, a cigarette tax clearly does not fit the definition.

Moreover, Senate rules have been changed since that law was passed, to outlaw adding "permanent provisos," or permanent changes to state law, to the budget bill. Now, legislators who want to change state law through the budget must use "temporary provisos," which last for only one year. So the point of order should have failed on that point as well.

Appropriately, Mr. Peeler's bad ruling was appealed. The result was extraordinary: The Senate voted 23-17 to uphold his ruling, thus ending any hope of even having a debate and legitimate vote -- much less any chance of passage -- on the cigarette tax.

In other words, half the members of the Senate said they didn't care what the law said; they simply wanted the cigarette tax to go away without their having to vote directly against it.

That tells you a lot about the politics of the cigarette tax: Usually, legislators fall all over themselves to get the chance to vote against a tax increase; what they dodge are situations where they might think they have to vote for one. Circumventing the law in order to avoid going on record as opposing a tax increase suggests that they knew very well that their constituents would support that tax increase.

That is dishonest.

And cowardly.

And tax opponents hope to pull the same trick again this week when the Senate takes up the budget bill. (It will even be argued that Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer is bound to rule the cigarette tax out of order because of the precedent set by Mr. Peeler. That's ridiculous. Nothing in Senate rules requires a presiding officer to follow precedent; as House Speaker David Wilkins explained last year when asked how he could allow debate on a cigarette tax considering Mr. Peeler's ruling: "It's not my fault he was wrong.‘.‘.‘. I have to rule correctly regardless of what the Senate does.")

Count on cigarette tax opponents to try these off-point points of order when a separate bill to permanently raise the tax comes before the Senate in the next few weeks. At that time, the ruling will be wrong on a third point: The law applies only to the budget bill.

Cigarette-tax opponents likely will also argue that the stand-alone bill is out of order because the state constitution requires that all "bills for raising revenue" originate in the House. That point, too, will be off base, for a number of reasons. The most obvious one is that the House -- in either an extreme case of good faith or else a bow to Realpolitik -- left a reference to the cigarette tax in the title of the bill, so there would be no question whatsoever about it being constitutional for the Senate to add the tax hike to it.

Even raising such baseless points of order is an act of cowardice: Since they are completely without legal or constitutional foundation (and would be without merit as they relate to the sales tax exemptions, for the same reasons), it is merely an attempt to let senators vote against popular tax increases without admitting they are voting against them. If senators oppose the cigarette tax-income tax swap or eliminating sales tax exemptions, that's their right. But they should have the intestinal fortitude to openly vote against them, rather than playing games to mislead the public.