Parents won’t get tax credits to send their children to private schools next year, after lawmakers Wednesday scuttled a key plank in Gov. Mark Sanford’s legislative agenda.

House Ways and Means Committee members said they were uncomfortable voting for a bill that could have such a significant impact and wanted to wait and consider it next session.

Their decision kills — for now — Sanford’s controversial “Put Parents in Charge Act.”

“The bill had problems in it,” said committee chairman Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, who has objected to its lack of accountability for private schools. “The governor probably needs to address those and propose a different bill next year.”

The decision left tax credit backers — including Sanford — vowing to push the issue again next session. And opponents pledging to continue to fight it.

Lawmakers debated the bill for about an hour before deciding not to act. That effectively kills the proposal for this session, which ends June 3.

The proposal would give families whose taxable income is less than $75,000 a year a tax credit on property or income taxes to spend on private education, home schooling or the cost of transferring a child to another school district.

Opponents call the bill a thinly veiled voucher proposal that would siphon money from already underfunded public schools. Supporters said they want to make private school available to families who can’t afford it now.

Others said they liked the concept but wanted to hold hearings around the state before making a decision.

“Maybe this will solve the problems” in public schools, said Rep. Lanny Littlejohn, R-Spartanburg. “We have a responsibility to look at this thing over the summer and fall.”

The proposed law has been one of the most contentious issues of this year, with school choice advocates and public school backers both running aggressive campaigns for and against the bill.

The issue looked dead a few weeks ago, after members of the Ways and Means Committee decided to hold the bill in committee and study it further.

But pressure mounted again last week, after local and national school choice groups teamed up to revive the bill. The groups spent thousands of dollars on a TV ad campaign and swamped legislators with phone calls through a phone bank.

Scott Price, a lobbyist for the S.C. School Boards Association, said he was pleased that legislators decided not to push the issue through this year.

“This is a very controversial issue and not one South Carolina is ready for,” Price said.

But Todd McCauley, executive director of South Carolinians for Responsible Government, the local pro-tax-credit group running the ads and phone bank, said the campaign will continue until lawmakers vote on the issue next year.

“The only reason it’s gotten this far is because people across the state ... are basically begging to be able to send their kids to a school of their choice,” McCauley said. “It’s going to continue until we get ‘Put Parents in Charge’ passed.”

Sanford spokesman Will Folks said the governor also hasn’t given up. “The governor is going to continue to push for this bill.”

But on Wednesday, Democrats predicted the majority of taxpayers would agree with them that the tax credit would wreck the public schools.

“When citizens wake up and realize what we’re doing to the public education system in this state, it is going to be war on us as legislators,” said Rep. Ken Kennedy, D-Williamsburg. “Some heads are going to roll.”

Reach Talhelm at (803) 771-8339 or jtalhelm@thestate.com