IN 1955, THE Legislature passed a law telling a South Carolina city it couldn't put up parking meters on streets around the county courthouse and county office buildings.

The law was so poorly written (rather than naming the city, it applied to cities with 6,350-6,800 residents "according to the last official United States census") that within five years, it no longer affected the original target. Instead, each new census brought new towns under the law.

Finally, this year, a handful of legislators decided to try to undo that ridiculous meddling into local matters, by repealing the law.

Unfortunately, six weeks after its introduction, the bill hasn't even merited a subcommittee review. Even more unfortunately, the bill is the exception to the rule.

In the first year of the first term of the first governor I've known who actually talks about the need to strengthen local government, the Legislature is responding with what could almost be seen as a backlash. Before Gov. Mark Sanford can even get around to offering specific proposals to empower local governments, legislators are falling all over themselves to disempower them.

"We really have been taken aback this year," the S.C. Association of Counties' Mike Cone tells me. "We thought this was going to be a year that they would have such financial woes and problems that they would be preoccupied with the budget" instead of picking on local government. "We've had lots of sessions like that, but we didn't think that this would be one of them."

Some are just the usual anti-local government broadsides: proposals to dictate what rules cities can apply when they use city resources to provide water service to non-city residents; proposals to limit local governments' already meager taxing powers, as well as their ability to spend the money they've already collected.

But they're joined this year by creative new limits on citizens' rights to govern themselves through their local officials. The theme seems to be: Let's do away with the need for local governments. If the Legislature (influenced by high-priced lobbyists) passes weak or ineffectual laws, prohibit the cities and counties from acting to protect their citizens. If the Legislature applies a law to state government, force city and county governments to pass the same law for themselves.

The most talked-about example of this is the House's effort to prohibit counties from using zoning laws -- one of the most basic local government functions -- to limit where hog farms can locate. (An early version of the bill would have overruled the nearly universal practice of prohibiting people from raising livestock and poultry within city limits.) But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

One bill would stop local governments from approving certain water regulations that are tougher than state rules. Another would prohibit them from regulating businesses with alcohol licenses -- an attempt to override the Charleston County ordinances requiring bars to close at 2 in the morning. One would essentially require local governments to do business with predatory lenders, by prohibiting them from refusing to do business with them; that's part of the House's answer to demands that the state restrict predatory lending practices.

Some legislators, upset that the Greenville County Council won't make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a county holiday, want to force all cities and counties to pay their employees to not come to work on that day, or even on all 12 holidays the state provides its employees. A bill prompted by USC's abortive hotel-building venture prohibits public colleges from owning and operating hotels and extends that ban to local governments. Then there's the bill to prohibit state agencies from spending public money to lobby the Legislature; one version also prohibits local governments from spending their money lobbying the Legislature.

All of this is on top of the financial abuse the Legislature is piling on -- pushing more state responsibilities down to local governments, without providing any money for them to do the work, and even requiring the locals to pick up the tab for tax breaks the Legislature claims credit for. (Against that backdrop, the very bad bill to force local governments to pay owners of sex-shops and billboards if they get zoned out of existence seems almost reasonable: At least local governments would get to choose whether to spend that money.)

The problem isn't the content of the bills. I wish Greenville County would observe MLK day; I don't like taxpayer-funded lobbying. But I believe even more that it's up to each community to make those decisions.

Unfortunately, few legislators make that distinction. More typical is Sen. Robert Ford, who sponsors the bill to take away local control over bar hours while proposing to let local governments set local gambling rules. Support for Home Rule is strong when it suits legislators' cause, weak when it does not.

And the governor? The Municipal Association's Howard Duvall says he has been impressed by Gov. Sanford's words on unshackling local government. But, he says: "We would like to see if he is indeed a supporter of Home Rule. What we're waiting for is for the perfect trial case to get on Governor Sanford's desk."

It might not be a long wait.