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Web posted Sunday, January
2, 2005
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Delegation divided on tax cap veto
BLUFFTON: Area legislators take sides on
Sanford's veto of bill changing real estate
reassessment rules.
By Frank Morris
Carolina Morning News
Beaufort and Jasper counties' state
legislators are split over whether to override
Gov. Mark Sanford's veto of a bill to set a 20
percent cap on property reassessment
increases.
Among the six legislators living
in the counties, while some left some wiggle room,
half gave support for sustaining the veto and half
favored overriding it.
The assessment cap
bill, which would impose a 20 percent cap on
increases in property values on homes and
businesses for tax purposes was passed by the
Republican-controlled Legislature shortly before
it ended its most recent session in
June.
Sanford, a Republican, vetoed the
bill Dec. 16, saying he determined enactment would
violate the state Constitution by not taxing
property based on fair market
value.
Legislators last week said deciding
whether to sustain or override Sanford's veto of
the assessments cap and numerous other bills would
top the body's action list when its new session
opens Jan. 11.
Overturning a veto requires
a two-thirds vote in the House and then a
two-thirds vote in the Senate. If the House
sustains a veto, the Senate gets no say and the
governor wins.
Lining up for an override
vote on grounds something needs to be done to stop
massive tax increases were Sen. Scott Richardson,
R-Hilton Head Island, Rep. Bill Herbkersman,
R-Bluffton; and Rep. Catherine Ceips,
R-Beaufort.
On the other side, Sen.
Clementa Pinckney and Rep. Thayer Rivers Jr., both
Ridgeland Democrats whose districts cross into
Beaufort County, said they definitely want the
veto upheld. Rep. Richard Chalk, R-Hilton Head,
said he probably would vote to sustain
it.
Rep. Walter P. Lloyd, D-Walterboro,
whose District 121 includes northernmost Beaufort
County, was unavailable for
comment.
Richardson, who co-sponsored the
cap bill while Beaufort County prepared 2004
reassessment notices, said the Legislature should
look at overhauling the tax system.
"I
would like to see us deal with the whole tax issue
collectively, instead of dealing on the edges," he
said. "If you want to deal with it right, that's
what we need to do, is look at all of those things
at one time and tweak them, and some will go up
and some will go down. I would like to see sales
taxes go up a little bit and property and income
taxes go down."
Pinckney said Sanford was
right to veto a cap that's "very unfair.
"I
think a 20 percent tax cut will have a negative
impact on working-class people," Pinckney said.
"The most people who would benefit are those who
have homes on the beach and homes in expensive
subdivisions. Pay your fair share, that's how I
look at it."
He said the cap would shift
the tax burden, making taxes of people in mobile
homes, for instance, increase.
Chalk, who
became the local legislative delegation's only new
member when he filled former Republican Rep.
JoAnne Gilham's seat, said he was leaning toward
sustaining the veto.
"I probably would vote
to uphold the governor's veto. Because of the
constitutional questions and all, I don't think
(the reassessment cap bill is) the best way to
solve the problem," Chalk said.
"I'm still
thinking about it. What I'm thinking about more is
if you uphold the governor's veto, how do you
solve the problem?" he said. "I'll probably vote
to uphold the veto. I may be in the minority. It
may pass and let the courts decide it.
"I'd
like to see a limit on how much the actually tax
would increase after a reassessment," Chalk
said.
Herbkersman and Ceips both said the
reassessment cap is needed to keep property owners
in their districts from being taxed off their
land.
"We've got to have a fair system,"
Herbkersman said. "We've got to override the veto
or negotiate something ahead of time."
He
said more than 100 people, many of them retirees
or owners of heirs' property, have called him
saying they would sell their property if the veto
is sustained. He also said he agreed with
Richardson that the tax system needs to be
overhauled.
Herbkersman said that a vote
last week probably would have brought the
two-thirds majority needed for an override, but a
lot could change before the actual vote occurs. He
said the cap bill passed the House with 104 votes
from its 124 members, and some did not
vote.
He also said he agreed with
Richardson that the tax system needs to be
overhauled.
Ceips, asked if she would vote
to override, said: "I probably will as it stands
now," and "that might just be the starting of
where we go with that issue.
"I've gotten
overwhelming calls (from constituents) that they
want some type of property tax relief. I'm going
to listen to the constituents," she
said.
"I know of people who've said they
are going to have real trouble paying their
property taxes this year," Ceips said.
Her
constituents include people who "lived on their
land forever and now, through no fault of their
own, land values have gone up and their taxes and
they can no longer stay there. That strikes
straight to my heart that you would throw people
out of their home because they couldn't pay their
taxes," she said. "I've had some phone calls ...
that would break your heart."
Rivers said
his first goal for the Legislative session is to
uphold the assessment cap veto.
"I have
been opposed to (the cap bill) from the start,"
Rivers said, "and I'm building a million-dollar
house in Beaufort County on the Whale Branch River
and it would help me a lot financially. It's
wrong."
He said the bill was "a rush to
judgment . . . introduced in the last days of the
session in an election year."
"This is a
shift in the property tax from properties that are
escalating in value to those that don't increase
very much . . . or do not go up in value at all,"
he said. "The little people are going to be
subsidizing the rich people."
But Rivers,
too, said the property tax system is a problem,
"especially for people on Daufuskie Island that
have waterfront property that has been in the
family for years.
"The system needs to be
looked at, but this is a simple answer to a
complex question," he said. The fairness issue
includes agricultural use exemptions that give
enormous tax breaks on 88 percent of the land in
Jasper County, "including miles of waterfront
property," he added.
"I'd like to examine
the whole tax structure," Rivers said, reaching
the same conclusion as Republicans behind the
assessment cap.
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