The Richland County Recreation Commission is using fees generated by its programs to pay for a lawsuit against the governor and the county legislative delegation.

After months of denying that tax dollars were being used for the lawsuit, commission chairman Jim Davis acknowledged at a raucous meeting Wednesday that $38,301.43 to pay for the lawsuit had come from agency funds.

“We were not deceptive,” Davis said of his repeated denials that tax dollars were used in the lawsuit.

Five of the seven commissioners, originally acting as individuals, last summer challenged the constitutionality of a law passed last year turning over the right to appoint commissioners from the county legislative delegation to County Council. At that time, Davis said no public funds were being used for the lawsuit.

When a circuit judge ruled the commissioners had no standing in the lawsuit as individuals, they voted as a commission to file the lawsuit. Davis at that time denied any tax dollars were being spent on the suit.

The memo calling for the payment said the funds would come “from the self-sustaining income account of the commission instead of the tax allocation income account so that no tax dollars would be used.”

The self-sustaining income account is made up of mostly fees paid by users of the agency facilities, which were built with tax dollars. For instance, during Wednesday’s meeting, the commission boosted the fees for using Hopkins and Trenholm pools by 50 cents for adults and 75 cents for children to offset a projected $30,000 operational deficit at those pools.

Also during the meeting, commissioner Stephen King asked for commissioners Domino Boulware and J. Marie Green to resign because they had missed nearly nine months of meetings. The application commissioners sign when appointed call for them to resign if they miss three consecutive meetings without permission from the chairman.

Boulware and Green said they skipped the meetings because they weren’t part of the lawsuit, and the law being challenged called for a new commission to be appointed.

“We were to resign our position,” Green said. “I’m a law-abiding person. What am I supposed to do?”

Both said they were asked by members of the legislative delegation to return to the meetings. Neither Green nor Boulware resigned Wednesday. Both of them and King pledged to take legal action over King’s request.