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A ‘Walkable’ City
Death of CARTA, half-cent sales tax may put
city in lonely company
By Bill Davis |
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 A ‘Walkable’ City
Death of CARTA, half-cent sales
tax may put
city in lonely company
By Bill Davis
Charleston had the nation’s first professional theater, as well as
its first professional fire department. Now, thanks to last week’s
S.C. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the county’s half-cent
sales tax, Charleston may become the first major urban area in the
nation to see its public transportation system go down in flames.
The Court’s decision now threatens a host of quality of life factors
and economic/infrastructure initiatives, which the $1.3 billion tax
was supposed to have funded over the next 25 years. These include
the Charleston Area Regional Transit Authority (CARTA), money to connect
Hwy 17 S. with the new Cooper River bridge, the county’s contribution
toward the Cooper River Bridge itself, the completion of the Mark
Clark Expressway across Johns Island, greenspace preservation, and
the local economy.
Citing biased language printed on the ballot in last year’s referendum,
the Court found that the voter instructions appeared “calculated to
persuade and ultimately mislead voters” into voting for the tax.
The actual voting instructions approved by Charleston County Council
said, in part, that a “yes” vote was a vote for: “[i]mproving roads
and road safety ... repairing and maintaining highways, streets, bridges,
sidewalks, curbs, gutters, drainage systems ... the new Cooper River
bridge; reducing traffic congestion ... the Charleston Area Regional
Transportation Authority ... Protecting farms, forestland ... safeguarding
rivers, creeks, bays, drinking water ... providing new parks; and
improving air quality.”
The instructions also stated, in an obviously more succinct and equally
slanted manner, that all “qualified electors opposed to the traffic
congestion relief, safe roads, and clean water sales tax ... shall
vote ‘No.’”
The crux of the problem for CARTA, and its 5,000-7,000 daily riders
who log 4 million trips a year, is that without the half-cent sales
tax, it has no funding. Back in 1996, CARTA gambled on local sales
tax initiatives and took a one-time, $25 million payout from SCE&G,
which provides funding for public transportation for the rest of the
state.
State law allows for only three possible funding sources for CARTA:
vehicle registration fees, an infrastructure sales tax, and a locally-passed
referendum that would allow property tax revenues to be tapped.
With the defeat of the half-cent sales tax, CARTA could run out of
money as soon as this Friday as a multi-million dollar loan payment
is about to come due and it has no way to pay it.
Joe Riley, the mayor who saved summer school this year with his Summer
of Success/Support Our Schools program, has vowed to save CARTA. “We’ve
got to do it; we cannot let this happen.”
Unfortunately, those looking for Riley to produce a magic bullet might
instead be handed one to bite down on.
Riley says the first step is to petition the Court to rehear the case,
which was brought by a host of local citizens and politicians after
the sales tax passed, and convince the Court it erred.
Getting the Court to reverse its decision, he admits, echoing the
words of many other officials, is a longshot.
“We’ll have to win on the law, certainly, but surely the impact of
the court’s ruling on the community is something for the court to
consider,” says Riley. “Not that they would write a good opinion because
of that, but the urgency of the situation certainly would seem to
help our argument.”
The idea of tapping municipalities for money to keep the transit authority
rolling until another referendum could be held 14 months from now,
suffers from two substantial flaws, according to the mayor.
First, Riley says, no one has any money lying around, and second,
a Greenville legal case has established that big, upfront payments
put undue stress on the property tax system. That would cause a similar
effect to actually taking money from property tax revenues.
In short, the old government trick of stealing from Peter to pay Paul
won’t work here because Peter and Paul are too closely intertwined.
Despite facing long odds, the mayor says his staff will exhaust itself
looking for a possible solution. And if they, or anyone else, come
up with something, CARTA will be sure to listen, according to executive
director Howard Chapman.
“We are talking to anyone who will listen about our plight,” he says.
Getting a loan to cover the costs of even a pared-down version of
CARTA would require an enormous amount of cooperation, especially
since CARTA had to put up its Leeds Avenue facility as collateral
in a hard-fought battle to obtain a similar loan last year. Using
the buses themselves as collateral is an impossibility, according
to Chapman, since the federal government owns 80 percent of each one.
CARTA held an emergency meeting Friday to see what else it could do,
where selling ad space on the side of buses to raise money was discussed.
Already being considered is drastically reducing routes and times
and days of service, which raised a cry from downtown hotels and other
hospitality-based businesses that depend on cheap, bus-riding labor.
While Chapman sees the immediate negative effects of the authority’s
death, he says another, and possibly further-reaching, problem exists.
“By the year 2030 there is supposed to be an additional 300,000 living
in the Charleston area, according to what we’ve been told by a study
from the Strom Thurmond Institute of Government.
“As a result, if we don’t have an opportunity to plan ahead, which
the half-cent gave us some of that, we will be in the same situation
as Charlotte, Atlanta, and other Southeastern cities that have experienced
vital growth without a process or plan having been implemented.”
Another idea floating around is that CARTA could take over area school
districts’ bus systems. But that has some serious flaws, according
to Chapman. The biggest problem is that the Charleston County School
District has already entered into a contract with a private busing
company.
So, without that as a possible solution, many area businesses and
employees could be faced with parting company over transportation
issues. And that could cause problems that extend past the time when
a solution is finally found.
“The economic damage or direct loss of this important service, it
can’t be understated,” says City Councilman Leon Stavrinakis. “Beyond
the blow to CARTA is that we have, in recent years, come to feel a
lot of pressure on quality of life issues from the growth we’ve already
experienced, and a lot of what we are now facing is the potential
of roads and roads improvement and road safety projects not being
able to go further.”
Stavrinakis verbally shudders when he talks about not being able to
connect an eight-lane bridge to the existing four-lane Hwy. 17 in
Mt. Pleasant, for which, he says, no state dollars have been set aside.
“That’s going to be a traffic nightmare.”
Stavrinakis hopes that nightmare can be avoided but fears an increase
in county taxes to cover the loss of the half-cent tax will be unavoidable.
Something else in this ongoing fiasco that is unavoidable is the issue
of responsibility.
Stavrinakis, a local lawyer and the brother of a local restaurateur,
has been taking his share. Following the lead of Council chair Tim
Scott, Stavrinakis has been publicly falling on his sword in this,
the latest in a string of losses Council has suffered in court.
Those losses include the removal of the Ten Commandments from Council
chambers in 1999; the striking down of Council’s at-large election
system; having to issue tax refunds to 90,000 county property owners
who were overcharged in the property tax reassessment cap of 2001.
These losses are causing some to wonder if Council is capable of fixing
the mess at all.
Stavrinakis openly says he doesn’t know if an additional referendum
during next year’s general election is an option, or if it would pass.
While Stavrinakis is quick to point out that Council voted together
to approve the ballot language despite dire warnings from the election
commission, he is openly resentful about a couple of developments.
Stavrinakis complains that he is being unfairly singled out as the
lone author of the biased language on the ballot. He claims he has
proof that he didn’t work on a version of the instructions in February
of last year, and that the eventual version, which was voted in by
Council, looks nothing like the one he initially submitted.
He also claims that some of the proponents of the lawsuit are hiding
behind the authorship issue as a smokescreen to divert the public’s
attention away from the damage they are doing to the community.
Trent Kernodle, one of the lawyers who successfully represented the
half-cent’s foes, has a solution that goes beyond scraping together
enough money to keep some of the buses running.
“Don’t talk down to the electorate; don’t try bombast with all this
stuff; and don’t whisper about what’s really going on. Tell us the
facts and why, and [voters] will decide if they want it spent that
way.
“My solution is trust.”
Kernodle’s trust in politicians, shaken during his time representing
the fledgling Town of James Island, wasn’t improved by comments made
by the same foe, Joe Riley.
After James Island residents voted 3-1 to self-incorporate, “the mayor
claimed the election was legally invalid and went to the (state) Supreme
Court to get it fixed,” says Kernodle.
But once the Court struck down the half-cent, Kernodle says it’s ironic
that Riley “took to the streets saying ‘the people have spoken,’ and
said the Supreme Court was wrong.” Especially since the tax passed
by a “infinitesimally small” margin of 835 votes out of more than
80,000 cast.
“I guess it just matters whose ox is getting gored.”
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