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Mount Pleasant Town Councilman John Iacofano raised a lot of good points in a guest column last week criticizing the way Mayor Will Haynie tried to collect a new sales tax to pay for a poorly vetted project at Patriots Point. Whether Mr. Haynie was operating outside his scope of authority or with the buy-in of the council, the public clearly was left out of the loop until the tax increase was a single vote away from adoption.
Beyond being an outrageous way to conduct the public’s business, that was dumb: Any chance the mayor had to build public support for a plan that shifted the burden of the new tax onto non-residents through a corresponding property tax reduction evaporated because he never tried. Commentary: Questions linger on scuttled Patriots Point tax plan Mr. Iacofano was right too to reject the mayor's claim that this was a fee instead of a tax.
Yes, state law does refer to this particular sales tax as a “local option tourism development fee,” so that is legally its name. But writing a law that says a local government can collect a “fee” on those sales that are subject to the state sales tax doesn’t change the fact that it’s a tax. The Legislature could have named the sales tax a dog, or a duck, or a deceptive misidentification of a tax, and it still would be a tax.
However, one part of Mr. Iacofano’s criticism was entirely off-base: his claim that it would have been somehow inappropriate for the Town Council to impose the sales tax through an ordinance instead of holding a referendum. "This apparent disdain for the democratic process is disturbing under any circumstance," he wrote, when what actually would be disturbing under any circumstances is Mr.
Iacofano's populist pandering. Editorial: Mount Pleasant leaders must rethink how they can help Patriots Point His argument is so backward, so at odds with standard public policy, that we’re not even sure where to start. But we need to start, despite the mayor’s decision to abandon the proposal, because the thinking behind the criticism is every bit as seductive as it is wrong.
State law requires local governments and school districts to get voter approval to sell bonds — which are usually tied to raising some sort of tax, as was the case with Charleston County's failed I-526 sales tax referendum — because that obligates the local government to expenditures that future councils (elected by future voters) won’t have the legal option of ending. But requiring voters to make the decision about simply raising taxes is the exception, not the rule. Hicks: Is tourism sales tax fight the opening salvo in Mount Pleasant's 2025 mayor's race? Nobody expects the Congress to get voter authorization to raise Social Security taxes — or to cut some income taxes and dig the nation deeper into debt.
No one expects the Legislature to hold a referendum to decide the state’s sales tax rate, or what income should be exempt from the income tax, or how to tax the various forms of tobacco, alcohol or gas; and it doesn't. Nobody expects a local council to make voters go the polls and decide what their property tax rates will be. Requiring voters to make those decisions would be an abdication of our elected officials’ duties.
We elect municipal and county council members, school board members, state legislators and members of Congress to become experts on important matters we don't have the time to become experts on, to engage in constructive debates that suss out problems with their positions and, ideally, result in better solutions than any of them would have come up with absent that debate. It's especially important for tax matters to be decided through negotiations, where the various voters’ desires can be taken into account, along with legal and constitutional restrictions and practicalities such as creating a balanced mix of revenue streams that will provide stability through economic booms and busts. We won't argue that officials at any level of government do a great job with that these days, but that is the rule, the expectation, behind representative democracy.
Mount Pleasant mayor kills proposed tax plan, but says efforts to redevelop Patriots Point to go on Under state law, local governments do indeed have the option of holding a referendum to approve the hospitality sales tax that is officially but incorrectly called a fee. But that's an alternative — and an afterthought. The original bill, S.
483 of 2009 , didn’t include any reference to a referendum, just language authorizing councils in the largest tourism counties to impose a new sales tax of up to 1% to pay for tourism advertisement and promotion directed at non-state residents. In order to get around a potentially fatal objection by then-Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, the sponsors agreed to require a supermajority vote by the local government to raise the tax; they added the referendum as a workaround — just in case the tax was favored by a majority but not a supermajority of the council. A week after that concession, the bill was on the governor’s desk, and Mark Sanford allowed it to become law without his signature.
Editorial: Charleston County housing initiative a positive sign, but let’s see more details A referendum should never be used unless it is required by state law. To hold a referendum when it’s not necessary is an abdication of the duties council members assume when they are elected to office. Governing bodies often resort to a referendum because they're too cowardly to vote for a tax they believe is necessary, and so they instead punt the decision to voters.
Courageous elected officials — officials who are fit to hold public office — make those decisions themselves, whether in support or opposition, rather than shunting them off on voters. Click here for more opinion content from The Post and Courier..
