Concerned community leaders are suing Charleston County to demand a just-approved 2024 sales tax referendum ballot meet transparency requirements under state law.
Last week, Charleston County Council voted 6-2 to ask voters in November to extend a half-penny sales tax to fund $5.4 billion in road projects, including extension of Interstate 526 across Johns Island.
James Island artist Mary Edna Fraser, Glenda Miller of Johns Island and the Coastal Conservation League (CCL) are plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), W. Andrew Gosder Jr. and W. Jefferson Leith Jr. It seeks a declaration from a state court identifying the ways in which the ordinance and referendum language violate S.C. law.
“We’re talking about 5.4 billion taxpayer dollars over 25 years. The referendum must be clear,” Chris DeScherer, director of SELC’s South Carolina Office, said in a press release. “Keeping our government accountable to the law is especially important after the county’s lack of transparency and failure to complete projects from the last tax referendum.”
The complaint argues the ordinance and referendum language fail to disclose the estimated costs of each project, severely impacting voters’ ability to make an informed vote. In addition, as currently written, the sales tax question denies voters the choice to support funding for Greenbelt and mass transit without also voting to fund the controversial Mark Clark Extension. If approved, the sales tax would primarily be used for the $2.3 billion interstate extension, which includes more than $600 million in borrowing costs.
This is exactly what concerned many opponents of the ordinance, including some council members.
“My fear is that we will jeopardize ongoing projects from the [2016] sales tax,” council member Larry Kobrovsky said in a June report. “By lumping it all, we’re holding hostage all these other projects to 526.
“When people vote on this, they think the projects will be built,” he said. “This is just a fantasy. … There’s no guarantee we will have the money to finish these projects. How can we in good faith put out something that we don’t have the money for? To me, that wouldn’t be ethical or fair.”
Adding to the controversy, the new tax would pay for millions of dollars of work that was supposed to be covered by a 2016 referendum. About 5% of the new tax’s revenue — or $282,223,000 — would go toward “carryover projects” from the 2016 sales tax, and funding also would include borrowing of more than $600 million to pay interest costs on a $1.8 billion loan to pay its share of the Mark Clark extension project.
“Charleston County voters deserve to make informed choices when they head to the polls. They should not be forced into an all-or-nothing decision,” said CCL Executive Director Faith Rivers James in a statement.. “Voters deserve the right to vote for preferred needed improvements — like Greenbelt and CARTA funds — without being forced to support the destructive and unnecessary Mark Clark extension as the priority project.”
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