EXCLUSIVE: Merging Columbia, Richland County getting serious consideration
Think of it as One Columbia becoming a reality, not merely a sugary slogan.
The goals of having lower utility bills, lower taxes, a more efficient government and a better business climate for the capital city area will be central to a proposal that a select group of local leaders has been discussing quietly and is to propose formally this summer.
Mayor Steve Benjamin and a handful of political and business leaders want to make a serious run at consolidating Columbia and Richland County governments into one.
“I think it’s a good idea. Let’s have the conversation,” Benjamin said last week in an exclusive interview with The State newspaper. “I hope we can put aside our preconceptions and our misconceptions.”
It’s ambitious – a tall task fraught with political, procedural and legal obstacles.
Consolidation has been talked about before, dating to at least 1972. It failed each time because of pushback from politicians and residents who cling to their turf, say many who were involved in earlier efforts.
Benjamin wants to take a measured approach that would start in September by asking Richland County Council to approve a study of the benefits and drawbacks of having a joint law enforcement agency, a single planning, development and zoning staff and other dreamed-about efficiencies.
The biggest selling point, the mayor said, would be more money in taxpayers’ pockets because they would pay once, for example, for services such as police protection and get smaller water and sewer bills, Benjamin said.
Currently, customers of Columbia’s water and sewer systems who live outside the city pay nearly twice as much as in-city residents. That would change – how would have to be decided. And, Columbia residents would no longer pay taxes both for the Richland County Sheriff’s Department and for city police.
Ultimately, voters would decide the issue in a referendum.
State law allows cities and towns as well as special purpose districts, if they choose, to be excluded from being governed by a new joint Columbia-Richland County council.
A combined governing council should mimic Columbia City Council’s combination of single-member districts and at-large representation, Benjamin said, echoing a sentiment that many minority residents share.
“Coming from where I’m from, I certainly wouldn’t vote for all at-large,” said Marvin Heller, a leader in neighborhoods that surround Five Points. “Some of us have been historically neglected. I would not set myself up for that again.”
Businesses are drawn to the prospect of lower taxes and speedier government permitting.
“We can’t continue down the current path,” said Carl Blackstone, president of the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce, who has discussed consolidation with Benjamin. “The business community can’t handle additional taxes, so we’ve got to look at other ways.”
What’s to be gained
Former Columbia councilman Kirkman Finlay III, son of the late mayor who chaired the 1972 merger commission, said consolidation holds great promise.
“You’d go from a police force of about 600 and a sheriff’s force of about 1,000 to having 1,600 officers to respond (to calls for help), and staff expertise gets better,” said Finlay, now a Republican representative in the Legislature. “You don’t have to have two rapid-response teams.
“It could be a huge savings,” he said of fewer public employees working in a joint city/county government.
“We need to ask ourselves, why is Lexington County booming and Richland County, not so much?” Finlay said. “I would argue it’s over taxes, safety, schools and the business climate.”
Finlay foresees appointed countywide commissions overseeing water and sewer services. But he said a successful consolidation cannot be motivated by efforts to remove elected officials, “or it’s dead before it starts.”
Benjamin recommends the first stage of research be done by the University of South Carolina, which could tap into its experts in public administration, business and political science. The research would include examining Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Augusta-Richmond and other communities that have consolidated, the mayor said.
“We’ve got to have the data (to say a merger would) ... put money back in taxpayers’ pockets,” Benjamin said. “If this idea has merit, then we’ll have more than enough time to discuss it” before a public vote.
USC president Harris Pastides said the university is open to offering its expertise.
Benjamin led an effort in 2013 to convert city government to one run by a strong mayor. It failed at the ballot box.
Asked if consolidation is another power play, he said he would not seek to lead a merged council.
“I am willing to make that pledge,” Benjamin said. “This has to be bigger than the mayor or any other elected official.”
A real merger, if successful, would become his legacy.
Dividing lines
Of more than a dozen political, community and business leaders The State interviewed about the prospect of consolidated government, none opposed the idea outright.
All had questions about the specifics.
“It’s one of those things: The devil is in the details,” said Patrick Hubbard, a neighborhood leader and a professor at USC’s law school and a member of the city’s zoning appeals board.
Details also worry Regina E. Williams, president of the lower-income, largely African-American Booker Washington Heights neighborhood near the new Bull Street development.
“How does an area like ours, which is crumbling, benefit?” Williams asked. “I do not want our neighborhood to be lost in the shuffle.”
As with others interviewed, Williams’ first concern was over how consolidation might help or hurt her immediate community.
Jennifer Suber, president of the mostly white, middle-income Cross Hill neighborhood in east Columbia, has similar concerns. She and her neighbors have become comfortable with getting timely action from city officials.
“I don’t know that we would get that kind of attention if we were one of many instead of one of few,” Suber said.
Self-interest overwhelmed the wider community’s concerns during previous tries at merging the two governments, participants said. One attempt happened in the early 1970s, the other during the early 1990s. Mostly, they were window dressing, some of the participants said.
Then-newly elected councilman Kirkman Finlay – Kirkman Finlay III’s father, who would later be mayor – led the effort four decades ago. That was largely because his fellow City Council members agreed to let him proceed because Finlay campaigned on the consolidation issue, recalls former mayor Patton Adams.
“But when it came down to actually voting on this, they wanted no part of merging with Richland County,” Adams said. “Everybody wanted to protect their own turf. So we decided to go in the direction of merging services.”
Even those limited efforts ran up against entrenched interests.
City council in 2010 voted down the idea of merging its police force with the sheriff’s department – and later even rejecting a joint evidence-analysis laboratory while the city’s lab was shuttered.
The city and county have, however, reached agreements to jointly run and/or finance the fire department and the 911 center. Efforts to combine planning, zoning or business license offices failed, said former county councilwoman Kit Smith and Finlay III.
“It’s consolidating (but) – you do this and I’ll do that – rather than let’s do this together,” said Smith, a Columbia resident and community activist. “It’s all about trust.”
The possible dilution of the black vote also stalled merger talks in the 90s, said Miles Hadley, then city manager.
“Even the people who wanted it badly didn’t want it badly enough to alienate that portion of the population,” Hadley said, adding that a complaint was filed with the U.S. Justice Department before a formal proposal was offered. At the time, the Justice Department reviewed all election changes under the federal voting rights act.
Smith is among those interviewed who said the toughest battlelines over another attempt at consolidation will be geographic.
“My experience was that the unincorporated areas are very resistant to the powers of the city,” she said. Even today, “I think they would see it as yielding power to the city.”
Even residents who live as close to the city as those in Olympia are suspicious of City Hall, Smith said.
However, Norman Jackson, who represents parts of Lower Richland County, said of consolidation, “If it means better services and equal representation, I have no problem with it.”
The new merger proposal comes at a time that coincides with public skepticism about government being at an all-time high and during bruising headlines.
Within the past 3 1/2 years, the county election office bungled a presidential and statewide election, made news over allegations of public corruption in its management of the penny sales tax and its recreation commission, and has seen one of its councilmen, Kelvin Washington, removed from office over a conviction for failing to pay state taxes.
Benjamin was embroiled but not charged in a federal public corruption trial in 2015. Ex-City Councilman Brian DeQuincey Newman decided not to run for re-election months before he pleaded guilty this year to tax problems.
Meanwhile, the city’s lab and police force came under fire, the lab for questions involving the handling of evidence, and the police force because of a revolving door at the chief’s office and questions about professionalism and record-keeping.
Legal hurdles
The 1992 state law that controls how government consolidation may take place needs changing if Columbia and Richland County are to merge, legal experts said.
“Unless you’re a rural county, I don’t think you can get it to work,” Tim Winslow, a staff attorney with the S.C. Association of Counties, said.
“The problem is it’s just not a workable statute,” added Bob Lyon, the association’s chief lawyer and deputy director.
The seldom-used law does not account for municipalities that cross county lines as does the city of Columbia, which annexed portions of Lexington County now in the thriving Harbison commercial district.
“Ain’t nobody brought up nothin’ about no consolidation in decades,” Winslow said jokingly. “Nobody has even considered this in years and years.”
Much of the town of Irmo is in Richland. “You would end up eliminating 70 percent of the town of Irmo,” said Lyon, unless it opts out. Pieces of Columbia stretch into Kershaw County, too.
Benjamin said he has been working with state Rep. James Smith, D-Richland, to address the state law as well as to help study the issue.
Smith said he’s planning to call for an ad hoc legislative committee that would summon experts from around the nation and analyze local data. He would introduce a bill to change the consolidation law.
“If we do this right and study it diligently,” Smith said, “it could be a real good news story coming out of the region. We need some good-news stories coming out of Richland County.”
Reach LeBlanc at (803) 771-8664.
What would residents gain, lose?
Depending on how a government consolidation plan is drawn, here are some of the factors voters would consider.
▪ Smaller, streamlined government. But efficiencies might cost some employees their jobs. Supporters say attrition would occur through retirements or workers taking other jobs – not just layoffs.
▪ Out-of-city residents would pay lower water and sewer bills. City residents would no longer pay taxes for a municipal police force as well as the county sheriff’s department, among other things.
▪ Businesses would have standardized rules and fees for permits, licenses and other costs associated with their operations. They also would have the convenience of one-stop processing of paperwork.
▪ Some elected officials would lose their positions as a consolidated governing council shrinks to a number that would be determined in a referendum. A central contention would be the role of the sheriff and the police chief and the state law on dual office holding.
▪ Neighborhoods and residents might not get as much representation as they have now, which could dilute their voting strength.
▪ Towns and special purpose districts might opt out of the vote, which would create pockets in the county that are out of a new council’s influence.
Merger attempts
The capital city and Richland County have a checkered history on consolidation. The concept of a full government merger has never gotten off the ground at least as long ago as 42 years. But some services operate jointly.
▪ A 16-member commission in 1972 studied consolidation and made recommendations. Nothing happened.
▪ Another group tackled the issue in the early 1990s. It was stymied primarily over the issue of preserving representation of African-American voters, a participant said.
▪ A joint operating and funding agreement created a municipal and countywide fire department. But Columbia pays for its 12 in-city fire stations and the county for its 20 mostly volunteer fire stations. The city and county share the cost of administration.
▪ A joint 911 center is funded largely 50-50, but the bulk of the employees are city workers.
▪ The city animal shelter accepts strays from the county and houses them under per-day fees paid by the county. The shelter’s staff are city employees.
▪ In 2010, council rejected the idea of combining the police department and the sheriff’s office.
This story was originally published July 16, 2016 at 8:37 PM with the headline "EXCLUSIVE: Merging Columbia, Richland County getting serious consideration."