Editorial: SC Legislature should butt out of Lexington County’s 911 system

LET’S SEE IF WE’VE got this straight: The Lexington County Council decided that it was unfair to make taxpayers in the rest of the county keep subsidizing an inefficient 911 system in Batestburg-Leesville, Cayce and West Columbia, so it ordered those communities to use the county’s system or else start paying for their own systems.

But our legislators — you know, the people we elected to fix our schools and repair our roads and reform our ethics law and do all those other things that they haven’t managed to get done — didn’t like this idea. In fact, they thought they had a better idea about how the Lexington County Council ought to spend the taxes that the council takes the political heat for collecting.

So while they were debating how to spend the taxes that they take the political heat for collecting, House members voted to make the taxpayers in Lexington County keep subsidizing the inefficient 911 system in Batestburg-Leesville, Cayce and West Columbia — until officials in Batestburg-Leesville, Cayce and West Columbia agree to give up their subsidy, which county officials say amounts to about $200,000 per year.

Did we mention that those are local taxes, set and collected by the County Council, that pay for the 911 system? And that 115 of the 124 House members who had a chance to weigh in on this matter do not live in or even represent any part of Lexington County? Which is to say that precisely how the Lexington County Council decides to spend its tax dollars is absolutely none of their business?

We wish this were a surprising departure from the Legislature’s usual compliance with the Home Rule Act — the law that created county governments and empowered them to provide local government. It is not. Every year, the Legislature passes single-county laws, in direct violation of the state constitution; one year, Richland legislators even passed a bill that allowed people to drive golf carts on secondary highways and streets after dark, even though it was illegal in the other 45 counties. Every year, the Legislature passes laws that limit the authority of local governments, from restricting how and by how much they can raises taxes to prohibiting them from regulating billboards.

Did we mention that our legislators haven’t managed to do any of the things that we actually elect them to do?

We don’t mean to suggest that the main reason legislators don’t manage to do the jobs we elect them to do is that they’re too busy meddling in local matters that are none of their business. There are lots of other reasons as well. But this meddling plays a larger role than you might imagine in the Legislature’s frequent failures.

Beyond diverting their attention — it does take some mental energy to figure out how to write a law that would quash a decision already made by the County Council without violating the state constitutional ban on single-county laws — it also gives the legislators political cover: If they are able to make their constituents happy by doing those things that they ought not to have done, those constituents might be less upset with them for failing to do those things that they ought to have done.

Their constituents ought to be upset with them for both their sins of commission and their sins of omission.

This story was originally published April 20, 2015 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Editorial: SC Legislature should butt out of Lexington County’s 911 system."