The Opinion Blog

City Tries for Early Rollback

Friday's editorial encourages the Myrtle Beach council to press for an earlier property-tax rollback for city homeowners, while expressing our continued distaste for the new sales tax itself.

Home rule goes only as far as the S.C. General Assembly desires. Members of the Myrtle Beach City Council are up against that often unpleasant fact of municipal governance in wanting to give homeowners an early rollback on property taxes.

More Rally Restrictions? Think Twice

Sunday's editorial considers the possibility that Myrtle Beach's efforts to control the motorcycle rallies last year might have gone too far.

Amid the radically altered landscape of this year's Harley-Davidson spring rally, the center of the party undeniably shifted down south to Murrells Inlet.

During the May rallies, the good folks at Suck Bang Blow and the Beaver Bar said their business was about as strong as any year during the second rally weekend, though business in the week leading up to it was painfully slow. With the dual challenges of a recession and a total crackdown by Myrtle Beach, that was probably about as good as they could hope for.

Even that attendance level, however, seems to have been too much for some Georgetown County residents. This month, the Georgetown County Council is considering reducing the number of vendor permits it issues to one per business, in hopes of lessening some congestion.

Our advice, after a year's worth of reflection on the sweeping changes enacted by Myrtle Beach, is to proceed with caution. Our area as a whole has undertaken a massive overhaul of its approach to visitors on motorcycles, the ramifications of which have yet to be fully realized.

Local councils are elected to decide tough issues

Today's editorial explains why Surfside Beach Town Council was right Tuesday to update the town's public-smoking ban itself rather than turn the issue over to voters:

Until the bitter end Tuesday, when the Surfside Beach Town Council formally updated its public smoking ban, detractors exhorted the council to let the voters decide the issue. The implication there: If the town's electors were empowered to decide whether it's OK for smokers to pollute public indoor and outdoor spaces with secondhand smoke, the voters would say yes.

Video poker could come back to life

Today's editorial focuses on the high-level attention attracted by a Newberry County proposal to bring back video poker:

With the help of the S.C. Supreme Court, the General Assembly in 1999 drove a stake through the heart of video poker, which subsequently became illegal in mid-2000. But as evidenced by an advisory ballot proposal in Newberry County, video poker didn't stay dead.

More S.C. cities should enact smoking bans

Ripped from the wires ... Warren Bolton explains why more S.C. cities should be using their new authority to enact public smoking bans:

By Warren Bolton

SMOKING BANS save lives. A recent government study affirming that fact shouldn't shock anyone.

Instead, it should prompt more cities and counties in South Carolina to act. It's hard to understand why even more local governments haven't jumped at the opportunity to protect the health and lives of workers and patrons since the S.C. Supreme Court gave them the green light.

AB leaders beg high court for a defibrillator

Today's editorial asks why Atlantic Beach leadership can't fix town government without help from the S.C. Supreme Court (or, now, from Gov. Sanford):

The powers that be in Atlantic Beach want the S.C. Supreme Court to decide - quickly - whether a local circuit judge erred in ordering a new town mayoral election. The irony here is rich: The town's putative leaders insist that town government is alive but beg the high court for a defibrillator.

The justices are in recess until September. But because legal action has kept the mayor's seat on Town Council vacant all year, the remaining four council members are in "charge." They're divided right down the middle on virtually every issue that must be resolved before the town can return to functionality. So Interim Town Manager Charles Williams this week exhorted residents and property owners to beg the high court to come out of recess and decide the mayoral question soon.

Full-time MB mayor -- at full-time salary?

Today's editorials says Myrtle Beach City Council should make the mayoralty a full-time job only if it spells out the position's job duties in detail:

The notion that the mayor of Myrtle Beach should work full time and receive a full-time salary will strike some city residents as extravagant. Under the city's council-manager form of government, after all, the mayor is just another City Council member, with one vote out of seven -- the critical difference being that he controls the gavel and runs council meetings.

Because hired professionals who report to City Manager Tom Leath actually run city government, the mayor's function is largely ceremonial. If the current mayor, John Rhodes, is working full time, some will say, that's his choice. That choice, as some see it, does not justify raising his salary beyond its part-time level of $20,000 plus a $665 per month car allowance.