Small towns still cringe under prospect of proposed recertification bill

A Senate subcommittee drafted amendments to a proposed bill that would have required a town with a population that dips below 300 to get recertified to keep its charter.

The original bill sponsored by Sen. Greg Hembree, R-Horry and Dillon, upset small towns like Pawleys Island, whose leaders cringed at the paperwork and costly manpower it would have required.

But Hembree says the amendments eased the amount of paperwork a town would have to produce and only requires records a municipality should already have on hand.

The amended bill has not made it to the Senate floor for a vote, but Hembree says senators plan to discuss it again on Monday.

The amended bill lowers the population threshold of towns that would need to apply for recertification from 300 to 150.

Towns with populations under 150 would need to submit an application to the Secretary of State no later than 90 days after an official United States Census release. The application would need to include certain documentation to prove a town is providing an appropriate level of municipal services to warrant a continuation of its incorporation.

The document requirements in the original bill called for towns to submit its latest Census data; documentation concerning the town’s requirement to provide law enforcement; a complete list of municipal services provided by the town and documentation related to the delivery of those services; and the results of independent annual audits dating back 10 years.

The amended bill still requires Census data and documentation of services the town provides. But the new bill is only making a small town prove it fulfilled its requirement to provide law enforcement for the past three years. It also narrows down the window of audit results from 10 years to three years, offering towns the option to file annual financial reports in lieu of independent audits.

Hembree said on Monday the intention of the bill is to help struggling towns, not destroy them, but small towns have still felt targeted by the proposed legislation.

“I haven’t changed my opinion,” said Mayor William Otis of Pawleys Island, after hearing the proposed amendments Thursday. On Monday, he said his town was “totally against it. ... We have informed our senator that it’ll have a negative impact on the town of Pawleys Island.”

“It’s like you’re guilty until you prove you’re innocent,” he said of the bill.

Pawleys Island had 103 residents in the 2010 Census, which didn’t take into account the town’s population of part-year or temporary residents.

A barrier island just short of 4 miles long and nearly one-house wide, Pawleys Island was settled in the early 1700s by nearby rice planters. It was incorporated as a town in 1985.

The amended bill requires small towns to prove to the Joint Legislative Committee on Municipal Incorporation that it is providing adequate services to its citizens, such as law enforcement, fire protection and planning and zoning.

Otis said they provide all of the services required either through contracts with a neighboring municipality or through its own staff.

But even with the amendments that eased off on certain record requirements, Otis says the bill would still “require a substantial amount of record keeping and reporting which we currently don’t have to do.”

“For us to go through a lot of unnecessary work to justify our existence every year is, to me, an imposition beyond anything that logical people would think would make sense,” the mayor said.

South Carolina had 23 towns, including Pawleys Island, with populations under 150 in the 2010 Census.

Hembree’s bill was inspired by his work as the former 15th circuit solicitor through which he said he grappled with issues surrounding struggling towns like Atlantic Beach and Andrews. Under the amended bill, the Joint Legislative Committee on Municipal Incorporation would review a town’s application and related evidence to make recommendations to the Secretary of State regarding the town’s incorporation.

The committee could recommend the town continue to operate under its charter. It could also encourage or mandate the town make changes in its operations or advise the Secretary of State to cancel the charter.

Atlantic Beach, with a population of 334 in the 2010 Census, has struggled with a wave of administration changes, unpaid bills that threatened financial ruin, maintaining its police services and court battles over the past two decades.

The bill is “certainly not aimed at Atlantic Beach,” Hembree said, “but there were times in history that this would have been a statute that would have helped push things in the right direction.”

Hembree asked the State Law Enforcement Division in the early 2000s to look into the town of Andrew’s departments amid allegations of a criminal nature. Hembree told The Sun News in 2014 that the probe helped the town turn its finances around and get back on track.

“We’ve got home rule in South Carolina but we don’t have any statutory remedy when home rule fails,” Hembree said. “This provides a way to help a town get turned around on the right path.”

The senator said the bill wasn’t meant to target any particular town. But targeted or not, small towns are feeling the heat.

“There may be one or two municipalities in the state that history has showed have had difficulty in running their towns appropriately, but why should all other very small towns, who are capable of doing that, be penalized?” Otis asked. “Our fervent hope is that logic will prevail.”

Hembree said he could understand the concerns, but the intent of the bill is not “big Godzilla is going to come over and crush these little towns.”

“If they’re in that category, they’re probably thinking ‘you’re trying to take over our town’ and that’s not it at all,” Hembree said.

Any municipality could come up for review under the proposed legislation.

The bill includes a provision that a county in which a municipality is located can initiate a review of the town’s certificate of incorporation, regardless of the town’s population.

The secretary would still have the final say on a town’s incorporation, according to Senate Bill 163.

This story was originally published March 1, 2016 at 8:05 PM with the headline "Small towns still cringe under prospect of proposed recertification bill."