Richland County votes to kill Columbia's bus system

[nxylas]

(x-posted to South Carolina forum)

Richland County last night voted 6-4 against putting a 1% sales tax on the ballot in November that would have paid for tremendous improvements to the county's roads, greenways, bike paths and bus system. The latter in particular is unlikely to survive beyond next June, since funding for the system runs out in October. Columbia will become the only state capital in America with no public transportation, and South Carolina's quest to be top of the league in everything bad and bottom of the league in everything good will get a tremendous boost. Idiots.

[marmar]

1. How pitiful.....SC seems to have particularly repugnant politics.....

Idiots indeed.

[nxylas]

2. A lot of it is due to out-of-state influence

One of Columbia's local alternative newsweeklies, the Free Times, has done a lot of investigative work on what it calls the South Carolina Project, a plot by a cartel of wealthy libertarian wackjobs to effectively buy our state's government by funding candidates sympathetic to their goals and turn it into a lab experiment for their ideas of how a state should be governed (ie. as little as possible). They scored their first major success in getting Mark Sanford elected governor, but Sanford has made such a pig's ear of everything he's touched that even South Carolinians are reluctant to vote for more of the same.

[marmar]

3. I guess that's the one upside of an elected Repug official....

Eventually they'll screw things up so badly that they'll taint the brand.

[KamaAina]

4. Is there any way the city of Columbia, as opposed to the county, could step in?

I can imagine how that 6-4 vote went: commissioners from in and around Columbia proper Yes, those farther out (where there's little or no service to begin with) No. I can imagine it wouldn't be much, but it'd be better than having not only the state capital, but its largest city without transit!

Also, some college towns either partner with their local universities (Chapel Hill) or just have the universities operate the bulk of transit (Fayetteville, Ark.)

By the way, are any of these six :dunce: commissioners up for re-election in the fall? The ads just write themselves: "While gas prices soared above $4 a gallon, Commissioner Bilbo said No to transit. Now it's time to say No to Bilbo. Paid for by Friends of Nxylas for Council."

[nxylas]

5. My councilman was one of those who voted no

Unfortunately, I can't run against him, because I'm not a US citizen. I think the noes were actually those who had pet projects of their own that they wanted funding.