I voted for it before I voted against it before I voted for it, maybe

“Stunning” is an overused word in the news. But in this case, I think stunning is an appropriate descriptor for what happened in the SC General Assembly today.

So I begin … In a pretty stunning reversal, the SC House voted overwhelmingly today to extend massive tax breaks to Internet retailer Amazon for a facility in Lexington County, and other rumored facilities around South Carolina at a later date. It was stunning for several reasons including, but not limited to the following:

• the House had just overwhelmingly voted against the same tax package just three weeks ago;
• the Tea Party was watching for flip-floppers closely;
• it was a business investment that benefitted the Midlands which almost never happens (the Midlands has traditionally been left out of economic development by the political power-centers of the Greenville and Charleston areas);
• the Governor trotted out a dog-and-pony show after the last House vote to say the package for Amazon was a bad idea (though she’d originally refused to take a position on the issue)

For several weeks, I was working on several items at the Statehouse and heard the Senate debate the Amazon deal. Though they had to contort themselves to make the logic work, it seemed Senators were overwhelmingly ready to approve the tax package for the Internet giant – and I predict they will, now.

There are only two dramas left to watch – wait, there is one drama and one thing that will never happen to watch now.

The first and only real drama is the bill arriving on the desk of Governor Nikki Haley. Will she or won’t she live up to her promise that she won’t take sides on the Amazon deal, and that she’ll pass whatever comes to her desk? After the House voted several weeks ago to kill the incentives, Haley was saying that was what she had wanted all along. Though she’d voted for an almost identical tax package for TV retailer QVC in 2005, she was happy that the deal hadn’t been approved for Lexington County. Now, she’s given herself some cover on both sides of the issue, but she’ll look disingenuous now no matter what her final decision is.

The second drama that will never play out is fixing the tax code so that South Carolina can be more-than-competitive for future economic development without having to strain common-sense every time jobs are dangled in front of us. South Carolina sales taxes and property taxes have become mush over the last ten years as the General Assembly keeps playing favorites and making our tax code an indefensible mess of ever-larger winners at the expense of losers (the vast majority of South Carolinians).

The drama is what Governor Haley will do - fixing our tax code is a drama that will never play out with the crew in the statehouse.