Monday, June 18, 2007

Special Purpose Districts and Schools – Question 4

Question for Sarah L and DeQuawn S. How did home rule and court rulings affect special purpose districts? Note in your answer how the existence of spd’s affected the incorporation of Hilton Head as a municipality.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Before 1973 the state frequently passes special acts for specific local governments. After the Home Rule Act this was prohibited. During another Supreme Court case in 1975, the ruling allowed some legislative involvement in specific types of special districts. Because of this, South Carolina’s legislation has continued to create special districts. Hilton Head Island had six special districts when it became a city in 1983. The new city had to coordinate services with the six governments in its jurisdiction.

-Sarah Luckey

Anonymous said...

The Home Rule Act as Sarah mentioned prohibited the state from passing special acts for specific forms of government. The Act provided the special districts with some power and purpose. The incorporation of Hilton Head was affected by the many different districts providing services to what was soon to be a city. The newly formed government could not afford to have its own services. Thus it had to coordinate with the special services districts which have little legislative oversight.
DeQuawn Smith

Robert Botsch, USCA Political Science said...

This was a very complex section and one can easily get lost in a maze of rulings and cases. But both of you got the essential answer -- that even though districts could no longer be created by special local legislation, the legislature allowed the formation of districts by providing a general method that citizens could create new districts. And in addition, districts that crossed over county lines were not seen as "local legislation," so the legislature could continue to create these kinds of districts.

Districts have been very successful in fighting efforts to reduce their size or to abolish them, sometimes using federal laws and sometimes in court cases and in laws that protect their assets.

In a nutshell, spd's have political clout in the legislature and they have successfully used it to protect themselves. So when Hilton Head incorporated, they were, as both of you said, forced to try to coordinate the services provided by existing spd's rather than take over these services that are typically provided by municipal governments.