We have all heard the expression "putting lipstick on a pig.” The Captain Sam Spit litigation saga that will cost SC taxpayers $32 million is what that expression was created for.
The $32 million taxpayer-funded settlement does not include 17 years of legal fees expended by the Department of Environmental Services and the AG's office with no oversight and does not include an additional $4 million paid by taxpayers in the town of Kiawah. The Attorney General and the legislators rush to present it as "good for everyone". Presumably that includes us taxpayers. I am not sure if we would agree.
Let's start at the beginning. The Kiawah Island developers originally acquired roughly 10,000 acres in Kiawah Island in 1988 for approximately $105 million. The "spit" was a 170-acre parcel acquired as part of this overall acquisition in 1988.
A crude ratio of acreage (170 out of 10,000) would value the original purchase price of the spit at less than $2 million. Maybe the spit was a special parcel and was worth twice the average. That optimistic assumption would still put the original value of the spit at $3.5 to $4 million tops. I am trying to be nice!
If the state felt strongly about the spit needing to be "protected" land, they could have negotiated a conservation easement with the developer or even bought the land as part of an overall development plan. This would have cost the state little to nothing. The state did nothing at the time.
In 2008 when the developer applied for permits to develop the split, the permit requested a bulkhead revetment (retaining wall) as part of the permit. This started a back-and-forth series of lawsuits between the state, the far-left Coastal Conservation League and the developers. Millions of dollars of taxpayer money and effort were spent over a 17-year period (including 5 SC Supreme Court rulings) arguing about permits for revetments and the government's rights on private land. Each time the state prevailed on winning a small permit battle, they did not realize they were losing the bigger war on private property rights.
It seems the Attorney General at that time (lawyer in name only McMaster) and his successor and current AG Alan Wilson could not figure out that government cannot take over private land and mandate what goes on without buying that land. It is part of the SC and US constitutions. The AG's office or the Governor could have intervened with the useless bureaucrats at the Department of Environmental Services at any time during the 17-year litigation, ended this madness and negotiated a sensible deal. Yet, with no oversight from the AG or Governor's office, the bureaucrats at DES kept wasting our money on endless litigation. None of these legal fees have been disclosed so far.
Finally, last year someone realized that the state, in addition to legal fees could face as much as $ 200 million in damages for "taking" private land . A takings claim can trigger damages and paying the attorney's fees for the other side. They also concluded that the DES in-house taxpayer-funded lawyers could not handle the case anymore, and they would have to hire expensive outside counsel like citizens are forced to do when defending themselves against these agencies.
This is how we ended up with a $37 million settlement to the developer (at least 10 times their purchase price). Roughly $32 million comes from state taxpayers, $4m from the town of Kiawah taxpayers and $1 million from a conservancy group. All this could have been easily avoided if the state including the Governor's and AG's office had simply respected private property rights and the Constitution and not wasted our money defending the indefensible and paying the price with our money.
Instead of making up some happy ending, wouldn't it be refreshing if our government could simply say they made a mistake and they are sorry. Nope. That's where the lipstick on the pig comes into play. Read their comments in the linked article and marvel at how they manage the news-- an expensive $32 million lipstick job.
The Reddy Room (reddyroom.com) represents the opinion of Lucky Dog Publishing owner Rom Reddy, but not necessarily the opinion of the newspaper. In keeping with our philosophy of publishing all opinions, we welcome responses, which must be limited to 400 words and will be published on a space-available basis.