05 22 25 SC growing pains!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Jonathan and Kelly Show. Jonathan Rush the
yser two hundred and fifteen, the nayser two hundred fourteen,
with one answering present, Kelly Nash. The bill is passed
the Jonathan and Kelly Show. Woc who was the one
avoted president. I haven't seen that.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I think he's from Maryland.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
I think so Lawler was finally in because he got
the salt ceiling where he wanted it, and.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Just so people understand, if you're a Republican in a
blue state, you need that salt increase. And so there
had never been a cap and then it came went
from no cap to ten grand in twenty seventeen. So
they're pushing to get it back. They understand they're not
going to get a no cap, but I think they

(00:51):
got it up to twenty thousand for individuals, forty thousand
for married couple.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Here you go. Yeah, Lawler, I'm fearful he's going to
try to be the next Nancy Mays. That argument he
was making the other day we talked about yesterday. I
think with Martha McCollum's just idiotic. He's gonna protect you
from the largest tax increase in American history by making
sure that his constituents don't have to pay any more

(01:15):
money in the Salt agreement. But what if it fails, sir,
and you're gonna make them pay the largest Yes, you're
a yes vote. Just shut up, you're a yes vote.
Thanks for thanks for grand standing.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Well, I mean he's look, he's doing the best he can.
And as a Republican, I want him to win reelection.
I don't want him to lose to some nut job.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Well that's true. Okay, grand stand away, sir. Good for you.
We'll play some tat dance music for you next time.
All right. So now, obviously that goes over to the Senate,
where they're going to have to go to the conference,
and then we're gonna the MSNBC proponents are already saying
it's gonna be shredded. So it's going to be in
a no go anyway once it comes back from the Senate.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, yeah, the Senate told you themselves. F the Republicans.
I don't know. I don't know why John Thun can't
get a better grasp on these guys, but they're not
they're not behaving accordingly. And Trump says on truth Social
about an hour ago, do it or else. So I
don't know what the or else is. But when Donald
Trump gives you a red line, unlike Barack Obama, I

(02:17):
tend to believe it'll be very bad for you. I
also know that there's nothing. The things that the Senate
Republicans are talking about are like what we just talked about,
the whole salt thing. They want it back to ten
grand Why why does.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
It make such a different disgotiation once? So?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
I mean, why are you trying to be ballbusters on
this stuff? This is now that's grandstanding.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
You just want to prove that you're the most deliberated body.
Is that what it is? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Well, Trump says that we're going to have this thing
signed by the fourth there, so we'll see if we
do so.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
And big big salute to Mike Johnson again pulling the
magical rabbit out of the big, big beautiful bill hat.
He was able to tap dance his way through it.
Good for you?

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Is that like the new Maga hat, the big beautiful
bill hat.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
I would have one of those friends. Man? How about that?
How about that Oval office yesterday? I'm telling you, I
do not want to go in the Oval office and
sit down in the hot seat. The one to is
right is the hot seat. That's where Zelenski felt it.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
You know, I felt like almost like we're like, so
that guy had to know that. Trump felt that way
right before he goes in. He's he he himself has
been on social media talking about there is no genocide
against whites in our country. He said that, so he
knows that there's an image in the world that there

(03:44):
is a genocide against white farmers in South Africa. And
so yet when they were showing him the video and
he's acting like he's shocked, I felt like it was
like when you show the videos of Joe Biden's cognitive
decline in twenty twenty one, people are like, I've never
seen these before.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
That's a great correlation. It was good. It could quite
pull it off, Like you all right, so we got
we had all that coming down yesterday. Now obviously there'll
be more fireworks and not to say we should. What
was that, I don't know. I just had a pain
go through my right leg.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
I don't know, you are right, Oh my gosh. By
the way, I just looked it up. It was the
House Freedom Caucus chair Andy Harris from Maryland who voted present.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Oh, gotcha.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
And there was another guy who was in the House
Caucus or Freedom Caucus, who voted. He was the last vote,
and he said that, look, I don't love it, but
I certainly wasn't going to be the guy to tank it,
and so if I voted against it, it was even
if he voted present, it was probably dead. So he
voted for it.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Now, as CNN or MSWC come up with a way
to blame the the shooting last night in DC on Magus.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
I'm sure sure they're strong. I don't even know that
they're addressing it right. Have they even run a story
on it?

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Uh? Their big story today is the NBA playoffs.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah, I saw, Oh what's her face? The girl from Minnesota?
What's her name? You know that what I'm talking about.
There's one of the squadstor no, no, the current house
member to leap, to leave, No, Rashda Rashida to leaves
from Michigan. The girl who's even more the one who

(05:29):
married her brother.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, Omar, Yeah, Omar.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
And Omar seemed annoyed to even be asked the question
this morning, do you have any comments? Do you want
to send any thoughts in prayers, do you want to
do anything? She just kept walking and she was like,
I'm not commenting on that, and I'm moving on with
my day, So go after yourselves. Basically, yeah, I mean,
this is a horrific thing that happened, the two, the

(05:56):
two who died. I mean, you couldn't have picked a
people who had so much to live for.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Absolutely, it's a tragedy.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, but not getting much sympathy, and again on the streets,
even if you were to just accept the when they
say baseless claims, like when Donald Trump has baseless claims
on this white genocide happening in South Africa, Well he's
basing it on the fact that there's over a thousand
of them been killed in the last year, so that

(06:23):
I don't know that it's baseless. Seems like there's a
lot going on there, and they're singing songs in stadiums
about kill the white farmers and all that. So I
don't think it's completely baseless. But if you were to
take their claims of genocide happening in Palestine, which again
by sheer numbers, is not true, I don't know that
most people know this. In the year two thousand there

(06:47):
was two point I think three million Palestinians. Twenty five
years later were at five point six million. They've doubled
the population in twenty five years. While the nation, or
while the rest of the world has a declining birth rate,
they've doubled theirs. A it's the opposite of a genocide,
it's a population explosion. But even if it was the case,

(07:08):
those two had nothing to do with it. These you're
killing your targeting for death or even targeting for disruption.
Like what's her name, Gal Gadot. They shut down her
movie in London. She cannot make the movie anymore because
the protesters are so loud. They're going to have to

(07:28):
move the shooting to someplace else where they can't where
the protesters can't be because they've got like one hundred
idiots out there with blowhorns and all these other things.
So she doesn't have anything to do with this. She
was in the military fifteen years ago. You are targeting
people who have nothing to do with what your complaint is.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Well, they are starting to cover it. Got some kind
of press conference going on, so we'll be learning more
about that. We'll be find out how it's magas fault
now a couple of things going on in the state
of South Carolina about it today in Arrast thought Charleston
County is going to consider development impact phees have been
reading about this. Lexington, I think has table one started
back in January. Some of the fastest growing counties have

(08:11):
decided that this is a good way to get ahead
of what would be expensive for the county. I want
to buy into this, but I can't. Charleston County is
not considering out of the development fees for developers to
help them offset the cost of increased services. Certainly, everybody
understands you're going to going to build a new neighborhood.
You're going to have not only the streets and the

(08:32):
curves and degrading for the roads, You're also going to
have then the impact for the water system, all the
utility is going to be built in for this neighborhood.
Got it. And there's a lot of upfront expense, got it.
And we've even talked about how counties say we don't
have enough money. We got to expand more for our
growth that we project while you are taking in new

(08:52):
taxpayers every day, so it will offset itself. But there
is an upfront cost with a lot of these things.
So we're going to go ahead. I'm going to go
and give them the benefit of the doubt, and the
argument is well stated, and they certainly have every reason
to they're on the council. They can do whatever the
hell they want to do as long as the constituency
continues to put them back in. But they're going to

(09:13):
be adding in now these these development fees, not just
for subdivisions, but also for hotels and other opportunities.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Yeah, if you want to build in these counties, you're
going to have to pay the impact fee upfront. And
so I like it to be honest with you, because
it's passed on to the people who are going to
be moving here. Right if you're buying a house, like so,
if you're buying a house down in Mount Pleasant, understand

(09:43):
that you're paying an extra six five hundred and nine
dollars for that house because that's going to be the
impact fee. If you are buying a house in like
another area of the state. I'm trying to figure out
when a Monk's Corner they got one for four thousand
and eight hundred and five dollars per house. So the

(10:03):
counties or the municipalities. They set this impact fee based
on how much more growth do we want. Like in Lexington,
you've got a whole group of citizens who don't want
anybody coming, Like we're tapped out, don't. We don't even
care if you widen the roads anymore. We just don't
want more people in Lexington County, or specifically Lexington. If

(10:28):
you're in Monk's Corner, I guess you're like.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
No, no, we'd like some.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
We'd like not a lot, but we'd like some. So
we're going to make it more expensive to live in
Monk's Corner than it currently is. But we're not going
to put that burden on the current residents, the people
who have already made the choice to live here and
make Monk's Corner a great place to live. You don't
get an extra fee added on. It's only the people
who want to move in. They pay it upfront, and
that way we have money if we need to widen roads,

(10:53):
add traffic lights, build a new school, all that crap
is already factored in. If the enough people move in,
I think this is a great way to go, and
I know Richland County is looking at it. Here where
we live, I would prefer that, then, well what you
see happening right now, I mean they're max millaging at

(11:14):
just about every school district in the Midlands. And when
they max millaged, that means that your taxes are going up.
That's not something that you get a vote on or
whatever the county council will. But county council very rarely
says no to a tax increase, the one that they
don't even have to say, we did it, Oh, that
was the school district they needed it.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Oh yeah, they get somebody to point the finger at
on that one. It's just that invariably are county councils.
Maybe it's because I'm living the scorned area of Richland County,
so I'm used to county council just throwing money out
the window and invariably not spending it on what they
said they're going to spend it on, just like any
other body of government. It seems like, well, here's the

(11:53):
situation going on in Charleston County right now. Voters overwhelmingly
rejected the county sales tax referendum last year. Now officials
are considering putting their dollars towards figuring out exactly what
went wrong.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
How can we market better?

Speaker 1 (12:10):
County Council's Finance Committee will vote on the twenty second
that's today, on hiring a firm to evaluate the transportation
sales tax program. Why the twenty twenty four referendum failed.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
They're learning from Richland County. You was that twenty twelve
that we sent.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Money, well spent. We're going to take the money that
you refuse to spend and we're going to spend some
more money to figure out how we can best help
you understand that we're going to spend your money whether
you vote against or did it well, I mean.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
It was twenty twenty or twenty twelve, I think, or
maybe it was twenty fourteen that we had the tax
increase in Richland County. And what was that lady's name
who ran the election, because that's right, yeah, Lillian McBride,
that's right. So not only did they spend like a
million dollars on TV direct radio ads, you know, pumping

(13:03):
up the benefit of the go ahead and give yourself
that penny tax.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
You're gonna love it, love it.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
But just as a little extra added insurance, we're gonna
have somebody who can run the election who does not
reportable to anybody. You can't fire her, and she already
knows the marching orders. And so they shut down, or
they didn't shut down. They did they understaffed and under
machined the areas in the Republican leaning areas of this

(13:30):
of the county.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
By the way, that's not an accusation, but it'd be
true because the emails exist. But they wanted to know
why we weren't moving the voting machines out of the
warehouse just for the voting day. Yeah, we didn't have
the trucks available for that.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
And I think they there was an area near you
where it was like the district the two different of things.
They voted like in the same building, but like the
right side was used for District nineteen and the other
but like the one that's like leans left. They had
like seven machines and the one that leaned right had won,
and so the line to get into that one. We're

(14:03):
in the same building, but these people have to wait
an hour and a half, two hours, four hours to vote,
and these people are voting in ten minutes. Why can't
we just take a couple of those machines and move
them over and even it out. Oh no, it'd be
a violation of some sort of law here.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yeah, but that's what they're in the law strictly around
here in Richly County. Those what Charleston needs to do.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Man, if you want to get that penny tax, you
not only do you spend the millions on the ads,
but then you get yourself on Lillian McBride.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
That's exactly what they need. If approved, the county staff
will enter into negotiation with whichever firm the council chooses,
at whatever cost. Councilwoman Jenny cost A Honeycot, who represents
was a proponent of the sales tax, initially proposed enlisting
the assistance of a firm in January, she tells the

(14:52):
Posting Courier. Then she hopes to have a third party
of value weate what went wrong and will turn the
public perception and so voters are more inclined to vote yes. Well,
here's the deal. It's not a very tough thing to understand.
It's a penny tax. Are you willing to pay an
extra penny per dollar on every item that you buy

(15:16):
in this county so that we can do these things now?
The Mark Clark Expressway, the extension that's dead, right. How
many times do they have to do the voters have
to say we don't want it now?

Speaker 2 (15:30):
I think that's I thought I saw a headline like
a week ago that said they're not going to bring
that back.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yes, it's now dead now? Is that what the difference is?
Now that you've decided to kill that project, will they
vote for it now?

Speaker 2 (15:48):
And I lived in Charleston in two thousand and three
and they were pushing that very hard in two thousand
and three, and thought that they had already gotten it passed.
So I mean, that's a twenty five year issue that
they finally are going to let it go.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
So oh, this is an interesting paragraph lack of trust.
But County Council for Honeycutt having a third party involved
in consulting in strategic communications for the next referendum is supported,
just because just having County Council the county staff do
outreach didn't work last time. But you think these people
have to have a sit down to understand what the

(16:25):
issue is here. It's a penny tax. We're not trying
to pass the big beautiful bill here. There's not thirty
seven thousand things stuffed inside this legislation. It's a penny tax.
We want to know what the list is of items.
Let's go back to the Richland County. We gave you
a list of items of things we're gonna do. Kelly
Nash has been watching this play out for how long now?

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Well, in two thousand and five is when I bought
my house, originally in Lake Carolina, and I was told
by the realtor at that time that within the next
year we're going to have hard Scrabble Road will be
widened to a four lane road. So don't expect any
more te It'll be traffic problems when you first move in,
but by two thousand and six, hard Scrabble Road it'll
be four lanes all the way down, nothing but clear sailing,

(17:07):
smooth sailing out of here. And I think it finally
got to its fourth lane this year. So that was
a twenty two year problem.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Brett Taggard, by John's Island resident said, who led the
group in Charlestonians for the I five twenty six Everything
I was hearing was that people were concerned about giving
the government more money when they hadn't seen enough progress
on the stuff. From the twenty sixteen sales tax.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
It is just a continuation of a problem. Well, you're
gonna get. You're gonna learn because they're gonna teach you.
The beatings will continue until morale improves in Charleston County.
Having to do with the penny tax. We're not gonna
give it up. We're gonna get that penny well.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
I mean, the guy who said the thing about the
twenty sixteen sales tax. That's a hard one for them
to overcome. If the residents are saying, we gave you
a penny sales tax nine years ago and you have
misspent it, you did not deliver what you said you
were going to deliver, and now you're asking for another

(18:14):
penny tax, maybe to finish off the projects that you
should have paid for with the original penny tax, and
or add more to it. That's a hard no for us.
We're not you're mismanaging the money. The only possible excuse
that they can come up or a solution that I see,
is none of us were here in twenty sixteen. I

(18:36):
doubt that that's true. I think that they, probably the
majority of them, were serving in twenty sixteen.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
I think most of the people in Charleston County Council
would tell you that because of Trump and his ilk
than the cost of this project of skyrocket, if we
weren't able to afford it.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
They could say that. I mean, you can say whatever
you want to say, but the bottom line is you
said that if we did this, then this would happen.
When you ask for something and say that if you
give me this, I will give you that, and then
you don't give me that, and on top of not
giving me that, you say and I want.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
More of this. Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
That's a really hard sell for anything. If you're a
salesperson trying to sell something like if you bought ads
on iHeart and said, if you spent fifty grand with iHeart,
you will show you a ten percent increase in your business.
If we take the fifty grand and you see a
three percent increase and then say, ah, but we need

(19:33):
another fifty grand, and then not only are we going
to finish off that seven that we forgot about, we're
also going to get you another ten percent. That's a no.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
You can't sell that well exactly. But that's the difference
because in the private sector you have to answer those
questions and you're held accountable for but seemingly, and I'm
not pointing out Charleston County. I live in Richley County.
But who am I to throw stones around here? I
mean I'm facilitating the people who are like the kings
of it. I can only to the General Assembly.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Well, we live in a liberal I mean, look when
you look at like presidential election results or whatever, you
can see it. Joe Biden won Richlyn County like by
twenty points. Sure, so, I mean it's like we have
idiots all around us. They're all liberal nut jobs. Charleston
is liberal, but not that liberal. So they're they're hanging

(20:22):
on to sanity, and good for them. They're holding the
county council responsible, right if you failed. We tried it,
it didn't work. We're not doing it again.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, we can't even gather enough people on the street
corner around here to try to hold county council in
Richland County accountable.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
They no, I mean you do surveys. They love it,
love it. They the voters of Richland County would tell
you that Richland County is fan tasking just like it is.
Keep doing what they need to be better. More money,
just what they need.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
They need more if you got it to a ten
percent sales tax in Richland County, oh my god. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Now, And it doesn't matter what you point out to them,
the failure of the schools, the failure of the roads,
the failures of just even businesses leaving Richland County. They again,
that's their assess and they're entitled to it. It's not
my assessment. That's their assessment. And so again, if you're
if the populace the say this is good, then it's good.

(21:20):
There's nothing I can say to stop it. So the
people of Richland County like what they've got, love it,
and they just keep reelecting them. The people of Charleston
County not so happy, and they're not going to give
them that penny tax.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
And now we're still waiting on our big beautiful bill
here from the General Assembly to see what's going to
happen with our finalized budget plan. Although we did learn
that they were able to I guess was there any
negotiation extra needed? And why was it even brought up
in the newspaper today get their own bump for their
per diem expenses inside the new budget.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Well that no, that was passed yesterday. So that was separate.
That's so separate. Yeah, so that's they're going from one
thousand I think it is to twenty five hundred and
so that did pass yesterday. So again that's the first
time they've gotten any bump in thirty years, and so
I think a lot of people have agreed that that's

(22:12):
an important step to try to at least again, if
you're a house member in the state, you're not like
a house member in Congress. You're not probably getting rich
off of this gig.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Probably not, although it may be that your goal is
to climb high enough that you do, and we've seen
that happen time.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Oh absolutely, But to get you involved, we want you
to not lose money being a house member. And so
this I think is the goal. Is Okay, so they
have to put out a lot of money to cover
their district, driving around, meeting people, going to all the
kawanas clubs and all this other stuff. They spend thousands
of dollars a year on that, and they're not they're

(22:55):
losing money even with their salary trying to maintain this position.
At least, let's get them to okay, it didn't cost
you anything to be a house.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Member, gotcha? Yeah, I don't. I don't have a bone
to pick with that one. Now we're supposed to get
our finalized budget here, God, I read the new with
the twenty eighth.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
I don't remember off the top of my head.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
I believe that's the projected date. Now is the twenty
eight for our state budget? Are you extended? We got
good news that we got even more money than anticipated.
So they got they got more of a surplus. Well
that expedite the tax cuts. The tax cuts conversation or

(23:36):
will we fill a poto? We'll find out. We wait
with bated breath, the finalized Is it gonna come out?
Is it gonna be Is it gonna be like