FLORENCE -- The Florence County Council Chairman is asking the county treasurer to stop wasting tax payer money by filing so many lawsuits.
Rusty Smith says treasurer Dean Fowler has at least three lawsuits pending against the county, and the county has to pay for his legal services.
This week, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in one of the cases involving a contested tax bill.
The court ordered the county to grant a multi-lot discount to the landowner, upholding a 2009 Circuit Court decision in favor of the landowner. Fowler had appealed that 2009 ruling.
Smith says he hopes the treasurer will accept the court's decision and let it go.
"In fact, he is not the interpreter of the law. The truth of the matter is Judge Nettles and the Supreme Court are, and they certainly found soundly in this fact in that he is in error and what he's doing is costing tax payers unbelievable amounts of wasted money in the tens to $20,000. It's a continual episode that he perpetrates on the taxpayers," Smith said.
Fowler is out of town, but told us by phone that his lawsuits aren't frivolous.
He says the Circuit Court should have never gotten involved in the lawsuit with the landowner's tax bill because it was an Administrative Law Court issue. He says by getting involved, the law has become diluted. Fowler says he filed the lawsuits because he wants to uphold the law, when it appears county council chooses to go above the law. Fowler adds that if Rusty Smith and Florence County Council would stop encroaching upon other officials' authorities, then the lawsuits would stop.
