He said-She said Part 2 - Sorting out the facts from the spin in local Senate race

State Sen. Catherine Ceips and former governor's chief of staff Tom Davis have been busying themselves with a drawn out game of he said-she said in the lead up to the June 10 Republican primary for the Senate District 46 seat representing Beaufort County.

Amid the all the digs, third-party sourcing and contextual gaps, figuring out what's what is no easy task. Here's a breakdown of the candidates' rhetoric on three more issues with fact-checks and missing context.

The billboard bill

In January 2005, a group of House legislators introduced a bill that would require local governments to compensate billboard owners for the value of their signs, plus potential lost earnings triggered by eminent domain and regulatory changes. By February 2006, both chambers had passed the bill and overridden Gov. Mark Sanford's veto.

He said: The law makes it financially too burdensome for local governments to regulate billboards, jeopardizing Lowcountry aesthetics and undermining home rule.

She said: "That billboard bill is not about home rule, it's about compensating property owners. It's about property rights."

The real deal: There's not much spin here. Ceips, then a member of the House, backed the bill. Sanford, the South Carolina Association of Counties and many local officials fought the bill for the same reasons Davis named.

As a side note, outdoor advertising interests spent $339,000 lobbying legislators -- including Ceips -- in the campaign to get the bill passed, The State reported.

The hog farm bill

In 2003, a bill was debated that would block local governments from creating ordinances that regulate livestock and poultry farms more stringently than state regulations.

He said: Ceips voted in favor of the bill, a vote to erode home rule.

She said: The vote Davis referred to was a procedural vote. Ceips said she ultimately voted against the bill. "You know what matters in Columbia? The final vote. It's the final vote that matters."

The real deal: On March 27, 2003, Ceips voted against two procedural motions that would have kept the bill off the House floor indefinitely. Both motions passed, and the bill was reconsidered on the House floor April 2, 2003. That day, the House approved the bill with Ceips in the minority.

The bill stalled in the Senate and never became law.

In an April 10, 2003, letter to the editor in The Beaufort Gazette, Davis recountedspeaking with Ceips and learning she had researched the bill's potential effect on the environment, which she felt were unacceptable, and home rule, which she did not think was at issue.

"I disagree with Ceips' assessment of the home rule implications of that bill; however, I must nonetheless commend her on the careful and thoughtful way she went about weighing her vote in this matter," Davis wrote.

State highway commission

The South Carolina Department of Transportation is governed by a powerful seven-member highway commission. The governor chooses one at-large member and the state legislators of each congressional district elect the other six members. Commissioners serve four-year terms.

In 2006, commissioner John Hardee, who represented the 2nd Congressional District, was finishing out his second term. Beaufort County is one of 10 in the district.

Then-Sen. Scott Richardson of Hilton Head Island backed Barry Connor, an engineer from Bluffton and former Beaufort County Council member, to take Hardee's spot on the highway commission.

He said: Ceips supported Hardee over a qualified local candidate who could have given Beaufort County a better voice on the commission. Hardee was a solid candidate, but is from Columbia and the son-in-law of the powerful Sen. Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, who heads the Senate Finance Committee.

She said: Connor's candidacy never went anywhere. The nomination never came up for vote in Columbia and he wasn't in the running.

The real deal: According to Hardee, his third-term reelection became automatic after a requisite number of legislators signed their support for him in a somewhat informal process. The relevant legislators never held a traditional vote between candidates.

Also, the district's legislative make-up means a Lowcountry candidate is a long shot, since there are many more legislators from the northern end of the district than the southern end.

"All the Lexington, Richland County guys ganged up on us," Richardson said Friday of Connor's candidacy.

Hardee's third term was short. He was ousted in January 2007 after the state Supreme Court ruled that highway commissioners cannot serve consecutive terms. Legislators chose Columbia lawyer Henry Taylor to replace Hardee.