County puts stop to ID requirement to pay taxes

BLUFFTON -- As a general rule, Beaufort County wants to make paying taxes as easy as possible.

But for at least 10 months, county employees in Bluffton, following a procedure devised by an overzealous sheriff's deputy, created an unnecessary obstacle that prevented some people from paying taxes on their vehicles.

When people came into the county auditor's office to pay personal property taxes on their cars and trucks, clerks asked them to show a South Carolina driver's license, even though that's not required for paying taxes. If they didn't have an in-state license, their taxes weren't accepted.

In some cases, the deputy who established the policy escorted people out of the tax office when they complained about the requirement, according to people whose driver's licenses were checked.

A local attorney objected to the practice last October in an e-mail to county administrator Gary Kubic. Kubic said he immediately relayed the complaint to Auditor Sharon Burris, who said she told the deputy to stop the practice.

Yet it continued until earlier this week, when Burris and Sheriff P.J. Tanner finally ended it for good. The policy, which also spread to the county's tax office on Hilton Head Island, disproportionately affected Hispanic residents because they are less likely to have driver's licenses, according to leaders in the Hispanic community.

WHERE THE IDEA CAME FROM Checking for in-state driver's licenses was an idea that came from Sgt. Neal Player, said Tanner. Player's job has been to enforce local tax laws, and in that capacity, he has worked closely with clerks in the auditor's office in Bluffton. "Neal mistakenly and improperly gave bad information to the auditor's clerks and that information was brought to Sharon Burris' attention," Tanner said. "We corrected it, Neal has been corrected and there's also an inquiry on what he did that is being handled by his supervisors."

Player did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

Tanner said requiring an in-state driver's license was not an attempt to unfairly target Hispanic vehicle owners and was the result of misguided diligence on Player's part.

Player was trying to make the point that if people didn't have a drivers license, they shouldn't be driving to the auditor's office to pay their taxes, Tanner said.

"The auditor's office is not the place to enforce that law," said Tanner, adding that a better place to check driver's licenses is during a traffic stop. "What Neal did was wrong. He's going to be admonished for what he did."

Player was assigned to be the Sheriff's Office liaison to the auditor in May 1999. Within a year he created a program in which he aggressively enforced a law requiring residents to get South Carolina license plates within 45 days of becoming permanent residents. In the first 20 months of working with the office, Player checked 5,765 cars for state license plates, bringing in $194,780 in car-tax money.

But Player, who was hired in the 1980s, has also had other problems as a deputy.

He oversaw the sheriff's evidence room for two years under former Sheriff Carl McCleod. During that time, his operation lost evidence for a murder trial, misplaced drugs and sold a confiscated firearm to a county official. Tanner made the problems in the evidence room a central issue in his 1998 campaign. After Tanner won the election, Player was reassigned to drug investigations.

HOW THE COUNTY FOUND OUT The in-state driver's license problem first came to light when a Hardeeville insurance company, Agency One, began having trouble getting registrations and plates for cars belonging to its clients.

Owner Karen Monday, whose company serves a mostly Hispanic clientele, said she raised the issue with Hardeeville lawyer Hector Esquivel. Esquivel then contacted county officials, including Kubic, last October.

Kubic said, "I told Sharon (Burris) you can't step outside the law."

Burris said she spoke to Player, who was working out of her Bluffton office. "I had talked to Neal Player and said we cannot do that," said Burris.

But Burris, who works mainly in Beaufort, said she didn't find out until last week that the Bluffton office continued asking residents to show in-state licenses before paying their vehicle taxes. "I did not realize he was still doing this," she said.

Were the clerks only targeting Hispanic car owners? "According to them -- and I don't know whether it was to cover their back sides -- once they started following this procedure, they said they were asking everyone for their driver's licenses," Burris said.

HISPANICS AFFECTED Claudia Esteban, 45, of Bluffton said efforts to get her car registered stalled when she visited the local auditor's office.

To get a car registered in the county and obtain South Carolina plates, a person must first show that they've paid county property taxes on their vehicle.

Esteban, who has a North Carolina driver's license and spoke through an interpreter, said she was told by a clerk that she needed an in-state license. The woman told her, " 'If you have a license from North Carolina, you should go there to register your car,' " according to Esteban.

Esteban said a sheriff's deputy was walking around the office and she was worried about getting into trouble if he heard her arguing with the auditor's clerk.

"I was thinking, 'Why did I buy a car if I can't even register it?' "

She left and went to the Hilton Head office to pay her taxes.

Esteban said word has spread about the issue: "No Hispanics go to the Bluffton office anymore."

And insurance companies have avoided the Bluffton office, too.

Helize Berrueta of Aseguranza Internacionales, a Hardeeville insurance company, said her company for months bypassed the Bluffton office and paid its clients' taxes at the county's Hilton Head office.

Berrueta said that some of her clients complained to her that Sgt. Player was also asking them for a Department of Motor Vehicle form with their names, phone numbers and addresses on it. This is also not a requirement.

Esquivel, the lawyer who initially contacted Kubic, suggested then that Player was using the information from the DMV forms to catch residents who don't get their cars registered after living in the county for longer than 45 days.

Burris said she said she spoke directly to her employees after hearing the in-state license requirement persisted.

"I told my ladies they were either going to do it my way or not work for me."