(ONE IN A SERIES OF POSTS ABOUT OUR REPUBLICAN OPPONENTS IN NOVEMBER)
To convince a skeptical public of its good intentions, Google presented a briefing on April 10 about its planned data centers in Ridgeville and St. George.
Google, as expected, emphasized the positive economic impact of the centers. The company sidestepped such explosive issues as the impact on the area’s water and electricity resources, or the constant noise pollution the centers create.
Rita May Ranck, the incumbent Republican who represents District Three on the County Council, attended the briefing and posted this a day later on Facebook: “We heard the truth about their impacts on water and electricity….”
Heard “the truth” from Google? How would Ranck know that? Where is her skepticism or curiosity? While no one should expect Ranck to have all the answers about the impact of data centers on Dorchester County, she might at least know what questions to ask.
For example, what tax incentives did Google receive from the County to build here?
How much water will it use on an annual basis to cool its servers, and where will that water come from? Is the volume capped by the County?
How much is Google directly contributing to the operation of the public schools in the County now and for the next decade?
Should rate payers be happy that Dominion gave Google a sweetheart deal of six cents a kilowatt hour? Residential customers pay an average of 14 cents. Will this giveaway lead to higher residential rates?
Why is Google being charged the same property tax rate of 4% that is typically charged for owner-occupied homes? Why not a higher rate?
Armed with Google’s version of “the truth,” Ranck seems satisfied, but voters are not. Why is Ranck even on the County Council if she doesn’t want to provide aggressive oversight of Google and its data centers, one of the biggest issues facing her?
When she first ran for Council in 2022, Ranck barely won, defeating Democrat Carlisle Harrison by a mere 116 votes. In her first term she has been a reliable Republican vote. She doesn’t ask hard questions, as her Google performance indicates. She does, however, show up at awards and ground-breaking ceremonies for grip-and-grin photo shoots.
A sign that Ranck was not prepared to govern is that she was issued a public reprimand by the State Ethics Commission for her failure to properly disclose campaign finances. She was ordered to pay a late-filing penalty of $300 and a administrative fee of another $300.
Ranck defended herself by saying she was “confused by the filing requirements.” She claimed her campaign strategist filed the first disclosure report, but she was “unaware” of the other quarterly filing deadlines.
Her naiveté exhibited toward Google suggests she hasn’t grown much in office since the reprimand. So does her performance on the other big issue facing County voters: rapacious developers who make their profits building homes and then bail out on communities, leaving behind clogged roads, crowded schools, flooding, and more.
Thoughtful Democrats in Dorchester County and nationwide are hoping that tough “Concurrence” agreements imposed on developers will force them to reckon with these problems before a shovel goes into the ground. Home building must be “concurrent” with actions to combat the problems that development brings in its wake, before those problems pile up.
So where does Ranck stand on Concurrence? Sadly, she offers the sort of double-talk that politicians resort to when they don’t want to take a position.
Consider this statement from Ranck when she first ran in 2022: “I believe in the owner’s right to do what they want with their own property. But I also see each property as part of the community. And so, I am for some form of controlled growth….You have to look at the whole community and what’s good for the whole community.”
Try crafting a coherent Concurrence agreement from that mush.
Or this: “I would like to see as little development as possible, but yet again, [we must follow] the laws of the state of South Carolina when the developer owns the land.”
These are clearly the views of a pro-developer politician.
Ranck is on record as lauding an agreement between the builder DR Horton and the County for the development of the Yerby Road tract, a 1600-acre property in the Knightsville/Summerville area. The County “downzoned” 600 acres to permit 1600 to 1700 new single-family homes. This development borders the ecologically delicate Cypress Swamp, which is a flight corridor for birds.
Ranck says the agreement is “the best thing I have read since I’ve been on the Council.” Horton is promising to contribute $10 million for a round-about on Orangeburg Road to help traffic flow, to set aside 51 acres for a public school, and to protect the wetlands and floodplains.
One wonders if Ranck did her homework on DR Horton, the company that must deliver on its promises. Did she know the builder paid $16.1 million to homeowners in Easley, SC to settle a class action suit brought because of faulty foundations, framing, and water intrusion defects? Did she know a Florida court in Jacksonville ordered Horton to pay $9.6 million to homeowners in Heron’s Landing because of problems with cracked stucco and leaking roofs? Did she know Horton is facing other class actions in Hawaii and Louisiana, or that there are plenty of unhappy homeowners in Dorchester County who have posted online about their defective Horton homes?
Can voters count on Ranck to provide aggressive oversight of Horton and other developers? She has had four years on the Council to help craft a model Concurrence agreement. None has been produced by her or the other Republicans.
When and if Ranck manages to report her campaign contributions this summer and fall, let’s see how much money she gets from developers.
Ranck’s opponent for the Third District seat is Jessica Bright. You can read my profile of Jessica here and visit her campaign website at https://brightforcouncil.com/.
Unlike Ranck, Bright has been active in many parts of the community and understands the political world. She is much more likely than Ranck to take on developers and companies such as Google, who see Dorchester County as simply low-hanging economic fruit in a growing area.
Given Ranck’s very narrow margin of victory in 2022 and her invisible record of public service since, the choice for voters is an easy one.