Senator says 12 state lawmakers not filing taxes

If you don’t file state income tax, you cannot hold state office according to three bills introduced on Tuesday by Aiken Senator Greg Ryberg.
On the floor of the Senate, Ryberg introduced the bills by saying he had requested records from the South Carolina Department of Revenue, “The Department of Revenue reported that it’s records showed no filing…NO FILING…at all for 12 house members in one of more years between the years of 1999 and 2007!”
Ryberg explains his new bill by saying, “It prohibits anyone who has either failed to file an income tax return or failed to pay their income taxes, liability in full from holding office, in either the house or the senate. For that matter, from serving in any other elected office in the state or serving as a gubernatorial appointment.”
Sumter Senator Phil Leventis says while he supports the premise of the bills, but the list that Ryberg mentions casts a dark cloud over the legislature. “I won’t go too far,” he said, “sound a little bit like, ‘I have in my pocket a list…I have in my pocket a list of people who are trying to subvert the government of the United States’.
“Senator McCarthy never made that list public. I’m not going to object to this bill or hold it up, unless, I don’t get a list, by names, of the people involved in this matter.”
Ryberg says he does not have a list of names from the state Department of Revenue, only numbers. The bills are now in the Senate Judiciary Committee.