By Herman Guetersloh

Columbia City Councilman E. W. Cromartie II was furious. His name had appeared Nov. 18 in the newspaper as owner of three properties headed for a delinquent tax sale, even though he had paid them off the Monday before. So Cromartie called Richland County Treasurer Nenie Pasky “ranting and raving,” she says. He told her clients would read about that and it could cost him business. He wanted a correction. “I didn’t call him back for a few days,” Pasky says. Her list had gone out before Nov. 13, and The State had changed its policy this year and no longer accepted the updated list. Besides, her office had sent Cromartie multiple tax statements, like it does every year. “Everybody who owns property knows they have to pay taxes once a year,” she says.

Cromartie’s troubled payment cycle shows up each year. Property taxes become due in January, overdue in February and delinquent in March, if not paid. Then come business license fees in April, a lingering federal tax debt and periodic trouble with the state Department of Revenue. Cromartie’s water bills stack up for months, sometimes, until the city shuts off service. His garbage bills go unpaid, once for more than a year until the city wiped the debt from its books. More than once, the city has threatened to prosecute Cromartie for operating his businesses without licenses. There have been promises to pay, promises broken and payments made at the last minute. Time slips by until years come and go, in some cases, before the councilman pays what’s due.

It’s a classic tale of a debtor staying one move ahead of the law, but this one is an elected official, who, the record indicates, sometimes uses his position to influence his way through collection efforts. City records get squirreled away. Compliance with the state open-records law is partial and slow. Eight months after a Free Times investigation begins, a threatened lawsuit lands at City Hall. Files turn up a day later. What spills out is a litany of delinquent business licenses, notes indicating that Cromartie expects special treatment because of his position as councilman, and notes pointing to Assistant City Manager Charles Williams as the insider who orders it done.

“I understand that you are just doing your job, and I can appreciate that,” Cromartie, 55, says on Monday. “There are many explanations, but I am not in a position to make those to you.” Then, after asking whether the tape recorder was on, he adds, “The city of Columbia is a great city, and we have many great things that are occurring to make it even a greater city as we move forward into the new millennium, and I wish you a very good day.”

Still, the answers from higher-ups are few. Mayor Bob Coble, City Council members and City Manager Mike Bierman say they don’t know enough to comment. So on Jan. 17, Coble launches an internal investigation.

“No one who is an elected official should receive special treatment, and we need to look at the facts here to see what happened,” Coble says, speaking on behalf of City Council. “Secondly, E. W. is a friend, who we know has worked hard for his district, and whatever the financial problems are, we are sorry.”

A Change in Policy

Cromartie ducked his Richland County merchant taxes for five straight years until 1995, when the city changed its policy and quit issuing business licenses to those with overdue taxes. In 1995, the county hired the city to issue its business licenses, too. In exchange, the city began withholding business licenses until owners brought current their county merchant taxes — taxes levied on moveable business property such as chairs, desks and personal computers.

Before the policy change, Cromartie had paid his business licenses more or less on time. Two of three business licenses payments arrived late in 1990 and in 1991. Penalties were assessed. Payments for 1992, 1993 and 1994 arrived by the April deadline. In 1995, he added video-poker machines to the list of businesses and paid his city licenses on time. But as of Aug. 1, 1995, he still owed Richland County $16,915 in merchant taxes levied in 1990 through 1994, so Columbia held onto his licenses pending payment. By Nov. 6, the city still was holding Cromartie’s business licenses. The record is silent as to whether the city ever mailed Cromartie his 1995 licenses.

He also owed the city $2,336 that year in garbage service, water bills and lot clearing fees. Of that, $1,405 was past due, and the city had given over $1,007 to a collection agency.

Cromartie’s tax troubles surfaced in The State on Nov. 6, 1995, as someone whose property was headed for a tax sale. He reportedly owed nearly $45,000 in state, federal and local taxes, even after paying off close to the same amount. That same day, Business License Administrator Janet La Schuma sent Charles Williams a memo appraising him of The State’s Oct. 24, 1995, freedom-of-information request and outlining Cromartie’s payment history for business licenses through 1995. The city had not complied with The State’s request by press time, the article noted.

More of the same in 1996. An April 18 memo alerted Williams that Cromartie’s 1996 business licenses were being held. Cromartie still owed $15,992 in delinquent merchant taxes for tax years dating back to 1990. The next day, Cromartie wrote a check for the business licenses. On April 23, Williams ordered La Schuma to mail the licenses, according to notes she kept. She did.

But not until May 7, 1998, did Cromartie finish paying his merchant taxes from years dating back to 1992. And, as the record will show, he did so only after the city threatened to take him to court.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

It was a banner year for Cromartie. He operated his businesses all year in 1997 without paying for a single license.

He gave the city two checks dated Oct. 15, 1997, for two of his four city-licensed business — a law practice, some two dozen rental properties, video-poker machines and a party-snack shop. But for reasons unclear, Williams ordered these checks held rather than deposited, records show. Williams did not return phone calls last week seeking comment. When offered a chance to review the records, he declined. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said Friday of the records.

La Schuma also declined a phone interview for this story, though she did provide written answers to written questions. “I was told not to process payments until May,” she wrote. “I do not know why.”

On Jan. 28, 1998, La Schuma gave Cromartie’s checks to Williams to hold himself. A week later, Williams summoned a meeting with La Schuma and then-Finance Director Susan Busbice. They discussed how Cromartie had not “done what he had promised” and how they were about to take him to court, according to La Schuma’s handwritten notes. Williams asked them how they felt about that. Then he called Cromartie and County Treasurer Nenie Pasky while all were present. La Schuma left the meeting determined to haul Cromartie to court if nothing happened by 4 p.m. Monday, Feb. 9.

Meanwhile, Cromartie and Pasky worked out a payment plan. He agreed to pay his county tax debt by April of that year. So on Feb. 9, Williams ordered La Schuma to back off from the court action, she wrote in her notes. He also gave Cromartie’ s checks back to her to hold until May.

By April, Cromartie had made only one payment, and Pasky hadn’t heard word one from him. So she sent Williams a letter saying so, and La Schuma issued summonses on April 21, 1998, to haul Cromartie into court for operating all four businesses without a license during 1997 and during the first part of 1998.

“I’ll give somebody one chance,” Pasky says of the payment plan, “and if it’s not met, that’s it.”

Cromartie paid the taxes May 7, 1998. His Oct. 15, 1997, checks went forward. With two business licenses paid and delinquent merchant taxes brought current, the city dropped charges on May 11, 1998. That same day, Williams ordered La Schuma to waive late fees for the two business licenses Cromartie paid, her notes show.

Dropping charges after payment is received is standard procedure, La Schuma wrote. But waiving late fees on an account with such a history is not, she also wrote.

After La Schuma dropped charges, she and her staff returned to collection mode. Again they talked with Cromartie. They talked in July. They talked in August. On Aug. 6, 1998, Cromartie told Brenda Kyzer, who worked for La Schuma, not to charge penalties for the remaining licenses, according to Kyzer’s notes. “It was really the city’s fault for all the running around he got, and it was the price he pays for being an elected official,” he further told Kyzer.

Kyzer declines to explain her notes. She now works for the Municipal Association of South Carolina, which is too closely connected to the city, she says. “I’m a little nervous about saying anything,” she says. “I just don’t know what I need to be saying and what I’m not supposed to be saying.” Though she does admit the Cromartie files put them all in quite a spot.

Payments were discussed again on Aug. 17, 1998. With whom, the record does not show. But two days later, La Schuma issued summonses again for the remaining six business licenses, two of which still lingered from 1997. Cromartie paid all six toward the end of September — four on Sept. 24, one on Sept 28 and one on Sept. 29, 1998 — avoiding a Sept. 30, 1998, date with a judge and prosecutor.

Garbage and Water Bills

During this same era, Cromartie evaded garbage bills for more than a year, the record shows. The city wrote off his garbage bills from December 1995 though December 1996, then again from April through July of 1998. “Written off” usually means the city turns the debt over to a collection agency, Bierman says. But he doesn’t know the outcome in this case.

On Feb. 18, 1997, city route auditor Emmanuel Lawson called CRW Collection Agency to check up on the collection efforts. Lawson wrote a memo two days later explaining how the Cromartie account had been cancelled in December 1996. “Any account of E. W. Cromartie was not to be contacted anymore because he was a city council member,” Lawson wrote, quoting the collections agent, who quoted a city employee.

But the memo trail goes cold. Sonya Covington, a city employee who handled collections at the time, says she never told anyone at CRW to cease collection efforts with Cromartie. Nor did anyone order her to do so. She got the accounts and forwarded them to CRW. “I just pushed the paper,” she says.

CRW’s Columbia office has since closed and the company no longer exists, technically — some kind of a corporate buyout. Someone at the Tulsa, Okla., office answers the phone. “You must be talking about the Cromartie account,” he says, but asks not to be quoted. “I’m not at liberty to say anything to the media that might appear in print.”

Water records, too, show a pattern of nonpayment. Water bills had stacked up for five months at 1202 Pine St. before the city cut off service on Sept. 29, 1997. The normal bureaucratic delay takes four months, says Covington, now a customer service rep with the Water Department. She describes the five-month delay as “a little bit odd.”

Bills at that property piled up for two more months. Then, on May 29, 1998, the city wrote off $494 from the account. Computer printouts do not show whether the account was turned over to collections. The account is no longer in Cromartie’s name.

That was during Charles Williams’ reign over collections. He’s not talking.

A New Era, Sort Of

The year 1999 saw more of the same from Cromartie but with less wiggle room. Pasky would cut him no more slack. She would offer no more payment plans. If he didn’t pay in time, his properties would go to the tax sale.

Williams no longer oversaw collections. As part of Bierman’s restructuring in late 1998, Assistant City Manager Mike West took over all things financial, from preparing a budget to collections. Williams runs city operations like parks and recreation. The Cromartie files had nothing to do with the restructuring, Bierman says. It just made sense to consolidate like duties under the same person.

In 1999, too, the city had cut off water service several times to accounts in Cromartie’s name. It shut off water to his law office at 1607 Harden St. on June 24, 1999, on Oct. 18, 1999 and on Feb. 21, 2000. Each time bills had stacked up for four months without payment — the normal bureaucratic delay. It was April before the city received another payment on this account, yet meter readings show some water usage during this time.

Other Cromartie accounts show service cut-offs, bounced checks, random payments and the occasional “write off.” Bills piled up at 2121 Waverly St. until the city wrote off $368. Though printouts do not show why, they do show a new meter was installed at the property and that water usage dropped afterward.

By the summer of 1999, Cromartie’s business licenses were overdue again, records show. The deadline was in April. In June, Mike West told La Schuma that if Cromartie’s name was on the county’s July 8, 1999, delinquent tax list, then the city would not accept payment for business licenses. Cromartie paid one license July 8, 1999, just hours before the county’s list came out and put the city on notice of Cromartie’s delinquent 1998 merchant taxes.

By Aug. 17, 1999, Cromartie still hadn’t paid the other business licenses, according to a memo by La Schuma. The next step was to issue summonses, she wrote.

In February 2000, Cromartie asked Free Times not to publish that he owed Richland County roughly $20,000 in overdue property taxes. The State newspaper doesn’t publish delinquent taxes until the properties are headed for an end-of-year tax sale. He called that “fair.” No need in publishing the tax stuff, he said, adding that a story would cause all kinds of problems. Bankers don’t like to read about that. Neither does his then-82-year-old mother. “You can’t come in here being a pit bull, young man,” he said. “You come in being a pit bull, and the big dogs will swallow you. Not me, I’m not a big dog.”

The story ran in March. It also mentioned Cromartie’s roughly $20,000 in federal tax liens for personal income tax and employee withholdings that went back to 1994 and $6,000 in state tax liens for sales tax and employee withholdings.

“He [Cromartie] does have a history of having some tax liability problems with us,” says Danny Brazell, spokesman for DOR. Ultimately Cromartie pays his state tax debt, but only after some coercion, he adds. “We usually have to call him and talk with him or visit him or send him some type of notice of assessment, or something has to usually take place to get his attention.”

In April, Free Times began investigating Cromartie’s business licenses, garbage bills and water bill payment history with the city. Throughout the summer, calls and visits to Public Information Director Leshia Utsey’s office were met with delays and partial compliance to state law. The Freedom of Information Act gives the city 15 working days to respond to a request for records.

By October, Utsey had produced some business licenses, computer printouts for water bills and some history of Cromartie’s garbage service payments. For an Oct. 12 story, Coble said the city should do better in complying with FOIA requests. More letters from Free Times went out, clarifying old requests and reminding officials that full compliance has yet to happen. The letters also asked for new information such as who authorized the city to write off Cromartie’s bills. Nothing.

So in December, Free Times hands the city a rough draft of a lawsuit and gives staffers one more day to comply with state law, or the lawsuit would go forward. A day later, an inch-and-half-thick stack of city records becomes available.

The lawsuit didn’t loosen the files, Bierman says. City staffers were gathering records all the while and had compiled quite a bit of information. Free Times just happened to be pursuing a lawsuit at the same time, he says.

“She [Utsey] wasn’t stonewalling you,” Bierman says. “Leshia is not one to stonewall. It’s not her information, anyway. ... I think there was a whole bunch of confusion all the way around.”

Utsey earns $55,162 a year and supervises five staffers at a collective salary of $167,507 a year. Utsey began at $42,002 on Aug. 18, 1997, and received a series of pay raises since then.

It’s January, and Coble and Bierman are saying more or less what they had in October. They don’t know all the particulars or whether Cromartie was treated any differently from others. “This is probably the only interview where I have no direct knowledge,” Coble says. “I have to go find out what the stuff is. So what I’ll do is go find out and make sure we have a response.”

Bierman says he doesn’t know the circumstances surrounding the write-offs. If a pipe is cracked, for example, the city might not charge the whole water bill, he says. Besides, Cromartie is not the only one. “There are some people who will play the float,” he says. “They keep their money, invest it and pay later.”

Bierman says he has no idea whether the city has showed favoritism to Cromartie. It depends on what the city works out with the customer. Staffers try to work out payment plans. The city prides itself on being customer friendly, and shutting down someone’s business wouldn’t do anyone any good, Bierman says. “Part of the settlement could have been we don’t do the late fees,” he says.

With lingering questions about fair play and special treatment, Coble and City Council hired the city’s outside attorney, Richard Gergel, to review the file, interview staffers, determine what happened and report back. In short, they launched an internal investigation.

“I think we need to get all the facts,” Coble says. “We need the complete picture and a full report on all that.”

The Cycle

To date, Cromartie owes no overdue property taxes to Richland County. He paid his 1999 property taxes in November. He has taken care of his state tax liens and is in good standing with DOR, Brazell says. However, he has acquired three new federal tax liens worth $21,422, bringing his federal tax liability to $41,659, county records show.

But it’s January, and the cycle begins anew. Year 2000 property taxes will become overdue next month and delinquent in March, if unpaid. A list of delinquent merchant taxes for 2000 will go out this summer. If Cromartie’s name is on it, the city won’t accept payment for his business licenses for 2001. If that happens, he will risk being prosecuted for operating businesses without licenses.

If the past offers any guidance, Cromartie will pay some bills, dodge others for as long as he can and stay one step ahead of the law the whole time.

 This story was originally published in Free Times Jan. 24, 2001.