WRONG WAY TO FUND COURT

Saving Charleston County's Drug Court may be important, but doubling the
county's marriage license fee to $70 isn't the way to do it. Fees should
bear some relationship to services provided. There is no relationship to
marriage license fees and the drug court, except that the county has
control of each. Probate Judge Irving Condon made the case to council's
Finance Committee for maintaining the drug court, noting that there is the
possibility of increased state support in the future. But if County Council
agrees that the drug court is worth saving in the interim, it should look
to some other source of funds than marriage license fees. Currently, the
county charges $35 for a marriage license. Of that, $15 is the county fee,
and $20 is a state fee imposed for a program to abate domestic violence.
Presumably, there is a relationship between marriage and domestic violence,
though we imagine the link is at least as great when two people merely live
together without benefit of clergy. The marriage license fee in Charleston
is less than in some other counties in South Carolina. That may serve as a
rationale to increase the fee, but it's not a particularly good one. Fees
should reflect actual expense; they shouldn't be viewed as a way to
arbitrarily generate revenue. County Council should consider other options
to raise the $140,000 that the increase would generate, and leave the
marriage license fee alone.