The truth of the fact is... a lot more in taxes

According to Carolina Livingmagazine, a $400,000 home in Charleston paid $2,136 in property taxes in 2008, while a $400,000 house in Columbia paid $3,365, 58% more.

Uninsured

Carolinians (726,846) last year were uninsured for health care, which placed the state as the 13th- highest percentage of uninsured residents in the country. Richland County's uninsured was almost 17 percent of the population, or 50,585 uninsured.

Charleston opts for new buses

The Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA) ordered 11 replacement buses with its $4.6 million in stimulus money instead of allocating the money for the Charleston Regional Intermodal Transportaion Center, a 30- acre transportaion hub planned to serve Amtrak, buses, area taxis, and shuttle services to and from Charleston International Airport. CARTA operates 36 13- year- old buses with about 400,000 to 600,000 miles on them. CARTA also received $1 million for improvements to its 26- year- old maintenance facility and $725,000 for 25 bus- stop shelters.

Atlanta threatens less service for less money

MARTA, Atlanta's transit system, sees another $10.8 million drop in sales tax receipts in fiscal 2010, which is on top of the $74.3 million in sales tax decline already predicted for 2010. A $1.4 billion shortfall is expected for the coming decade, according to a Georgia State economic analysis and forecast.

Fighting illiteracy

The Central Carolina Community Foundation (CCCF) chose Cocky's Reading Express (CRE) as a recipient of a $10,000 community impact grant that will measure CRE's impact on the reading scores of elementary school children in Fairfield and Lee counties. CRE was founded by USC student government leaders four years ago. It's a literacy collaboration among the School of Library and Information Science, SC Center for Children's Books and Literacy, and USC Student Government. CRE has successfully taken the message of early literacy to more than 11,000 elementary school children across the state.

Picasso, the most important (read: most expensive) artist of the 20C

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, N.C. is showing 60 works by Pablo Picasso until January 23, 2010. The exhibition shows how literature and writing influenced Picasso's art. For more information, go to www.nasher. duke.edu

Jafza South Carolina goes civil

The planning for Jafza's 1,300- acre logistics park in Orangeburg County has begun with the request for proposals being sent to a selection of five civil engineering firms: AECOM, Alliance Consulting Engineers, Arcadis, BP Barber, and Seamon, Whiteside and Associates. The RFP concerns infrastructure construction for the first phase of the logistics park. Jafza hopes to have its first tenant signed up by 2011.

Krawcheck is back

Charleston's Sallie Krawcheck, formerly the chief executive of global wealth management at Citigroup, is the new boss at Charlotte- based Bank of America's global wealth and investment management division. To start, Krawcheck last week bought 63,000 shares to the bank's common stock for about $1 million. Krawcheck will also be a member of the company's executive management team, suggesting she is available to take over at the end of the term of CEO Ken Lewis. Krawcheck bought her 63,000 shares at about $16.97 per share. On Tuesday morning, August 18, Bank of America common stock was trading around $16.87, up about 6% for the week.

Growth for BB&T

Winston Salem- based BB&T Corp., the third- largest bank operating in South Carolina, last week bought more than $22 billion in assets from failed Colonial Bank of Montgomery Ala. and announced a $750 million stock offering on Friday, August 14. Colonial Bank had 346 branches in Alabama, Florida, Alabama, Indiana, and Washington, D.C. Colonial is the 74th bank insured by the FDIC to fail this year.

State books

South Carolina closed its books on Friday, August 14, on the 2009 fiscal year. The state finished $98 million in the red, which will be carried forward into the current fiscal year, beginning July 1, 2009. At the end of fiscal year 2009, the state was behind in its projected revenue collections by $1.2 billion.

Main Street north of Taylor looking east and looking up

The city's new $8.5 million 400- space parking garage has been sited at the northwest corner of Taylor Street and Sumter Street, behind the old Berry's on Main building. The garage is actually aimed at the Palmetto Center to augment its parking. SCANA is moving out soon, taking its 900 employees down by the river along the Alex Sanders Bridge. The empty Palmetto Center needs another 400 parking spaces to compete in the downtown office lease market, but it's the retail and residential buildings on Main Street north of Taylor Street that might really understand the value of the new parking.