Project Jackson will have its final day in court today.
The Supreme Court of South Carolina will hear the case of Steve Donohue v. the City of North Augusta, Mayor Lark Jones and the North Augusta City Council at 10:30 a.m. in Columbia.
Project Jackson is a proposed 25-acre development consisting of a hotel, stores and a baseball stadium for the Augusta GreenJackets that would be located between The River Club and Hammond's Ferry neighborhoods.
Donohue, a resident of The River Club, sued the City in December 2013 to stop the development. After the first court hearing, Judge J. Ernest Kinard ruled Aug. 20 in favor of the City, siding with the City on all points. Kinard's ruling stated that the City did not need to prove blight of the TIF area, as the TIF was adopted in 2006 and the blight only needs to be proven every 10 years. Donohue formally filed a first appeal motion on Sept. 2, which was denied by Kinard 17 days later.
Donohue filed for another appeal on Oct. 18, and shortly after, the City of North Augusta filed a motion asking the Supreme Court to take jurisdiction of the case, skipping the Court of Appeals.
The process to receive a ruling from the Supreme Court includes filing of briefs, a record appendix and an oral hearing. In the initial brief filed by the plaintiff, Donohue states that the City of North Augusta didn't comply with state law in establishing the TIF district in which Project Jackson would be built.
He also stated that the City Council met in "private executive sessions" without announcing the purpose of the meetings, violating the state Freedom of Information Act.
He went on to call the violations of the Freedom of Information Act "egregious and repeated over the process of enacting the TIF Ordinance, this Court should find, on its own, that the resulting Ordinance is the product of a poisonous procedural tree and order the Respondent to repeat the entire legislative process if it still intends to amend the existing TIF District."
Donohue said he believes that Kinard's ruling was influenced by "its erroneous admission and reliance upon incompetent evidence and testimony."
The City of North Augusta maintains that a lower-court ruling green-lighting the Project Jackson development was proper and should stand. The brief filed by the City to the Supreme Court says that amending the TIF District was done legally "over a 15 month period ending in late 2013, and after not less than 13 opportunities for public input ... the (City) Council adopted Ordinance No. 2013-19 to make these amendments."
The brief goes on to state that City Council entered into executive session on a number of occasions, but announced the purpose of these sessions as "negotiations incident to proposed contractual matter."
The City's lead attorney, Belton Ziegler, said everything was done in accordance with the law.
"Our position hasn't changed from the beginning; we feel like everything was done legally and we were really able to tell our side of things in the brief," he said in January. "From the beginning, the leadership of the City of North Augusta has worked diligently from (City) Council on down."
The City asked the Supreme Court for an expedited ruling on the case, which was approved.
Generally, according to Zeigler, the court takes around nine months to give a ruling.
The Supreme Court of South Carolina meets at 1231 Gervais St. in Columbia.
Visit www.aikenstandard.com or pick up a copy of Wednesday's Aiken Standard for updates following Tuesday's Supreme Court hearing.