By ADAM BEAM
abeam@thestate.com
After Thursday night's mayoral candidates debate at the Capital Senior Center - the third such forum this week - one thing is clear: The battle for the Columbia mayor's office will be won and lost on a spreadsheet.

In a city that ended the 2009 budget year with a $7 million deficit and had to make millions of dollars of cuts at the police and fire departments, voters will have to choose between competing visions of the city's financial future.

The first vision is from mayoral candidate Steve Benjamin, an attorney who wants to restore the police and fire department cuts and then some, promising to give the two departments whatever money they need to add more officers.

The second vision comes from candidate Kirkman Finlay, a city councilman who said the cuts at the police and fire departments were necessary to rein in wasteful spending on overtime and shrink the city's overall budget to a more manageable, responsible level.

In between is candidate Steve Morrison, an attorney who said he supports "smart decisions" at the police department that rely on crime statistics and "a little bit of overtime" to deploy officers in troubled neighborhoods during peak criminal activity.

All three visions were on display at Thursday night's debate, which focused on the city's aging but most politically active population, which will likely have the biggest turnout on April 6 - election day.

"Funding for law enforcement and the fire department has got to be advocated by someone up there, and I think I'm the only one who did that," Benjamin said shortly after the debate.

Benjamin attacked Finlay during the forum's first question, blaming him for crafting the city budget that included the public safety cuts.

But Finlay embraced his role as a budget cutter and questioned Benjamin's willingness to restore funding to what Finlay said was a wasteful system based on unneeded overtime.

"Why do you want to restore ... overtime to the police department?" Finlay asked Benjamin during the debate, adding that the police department is fully staffed for the first time in 10 years. "You are buying police officers at 1 1/2 times the rate, the benefits are costly to everybody here, and generally the officers are highly paid."

Benjamin scoffed at the idea of "buying police officers," saying "these are men and women who put their lives on the line every single day to provide the very blanket of freedom that we live under."

And he rejected Finlay's point that the police department is fully staffed, arguing that while all of the budgeted positions may be filled, the department still does not have enough officers to protect the city.

Columbia Police Chief Tandy Carter set a goal of cutting Columbia's crime rate in half in five years, and to do it
he asked City Council for 92 additional police officers - a request that was turned down because of funding.

"We are a fraction of the force that the chief of police said he needs," Benjamin said. "We have not fully staffed this police department, and the city is feeling the effects of it every single day."

Morrison, who along with Benjamin and Finlay make up the three fundraising leaders in the nine-candidate race for mayor, said the city could not "arrest our way to a crime-free city" and advocated cutting off crime at its source

"Opportunity begins with youth in schools," said Morrison, adding that if elected mayor he would create after-school programs with the city's parks and recreation employees. "It encourages kids."

By ADAM BEAM - abeam@thestate.com

Columbia's next mayor could sink or save Richland County's unified fire service, a 20-year city-county partnership that is crumbling because of increasing health care costs and allegations of financial mismanagement.

The partnership has been so successful it lowered insurance ratings throughout the county, saving homeowners $5.5 million, according to a 2007 study.

But increased health care costs and changes in how the city is required to handle retirement health insurance have made firefighting so expensive Columbia officials say they need millions of dollars more from the county to make things work.

COLUMBIA, SC – Friday night’s snowstorm couldn’t stop Columbia mayoral candidate Steve Benjamin from taking his vision of A New Day for Columbia to the streets going door to door talking with residents in Columbia’s Historic Lower Waverly neighborhood today.
 
“It’s been a great day!” Benjamin said. “This is my favorite part of the campaign, getting out and talking with folks about what’s important to them. There was no way I was going to let a little snow get in the way of that.”
 
Benjamin and campaign volunteers began spent more than four hours canvassing the neighborhood and knocked on well over 100 doors.

Columbia mayoral candidate Steve Benjamin said Saturday he would support a
change in the city's form of government to a strong mayor system.

"One of the cornerstones of our campaign has been making city government more
accountable," Benjamin said in a written statement. "Having a strong mayor who
can say, 'The buck stops here' is the best way to do that, and I think the
people of Columbia deserve the chance to say so."

The man who wants to be the next mayor of Columbia is calling on the current mayor and members of the city council to restore cut-off funding to local firefighters.

Speaking to media and supporters at a press conference Tuesday, Steve Benjamin said the recent closures of two Columbia fire stations showed “a misplaced set of priorities” and emphasized the need for fundamental change in South Carolina’s largest city.

“I opposed that decision because I believed, as I still believe, that you don’t balance the budget on the backs of our first responders,” Benjamin said. “You don’t play politics with firefighters’ lives.”  To keep reading, click "Read more" below.

by Adam Beam
The State
November 4, 2009

Steve Benjamin held a news conference today in front of the Shandon Fire Station on Devine Street to talk about cutbacks at the Fire Department. You can hear what he had to say below:  To keep reading, click "Read more" below.

Local/Metro News Desk
The State

by Adam Beam
The State

Columbia mayoral candidate Steve Benjamin has hired one of President Barack Obama’s political consultants to lead his campaign — a sign some observers say of what it would take to unseat the popular, powerful 20-year incumbent Mayor Bob Coble.

Craig Schirmer, who led the get-out-the-vote efforts for Obama in the 2008 South Carolina primary and again in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania in the general election, has signed on as Benjamin’s general consultant for the April City Council elections.

Schirmer first appeared in South Carolina in 1998, when he authored a coordinated campaign plan for state Democrats in the year they won five statewide races — including the governor’s office for Jim Hodges.

Since then, Schirmer has developed a reputation as an organizational guru whose specialty is identifying likely voters and getting them to the polls.

“He’s the gold standard,” Hodges said. “He did a remarkable job finding many voters who have never voted before, and to get them out to vote.”  To keep reading, click "Read more" below.

by Wes Wolfe
Wolfe Reports

For anyone following the race for mayor in Columbia, it’s really not a surprise that attorney Steve Benjamin announced for the office Tuesday evening.The last time most Columbians were aware of Benjamin was when he was running to replace ... (former Attorney General) Charlie Condon.

It’s in our opinion that Benjamin is in good shape, with President Barack Obama’s “white youth and blacks coalition” predisposed to voting for him. ... To keep reading, click "Read more" below.