Sometimes the golfer is so bad, a mulligan isn't enough.
Earlier this month, we used a golf analogy in this space to call on commissioners to rethink their stance on business licenses after they had deadlocked on the issue in a previous meeting.
They got their opportunity to tee it up again last week and didn't do any better this time around, defeating the issue by a 3-1 vote.
But we shouldn't have been surprised: It's hard to teach old dogs new tricks. Commissioners have regularly voted down a business license program over the last 15 years, and there was no new trick in them this time.
Instead, they rolled over and played dead when they should have sat up to protect legitimate business owners and consumers.
Commissioners' refusal to implement a business license program certainly sets McDuffie County apart from other communities ranging from Columbia County to Thomson to Dearing. Governments in those other areas understand the benefits of such a program, ranging from increased revenue in their coffers to the added protection to both businesses and residents.
But here, those benefits take a backseat to laws that are supposedly already in place to offer protection and concerns about too much government.
And those old dogs are still around, performing their same old tricks.
