Cromartie out after scandal hits

There’s a lot of celebrating going on in Columbia right now, as City Councilman E.W. Cromartie will be resigning his position in light of a tax evasion scandal that broke on Monday morning. Cromartie, who has been in office since for about as long as we’ve been alive, has appeared to come to the end of his political road.

Few people we’ve run into that have had to deal with the City Council have good things to say about Cromartie, as rumors were traded among insiders about this action or that deal wasn’t on the up-and-up. To us, he seemed like one of those municipal elected officials that you find in mid-size cities that nobody really likes but who never gets a serious challenge.

In 2008, we surmised that the only thing that would knock Mr. Cro out would be a crime, not an election challenge. It’s come to pass, with the Feds getting him on non-payment of $25,000 in taxes from 2006, and creatively doing deposits and withdrawals to not get flagged by IRS reporting rules. According to the AP, Cromartie will plead guilty and serve 366 days in prison.