Property Rights Alert

Property and property rights are being taken away at an alarming rate. Mrs. McClanahan's story is a must for you to hear. She will be presenting a talk in Raleigh on March 18, 2004. Details are at the bottom of this notice.

Kay McClanahan was South Carolina Law Enforcement Division's (SLED) first female agent. She worked as Forensic Chemist in the crime lab for 18 years and then as field agent assigned to the U.S. Marshal's Fugitive Investigation Strike Team and later as a Field Agent and Criminal Investigator.

Kay is the past president of the largest worldwide forensic science organization, the International Association for Identification and she is past Chairman of the Criminalistics Section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Kay is also a member of the Board of Directors of the South Carolina Alston Wilkes Society, a Methodist-sponsored service organization providing shelter and employment assistant for homeless veterans and for former prisoners who are re-entering society.

Kay has twice been named South Carolina Law Enforcement Officer of the year. In 2002, she was honored as South Carolina hero of the year.

Kay and her husband, Bill, own a horse farm in the rural southeastern half of Richland County, called Lower Richland. In 1999, Richland County passed a very restrictive "Smart Growth" Comprehensive Land Use Plan, called the 2020 Town and Country Vision Plan, which will deprive rural property owners of their property and their rights, and specifically targets African-American landowners in the Lower Richland area. In 2000, Kay retired from SLED to devote full time to opposing the implementation of this plan.

As smart growth plans were passed in other counties in South Carolina, she became more involved on the state level, and in 2001, she and Bill founded the South Carolina Property Rights Watch. She divides her time now between assisting in the effort to help the people in Richland County and South Carolina learn more about Smart Growth and how it will affect them, and sharing what is happening in South Carolina with people from other areas.