Since everyone loves lists, we’ve decided to rank the top 10 local government stories of 2008. Please feel free to disagree with us, and let us know your Top 10 in the comments section.

Counting down:

10. Bernice Scott retires

The former welfare mom became one of the most powerful politicians in Richland County over her 20-year tenure on Richland County Council. But the first black chairwoman of the council did not get to leave like she wanted. At her next-to-last meeting, council members defeated a proposal to build a $3.1 million park in Lower Richland.

9. Public safety and the Columbia Police Department

After 48 officers left the department in 2007, council members began 2008 by voting to give officers an 18 percent pay raise. In March, City Manager Charles Austin chose Shelby, N.C., police chief Tandy Carter to take over the Columbia Police Department. Two weeks later, a council-appointed committee, led by former S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Ernest Finney, blasted police for underreporting crime to keep the city’s crime statistics low. Things did not get any better in September, when a USC student was raped near her Main Street apartment building. She later filed a complaint against the department, saying two male officers were pressuring her, including calling her parents and friends before she could tell them about the attack. But the department ended the year on a good note, gaining reaccreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies. And Carter presented a well-received plan that would give officers a $10,000 bonus if they bought a house in a high-crime area of the city.

8. North Columbia

After two people were killed at the Gable Oaks Apartments in three months, City Manager Charles Austin declared that North Columbia was “a community in crisis.” City officials began cracking down on apartment complexes with crime problems, going so far as to propose an ordinance that would require all apartment complexes to install security cameras and hire private security guards. That proposal died, but the political momentum lead to another ordinance — this one requiring all rental property owners, even people who rent out rooms in their homes, to pay for a business license. City officials say this will help them track down absentee landlords who have lots of crime on their property. A public hearing for the proposal is scheduled Jan. 21.

7. Federal stimulus package

When Barack Obama was elected president in November, local governments across the country began racing to put together lists of their most needed infrastructure projects (streets, water and sewer systems, etc.) for a proposed federal bailout. Columbia Mayor Bob Coble went to Washington, D.C., twice to try to get some of Columbia’s $374 million in requests on the list. While Coble and other mayors, like Charleston’s Joe Riley, were working to get the federal money, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Rep. Jim DeMint (R-Greenville) were working to keep the money from coming. Sanford and DeMint oppose the bailout because they believe it would burden taxpayers.

6. Belinda Gergel rides wave of historic preservation to Columbia City Council

After a 78-year-old farmhouse was demolished in the Heathwood neighborhood, Columbia’s neighborhood associations began a movement for zoning changes that would limit what could be torn down and built in neighborhoods. The controversy manifested itself in the race for Columbia’s District 3 seat, which was being vacated by Anne Sinclair. Belinda Gergel, a former college professor and neighborhood activist, supported the zoning changes. Brian Boyer, a homebuilder who was critical of the zoning changes, ran against her. The two raised record amounts of money and ran TV commercials - a first for a Columbia council district race. But District 3 has five historic neighborhoods, and on Election Day they powered Gergel to a decisive victory.

5. Columbia finances

For two years, Columbia was behind on its bookkeeping. With no audited numbers, city officials could not say for sure how much money they had and how much they were spending. The point was reinforced in July, when city officials discovered they had spent $18 million more than they had budgeted for employee health care. In August, the city got back on schedule when it closed the books for the 2007 fiscal year. But council members could be forced to cut the budget in early 2009 if business license fees and property taxes fall short. City officials have prepared an across-the-board, 5-percent cut, but council members are likely to modify that if they choose to cut the budget.

4. Homeless shelter

After Columbia officials failed to build a comprehensive homeless shelter, a group of business leaders, service providers and pastors got together to build one themselves. The Midlands Housing Alliance announced in June it had received a $10 million Knight Foundation grant to put a homeless shelter on Main Street. A group of five downtown neighborhoods immediately organized to fight the shelter and started pressuring City Council. City Council members offered to help the MHA pay for the shelter, but only if they moved it off Main Street. The MHA refused, and council decided not to help them. Richland County Council, on the other hand, chipped in $100,000 toward a new shelter. But the MHA has a long road ahead. An attorney in the Cottontown neighborhood unsuccessfully appealed to the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals to stop the shelter. The Elmwood Park Neighborhood Association has hired an attorney and sued the MHA.

3. Smoking bans

When the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the city of Greenville’s smoking ban in March, it cleared the way for local governments across the state to enact their own smoking bans. Columbia City Council members had narrowly passed a smoking ban in 2006 that exempted bars. That ban looked poised to go into effect until May, when Councilman E.W. Cromartie announced he was switching his vote to a full ban. That gave anti-smoking advocates a majority on the council, and an ordinance banning smoking in all work places went into effect Oct. 1. Richland County followed suit. Lexington County appeared poised to do the same thing, but eventually decided to let restaurant owners choose.

2. Paying for buses

The Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority, which operates the area’s bus system, could have to shut down in June 2009 because local government officials could not agree who should pay for it. Richland County had been paying for the system on an interim basis through a fee added to car taxes. A county-sponsored transportation committee proposed a 1-cent sales tax referendum, part of which would have paid for the buses for 10 years. But council members voted to not put the question on the ballot, saying they could not endorse a plan to raise the sales tax while the economy was struggling. Since then, Columbia and Richland County leaders have met several times, trying to come up with a way to keep the bus system afloat. Their best idea is to get state lawmakers to change the state’s hospitality tax law so they can use hospitality taxes to pay for the buses. That’s a long shot. The hospitality industry - a powerful special interest group - has vowed to aggressively fight any change in the law.

1. Gaston

What was once a sleepy Lexington County town woke up in 2008. It started in January, when Gaston residents heard this message when they called the town’s police department:

“We are laid off until further notice. Do not leave a message.”

Two weeks later, Mayor Larry Sharpe abruptly resigned, citing health problems. At the time, the town was being investigated by SLED. They owed the IRS $200,000 in penalties for years of not paying payroll taxes. In April, Sharpe - along with the town’s former administrator and clerk - were arrested and accused of taking more than $5,000 in public money. In December, The State’s Clif LeBlanc reported that Lexington County Councilman Jim Kinard and his employer, First Palmetto Savings Bank, made loans barred by state law to Gaston. Two weeks later, LeBlanc found that “records show an unraveling scandal involving a small network of families who prospered as the growing, working-class town of 1,400 drowned in red ink.” All three Gaston council members have opposition in the Jan. 20 election.