Twenty-three lawmakers appointed by the Speaker to a special Committee traveled across the state (on your dime) for 6 public hearings to determine how to fix South Carolina’s crumbling roads.
Their answer—they need more of your money. No joke.
What was sold as a major Department of Transportation reform bill is in fact a confused amalgamation of tax hikes, long-overdue common sense reforms, and fiscally irresponsible proposals that would make matters worse.
Not to be outdone, the SC Senate has their own DOT reform bill that is even worse.
Both bills create more bureaucracy with the creation of a Coordinating Council—in hopes that MORE government will bring desperately needed “efficiency.” (And yes, Republicans proposed this…)
Additionally the House bill attempts to implement the objectively good idea of decentralizing roads by sending a number of state-controlled roads to the counties. However, the bill forces or cajoles counties to raise residents’ property taxes in order to cover the maintenance of these roads.
But South Carolinians were promised that the “desperately needed” 2017 gas tax hike would pay to fix and maintain their roads. And lawmakers created the Infrastructure Maintenance Trust Fund to ensure this tax revenue could only be used for the maintenance of existing roads—and not for more shiny new projects in certain favored areas of Florence or near boondoggle Panther stadiums…
This new bill destroys the Infrastructure Maintenance Trust Fund allowing gas tax revenue to be used for any new projects bureaucrats and lawmakers can dream up. So much for fixing the crumbling roads.
Even more maddening, instead of using the ever-growing pot of revenue that already exists to fix the roads, this bill opens new pathways for bonds to be issued creating more obligations for taxpayers to pay interest on these new bonds.
Admittedly, there are good common sense reforms intermixed in the bill—permitting reform, a shift from centralized management to local contractors, removing the DOT Commissioners’ ability to set their own budget, and letting the Governor appoint the Secretary of Transportation—but the overwhelming negatives makes this bill a clunker.
Now H. 5071, the ironically named “Transportation Efficiency and Accountability Act,” is set for a hearing tomorrow Thursday, February 5 in a Ways and Means Subcommittee.
If you think that more taxes and more bureaucracy are NOT the answer to fixing our roads, then contact these Subcommittee members and let them know!
Philip Lowe (R-Florence)
Lee Hewitt (R-Georgetown)
Heather Crawford (R-Myrtle Beach)
Leon Stavrinakis (D-Charleston)
Bruce Bannister (R-Greenville)
