Legislature under pressure on road funding
A news analysis by Bill Davis | Devastation and death in South Carolina wrought by Hurricane Joaquin could push state legislators to tackle the state’s growing $40 billion transportation infrastructure needs when it reconvenes in January, politicians say.
Joaquin’s wrath closed hundreds of roads and bridges across the state, ended 17 lives and wiped out $300 million in crops. A total estimate for the damage is forthcoming, but Gov. Nikki Haley has called the damages “significant and widespread.”
Since the storm that dumped 11 trillion gallons of rain on the Carolinas, President Barack Obama has signed a declaration that South Carolina was the site of a “major disaster,” which cleared the way for federal money to be spent here to supplement state efforts. As of Thursday, the disaster declaration makes people and businesses in 19 counties from the Midlands to the coast eligible for physical and economic federal assistance. Businesses and organizations in 17 other counties are eligible for federal economic injury loans.
With Joaquin, Haley accepted federal help, a reversal of her political logic for the last two years of declining federal aid to expand Medicaid to help 200,000 of the state’s poorest get access to health care.
Joaquin exacerbated a transportation infrastructure disaster brewing for quite a while in South Carolina. Eight years ago after a bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed in Minnesota, Palmetto State legislators began whispering, wondering if that could happen here.
The answer has turned out to be, yes, South Carolina. There is a Mother Nature.
So where are we now?
But over the last few years, state government has done comparatively little to address the road and bridge infrastructure needs.
Federal officials have estimated the state needed to spend $40 billion over 25 years — about $1.5 billion every year — to bring roads and bridges to good levels. Included in an expansive report was the revelation that more than 8,400 bridges in the state, with 830 of the more than 8,400 bridges in the state were “structurally deficient,” and 10 were closed for structural problems. Two thirds were deemed “satisfactory,” with 19 percent ”substandard” and 9 percent “functionally obsolete.”
Three years ago with this news, the legislature “dug deep” and came up with an additional $50-million in one-time funding to be able to borrow $500 million for roads. Now, most agree that the $40 billion transportation deficit has grown significantly since Joaquin sent floods of water across the state.
So now that people have seen buckling roads and rain that caused more than two dozen dams to breach comes a sobering question: Which does South Carolina hate more — death or raising taxes?
“Something will happen”
State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D-Orangeburg) said the General Assembly has “no choice but to do something.”
“Something will happen, but the question is what and how much,” said Cobb-Hunter, who serves on the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee. She worries that the fear of raising taxes on the other side of the political aisle could preclude significant action.
A Statehouse Report QuickPoll last week showed that 90 percent of readers who responded wanted the state’s 16.8-cent-per-gallon gas tax to be raised to fund road upgrades. A September Winthrop Poll showed 84 percent of respondents believed repairing existing roads should be the state’s top priority in transportion spending.
House Speaker Jay Lucas (R-Hartsville), who Wednesday asked a House committee to start the process of better understanding the flood recovery process, last week pointed out that the House passed an infrastructure bill this year to the Senate where it withered. “Every day that passes without a plan drives up the repair costs, places our citizens’ safety at risk, and threatens the future of our economy,” he said in a statement.
State Sen. Paul Campbell (R-Goose Creek), who serves on the Transportation Committee, said the Senate modified the House bill and it is already sitting atop the coming agenda in that chamber on special order.
“When you look at our neighbors whose motor fuel user fees are $0.28 per gallon in Georgia and $0.37 in North Carolina and have been for several years, you can understand why their roads are significantly better,” Campbell said. “ If the General Assembly had indexed our fee in 1987 (last time for an increase), we would be at $0.34 per gallon.” Currently, South Carolina’s gas tax is $0.168 per gallon .
Campbell added that several counties in his neck of the state have already crafted special one-cent sales taxes to support local roads.
State Sen. Larry Martin (R-Pickens), one of that chamber’s most experienced members and the chair of the Judiciary committee, said he believes the General Assembly will come together in a bipartisan fashion to “get this important job done.”
Skinning that cat
But how that “important” job gets done could doom it. Some are like state Sen. Tom Davis (R-Bluffton), who has said he would “push back hard against anyone who says ‘only higher gas taxes will fix our roads.’”
Haley called for an increase in the state gas tax earlier this year, but only if there were an offsetting cut in income taxes so the overall budget wouldn’t increase. Some say that position may have been dealt a deathblow by the extent of Joaquin’s wrath.
“The real questions is will the governor insist on a $2 billion tax cut to allow $400 million for roads, even though [South Carolina] has one of the lowest tax rates in the country,” said state Sen. Ray Cleary, a Georgetown Republican who announced last week he wasn’t running for re-election.
“Or will a majority of legislators vote for an $800 million tax cut hoping to avoid a [gubernatorial] veto and giving SC DOT [Department of Transportation] $800 million – much less that it needed before the disaster – and ignore our reducing funding by over $350 million per year to higher education — causing our state to have the highest tuition rates of any southeastern state.”
Cleary said he believed if politicians cleared away most wasteful spending and were honest with constituents and if the state still needed more money for roads, voters would support them.
But where those extra dollars come from is also a problem. Yes, South Carolina has one of the lowest per-gallon gas levies in the country. But, thanks to rising fuel efficiencies and other factors, state documents show a rise in the gas tax would only be a short-term solution as revenues would decrease over time
One immediate solution is for the state to continue to try to borrow its way out of the problem. But there’s only so much borrowing capacity that the state has. And most realize slow times will come again, which will cut borrowing capacity even more at a time when transportation needs won’t decrease. Another solution: Increasing user fees and fines, but voters have already begun grumbling about getting bit in the wallet everywhere they turn.
In the words of one old sarcastic Columbia sage, in the face of Joaquin, “governance does happen.” But the unknown and unknowable question is: how much and when will it happen – especially in an election year?
Bill Davis is senior editor of Statehouse Report. Have a comment? feedback@statehousereport.com
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