By Robert Kittle
The disagreement over how to pay to fix South Carolina roads now has state lawmakers expecting to start the new fiscal year July 1st without a new state budget. A conference committee of three House members and three senators met Monday morning to work on the budget, but concluded that they would not be able to reach a compromise because of two supplemental budget bills that are still unresolved.
One supplemental bill is to determine how a surplus from this year will be spent. Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, spent the final days of the regular session filibustering that bill because he thinks $47 million of the surplus should go to roads instead of building needs at the state’s colleges and universities. The House Ways and Means Committee has passed the second supplemental bill, but it still has to be approved by the full House and then by the Senate.
That plan would spend $150 million of state surplus on roads and bridges, plus another $70 million to build roads and an interchange on I-26 for the new Volvo plant in Berkeley County.
The filibuster in the Senate kept senators from voting on a bill to provide a long-term funding plan for roads and bridges. Sen. Davis argued that the state DOT has enough money and the state has enough growth in its budget to fund roads without a tax increase.
Sen. Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, says he’s hearing from the people he represents that they want lawmakers to fix roads.
“I say, ‘It costs money.’ They say, ‘We understand that. If you need to raise revenue, however you raise it, do it. Fix my roads,'” he says.
But what complicates things further is that next year is an election year for all 170 members of the House and Senate. If there was opposition to raising the gas tax as a long-term funding source for roads this year, it’s likely to be even harder to pass during an election year.
But Rep. Brian White, R-Anderson, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, says lawmakers still need to pass a plan. “I would hope and pray that we do,” he says. “I mean, I think that it’s vital to the state to have a roads bill that fixes our infrastructure so people don’t have to keep realigning the front ends of their cars when they hit potholes.”
Sheldon Jenkins of Columbia agrees. He had to replace all four tires on his car last year because of slow leaks he says were caused by hitting potholes. “So we just did it again this year, got four new tires and we’re still running into potholes. So I think whatever it costs, a penny or whatever, I think it’s worth it for the consumer, for us, to get the roads fixed so we could save money on our tires because the roads are just terrible here.”
The Senate Finance Committee will meet Wednesday to vote on the budget continuing resolution, so it can be waiting on the full Senate to vote on when it returns next week. The House has already passed a continuing resolution.
The last time lawmakers needed to pass a continuing resolution was 2012, but that was for only a one-week gap between when they passed the budget and Gov. Nikki Haley issued her vetoes on it. Rep. White says this time he does not expect the budget conference to reach a compromise anytime soon. “I think we’ll be here on into the summer,” he says.
