"Andie MacDowell
driving the Mary Kay pink Cadillac with the entire cast of ‘Nip/Tuck’ couldn’t
make this report look pretty."
That’s state Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Gaffney, as quoted in the Post and Courier. He was talking about a new audit report on the S.C. Department of Transportation. Here’s what the Associated Press had to say about it later in the day, after it was released:
AP-SC DOT AUDIT, 4TH LD-WRITETHRU
Audit: S.C. Transportation Department is wasteful
Eds: ADDS last graph with additional comment from SanfordBy SEANNA ADCOX
Associated Press Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – The South Carolina Transportation Department wastes millions of dollars even though it has limited funds to build and maintain its roads and bridges, according to a state audit released Tuesday.
Legislators asked the state Legislative Audit Council last year to review the agency’s operations and spending.
"I was concerned about things I was hearing. I believed the audit would actually show there might be minor issues but nothing major," said House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, who wrote the request. "As it turned out, there are huge issues."
The tens of millions of dollars wasted could be used to maintain roads, he said in an interview via cell phone, as his car hit a pothole on U.S. Highway 17 in Charleston.
The 70-page report found the department paid twice as much as necessary to hire temporary employees, wasted $32 million on unnecessarily high management fees, prepaid nearly $9 million for projects eliminated from two ongoing contracts and spent $3 million on an extra project the federal government required in 2002 because of environmental violations.
"This report shows something needs to be done," said Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Gaffney. He is chairman of one of two Senate subcommittees that will meet Thursday to hear the audit council’s review and then meet Friday to hear the Transportation Department’s response.
"It seems like some of these things have been whispered about over some time," he said. "This actually puts it in writing."
Harrell said he planned to form a special House subcommittee to review the audit and make recommendations.
The Transportation Department said the audit "contains many inaccuracies and misleading conclusions that misinform the Legislature and the public."
Peeler said he was especially concerned by allegations the department tried to keep their cash balances low during the legislative session, when lawmakers craft the state budget. The report said the department may have lost more than $1.5 million in interest over two fiscal years by delaying billing the federal government for reimbursements.
For more than a year, the chairman of the commission that governs the agency has repeatedly asked Director Elizabeth Mabry to resign.
Mabry said earlier this month there is nothing in the report that would make her consider resigning, but she wished she had a better relationship with Transportation Commission Chairman Tee Hooper, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Mark Sanford.
Hooper said the commission will discuss the report at a meeting later this month.
"There definitely needs to be action," he said. "I’m anxious to see what the commission thinks needs to be done now. I’ve made myself clear over the last year and a half."
Hooper stressed the audit is about management, not the agency’s employees. "The DOT has some really great employees _ a dedicated, hardworking group of people," he said. "It has to do with executive management decisions either made or not made."
The Transportation Department’s written response to the audit said it found no significant problems in programs that make up 99 percent of the department’s expenses.
The agency points to a report by the California-based Reason Foundation that ranks South Carolina second nationwide in cost-effectiveness, and its award for excellence in financial reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada.
The agency stresses it has saved taxpayers more than $3 billion by cramming 27 years of building projects _ more than 200 _ into seven years.
Last month, Mabry wrote an opinion piece accusing Hooper of trying to destroy the agency’s reputation so the governor could take it over.
Sanford has wanted to make the director an appointed member of his Cabinet. He said the report clearly shows that "meaningful structural change" is needed.
"Whether it’s overpaying by tens of millions for contracts, purposeful manipulation of account balances, or violating state law when it comes to temporary employees, this report is disturbing to me and should be disturbing to anyone who cares about taxpayers and anyone who cares about our state’s infrastructure," the governor said.
Sanford, re-elected last week, said reforming the agency will be a top priority next year, and that should happen before the agency gets more money.
Peeler said he does not support ousting Mabry.
"I like Miss Mabry. I don’t think she should be the sacrificial lamb," he said. "I don’t want to say we fired the director and now everything’s OK. I want to make the agency better."
Sanford said the agency’s response is particularly disturbing.
Rather than acknowledge problems, "the DOT has chosen to try and shoot the messenger and go on the attack against the Legislative Audit Council," he said.
Sanford called the council’s work unbiased and "straightforward in laying out problems or challenges that we might face. So the idea that they have some ax to grind is completely at odds with what I think has been fairly noble work over the years."
The solution to this problem is painfully obvious. This agency answers to no one. There is no way to hold it politically accountable under our current system of government. Consider it Exhibit A as to why we need to make the executive branch accountable to the elected chief executive, as Gov. Mark Sanford has been advocating for several years, and as we at this newspaper have been advocating for about a decade longer than that.
Lawmakers can study and wring their hands over this one audit all they want. But until they toss out this Byzantine system by which we run our highway department, nothing will get better.
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Brad, I demand an Andy McDowell picture, or better yet multiples of same.. For the aesthetic value it would add of course. As for the process improvements in the Highway department, one can only hope but we still have the same legislators we had last year, with a few changes.
Brad, how soon you forget. We already went through restructuring of the SCDOT (in 1993). That resulted in breaking up the highly efficient SC Department of Highways and Public Transportation into 3 far less efficient agencies. We now have 3 accounting departments, 3 ITs, 3 procurements, 3 directors. Yet we have fewer troopers and maintenance workers. Frankly, if the governor had complete control we’d probably see an even greater reduction in efficiency. I’ve seen first hand the results of restructuring and it wasn’t pretty. Remember the SCDPS trailer park on Broad River Road? And the Boykin Rose shennanigans? When the State says “accountability” you better hang on to your wallet. Be afraid, very afraid.
I personally supplied reporters and editors of The State with leads on many of the items in this report, and I know other engineers did, too. The State, as usual, ignores waste and corruption in government until other news outlets break the story. Then they just report it like the weather, and return to trivia and editorializing for higher taxes.
This report misses many items of overspending at SCDOT. There are other agencies with even shoddier management controls.
Lee, we right about the waste and corruption in DOT all the time. Every time they ask for more money, we say that as badly as our roads do need work, we can’t give more money to an agency this messed up. Restructuring must come first, to make the agency accountable.
Oh, and by the way, bud, we had the same position when it was the old Highway Dept. I haven’t forgotten anything. The Legislature did a total sham “restructuring” on that agency so they could say they did something, while keeping out real accountability. It’s too important to lawmakers to have the agency run by connections and back channels, because that benefits them politically, while working against the interests of the people of South Carolina.
Brad, to borrow from Mary Rosh’s playbook. Since restructuring failed in 1993 (at least with regard to SCDHPT) is it because restructuring is a fundementally flawed strategy to making the DOT more efficient or is it because we haven’t implemented a sufficiently pure form of restructuring?
Frankly the agency really isn’t that bad. It does a remarkable job with the limited amount of money it has to work with. I’m sure if an audit team came into the State Newspaper they would find instances of waste, yet the newspaper gets published every day. Same with the DOT. The roads get built and maintained. Could they do better? Absolutely. Would a major restructuring help them do better? Probably not. We’d just add a bunch of unneeded obsticles in the way of getting the work done. Let’s implement some of the findings in the report where they make sense but otherwise leave the DOT alone. It’s doing fine without a bunch of wasteful restructuring nonsense.
Brad, I get so tired of a Constitutional “restructuring” and “comprehensive tax reform” being used as excuses for reforming nothing.
In business, you reform everything that is broken that you can, as soon as you find it, or you go out of business.
South Carolina has more miles of road and more of them under state maintenance than many much larger and wealthier states. It has no life cycle plans and budgets for maintenance, so the DOT is incapable of financially controlling its work.
The immediate action should be to halt all new road construction and all but critical maintenance until every road is inventoried and put under a master plan with costs afixed in future dollars.
All roadbuilding and widening to subsidize new real estate development and urban sprawl should be ended. Make developers pay the entire cost of construction and add it into the house price, so the homeowners can finance it, instead of the taxpayers financing it with bonds.
Lee actually makes some good points. Restructuring is really just a cop-out for making real change. Effective changes at the DOT can easily be implemented under the current commission system. And for a lot less disruption to the hard working employees who, for the most part, give the taxpayers a pretty good bang for the buck.
It appears that Mabry runs the highway dept as she does her personal life. Her neighbors dislike her because of dog problems and noise problems that she refuses to address. She is extremely overbearing when confronted by neighbors. And of course, we don’t want to forget how she openly campaigned against Gov Sanford and used slanderous remarks against him. The list goes on and on. Of course, we don’t want to forget that she is now on marriage number four. Someone who conducts themself as she does in her personal life certainly does not need to be the head of a state agency.
Do the people of South Carolina realize that Mabry was appointed to the highway department position because of her late fathers political connections?Absolutely true! Do some research. His name was Henry Stuckey. She did not get the job because of her competence as we well know now.
Most appointees are cronies seeking a do-nothing pie job.
Mabry’s predecessor was busted on federal weapons charges for buying submachineguns as his toys.