SC roads plan stalled by Senate filibuster

S.C. lawmakers likely will drive home a week from Thursday without passing a plan to fix South Carolina’s crumbling roads and bridges.

With five days left to pass a road-repair plan, one senator has taken over the state Senate, arguing a $85M proposal to spend money from a state savings account proposal should include money for roads.

State Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, along with a handful of the Senate’s most anti-tax lawmakers, also want an anticipated $400 million in additional state revenues to go to pay for road repairs, likely wrecking any plan to increase the state’s 16.75 cent-a-gallon gas tax.

Davis contends a tax hike is unneeded, due to the surplus, and would be unwise in any event, given the state’s “broken” Transportation Department.

Critics say spending $400 million on roads from a onetime surplus does nothing to ensure the state has the added money each year — up to $1.5 billion a year through 2040, according to one estimate — to repair the state’s roads and bridges, and expand its transportation system.

After Tuesday’s stalemated session, senators from both parties met behind closed doors to try to work out a deal on how to spend the $85 million savings account so they could get to the roads plan.

Republican Gov. Nikki Haley Tuesday endorsed spending the onetime surplus money on roads, adding she also would support using the money to cut income taxes or pay down the state’s debt.

Davis continued the third day of his filibuster Tuesday, arguing the money in a state savings account should go for road repairs instead of, as proposed, primarily to higher education projects. He argued the state’s colleges are doing well, citing construction — much of it privately financed — near the University of South Carolina in Columbia. “It doesn’t look like poor ol’ higher ed to me.”

Davis’ filibuster is preventing senators from taking up a roads proposal, stuck behind the savings account spending on the Senate’s calendar. Unless he gets his way, Davis said he would filibuster the remaining five days in the session, blocking any other action.

State Rep. Gary Simrill, R-York, said it is “very unfortunate” the roads proposal is stalled in the Senate.

The S.C. House approved its roads bill by a 87-20 vote in April, agreeing to increase the gas tax by 10 cents a gallon and hike the maximum state sales tax on vehicles to $500 from $300. That proposal would have raised $427 million a year for roads.

“We need a revenue stream that is reliable and sustainable,” Simrill said, adding a gas-tax increase would also be paid by out-of-state residents.

While spending a one-time surplus on infrastructure is a good idea, doing so will not provide steady future funding for roads or reform the state Transportation Department, Simrill said.

In 2007, for example, the state had huge surpluses but they vanished with he Great Recession, Simrill said.

Bill Ross, executive director of the pro-gas-tax S.C. Alliance to Fix Our Roads, said this year’s surplus gives lawmakers the opportunity to say they want to fix roads but not truly address the problem.

“It gets them off the hook politically,” Ross said, adding passage of a roads plan is looking doubtful.

“I really thought we had a chance, but it’s gotten so political,” Ross said, adding the Senate needed to pass a bipartisan plan like the House did.

But, with the Senate divided into at least three factions, including Davis’ no-new-taxes faction, that is unlikely.

Now, Ross said he expects the road-repair issue to devolve into a blame game.

"The public will see through this," Ross said, adding legislators will pay the price for not fixing roads next year when they are up for re-election.

But Haley predicted Tuesday that state surpluses, such as the $400 million one expected to be announced later this week, will continue in future years. “I strongly believe this (is) not going to be the only year we have this much new money.”

Haley said lawmakers should use the surplus to pay down the state’s debt, cut taxes or put it toward road repairs, a priority of the legislative session. “If they did any of those three things ... that’s a great use of the taxpayer dollars.”

Haley said lawmakers should study the best way to use of the surplus after the session ends June 4 and announce a plan when the Legislature meets again in January.

Haley proposed a 10-cent-a-gallon gas-tax increase for roads in her State of the State address but insisted it be tied to a far larger 2 percentage point cut in the state’s income tax. That plan went nowhere.

In previous years, Haley has suggested state surpluses — or the “money tree,” as she calls those surpluses— should go to road repairs.

But that is not a long-term solution, said state Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Berkeley.

“I don’t believe we can rely on the ‘money tree’ to take care of our continuing needs for roads,” said Grooms, who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee.

Grooms supports a Senate Republican Caucus plan to raise $800 million for road repairs by increasing the state’s gas tax by 12 cents a gallon and hiking other driving-related fees. That plan also would cut state income taxes by 1 percentage point and give the governor control of the Transportation Department.

This story was originally published May 26, 2015 at 1:28 PM with the headline "SC roads plan stalled by Senate filibuster."