Lexington County drivers might have to pay more for car registration. Here’s how much and why
Drivers in Lexington County might soon have to pay an extra $30 for their vehicle registration, part of a county effort to get funding for road improvements.
Lexington County Council gave initial approval to a new road user fee on Tuesday, although many members made it clear they didn’t want to. Instead, they see the proposed $30 fee as a necessity to repair the county’s crumbling transportation infrastructure.
”I don’t want to charge anybody, but we’ve got to do something just to catch up,” Councilman Darrell Hudson said.
Councilman Todd Cullum said he had a personal stake in the proposal. “If this passes, I’m writing a check for $120. I’ve got four vehicles,” he said.
Supporters said there is a clear need for action on road work, with one recent study predicting that 70% of the county’s roadways will be in “fair” or worse condition by the end of the decade.
Two more votes and a public hearing are still needed before the road user fee would be finalized.
Council members have said some kind of funding mechanism is necessary to address the county’s roads needs, especially after a 2022 referendum in which Lexington County voters rejected a 1% sales tax that would have funded a slew of road projects across the county.
The proposed user fee won’t go nearly as far as the penny-on-the-dollar sales tax would have toward funding road improvements, at least in the short term. The county estimates the new road user fee will raise approximately $8 million annually, whereas the penny sales tax would have raised $500 million over its planned eight-year lifespan.
But Lexington County voters rejected the penny tax proposal by more than 8,000 votes in the 2022 countywide referendum, 55% to 45%.
Hudson said he hoped the penny tax proposal could be revived in some form in the future, saying it failed in the last referendum because “our neighboring county screwed up so much from the beginning and got such bad press.”
He was referring to Richland County’s transportation penny tax program, approved in 2012, which was roiled by problems that once left the program facing a $154 million deficit in getting all of its $1 billion worth of projects completed. The state Department of Revenue also challenged $40 million in county spending as improper, leading to a 2021 settlement agreement that required Richland County taxpayers to pay $15.5 million back into the roads program.
Richland County officials say they have since gotten the penny program under budget, partly by scaling back some projects from their initial estimates and by the county taking over management of the program from the private consortium initially tasked with running the program, which had been the target of many of the state’s spending complaints.
In light of Richland County’s penny problems, Lexington County officials went to great pains during the 2022 referendum campaign to show how their penny tax would be managed differently from their neighbor’s.
The road to the user fee
Lexington County’s proposed new user fee would be assessed on all 300,000 vehicles registered in Lexington County at the time owners pay their vehicle taxes.
A fee doesn’t have unanimous support from council members, though. Council members Glen Conwell, Charli Wessinger and Scott Whetstone voted against the proposal Tuesday.
Wessinger said she had “a lot of heartburn” over requiring county residents to pay a new fee and hoped that alternative funding sources could be found. Even Councilwoman Debbie Summers, who voted for the proposal, said “$30 is going to hurt for some people.”
The proposal approved Tuesday includes a nod to the potential for a penny tax to eventually get public approval. If a penny roads tax is approved in the future, the road user fee will automatically sunset.
This story was originally published March 13, 2024 at 11:10 AM.
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