Lexington County fee would bring almost $8M a year for roads. Residents don’t want to pay
Lexington County residents had the chance Tuesday to weigh in on a proposed $30 fee that County Council plans to add to its vehicle registration to pay for road improvements. And those who showed up to a public hearing on the issue expressed an overwhelming opinion — they don’t like it.
Nine people spoke against the proposed fee, which would be required of all 300,000 registered vehicles in Lexington County from Jan. 1 if it receives final approval from Lexington County Council. Only one county resident spoke in support of the plan. The online responses to the hearing were even more lopsided: 122 responses in opposition to the fee came in versus two in favor.
The road user fee, given preliminary approval earlier this year, is the latest attempt by Lexington County Council to deal with its crumbling roads. A 2023 study found that that 38% of the county’s roadways were in “fair” or “poor” condition, and that by the end of the decade 70% of the roads would be in such condition without action.
The new fee would raise approximately $8 million a year, something supporters say is a drop in the bucket to what is needed to bring county roads up to snuff.
“It costs half a million dollars a mile to resurface a road,” Brent Rewis, a Gilbert resident and former deputy secretary of planning at the S.C. Department of Transportation, said at the Tuesday hearing. “Intersection improvements go for $1.5 million to $3 million.”
The former DOT official was the only member of the public to speak in favor of the fee.
Other speakers raised objections to the idea. Dan Hagan of Swansea said the proposal violates state Supreme Court precedent that says a local government can’t impose a fee on someone if the payer doesn’t receive a direct benefit, and he argued paving roads for everyone doesn’t count.
“Let’s call this what it is, a tax,” Hagan said. “This ordinance violates the law, and we will challenge it in court.”
Some suggested the county should pay for road maintenance by moving funds around in the existing budget.
“Maybe you need an Elon Musk-type person to come in and help set priorities and where the budget should be spent,” said John Campbell of Chapin.
Others suggested the fee should be based on a sliding scale based on vehicle weight, or replaced with some kind of tax that targets visitors to the county rather than drivers who live there.
That might be the sentiment council members want. In introducing the new fee, they said it was their intention for it to be phased out if voters ultimately approve a penny sales tax that would be targeted toward road improvements. Voters previously rejected those efforts in 2014 and 2022, but county officials are moving to try again in 2026. The council previously approved the creation of a special commission, drawn from county and municipal appointees, that will draw up a new project list for the renewed penny tax.
The previous penny tax rejected by voters in 2022 would have raised an estimated $500 million over its eight-year lifespan. But a renewed push would have to update any cost projections for the intervening four years. Chairwoman Beth Carrigg said Tuesday that absent a tax, the only source of funding the county has for road projects is the gas tax money allocated by the state — around $6 million annually, a third of which is required to be spent on state-maintained roads.
Rewis, the former DOT planner, said Lexington County and South Carolina are likely to only see more growth in the future, with more people moving in and bringing their cars to the area’s roads along with them.
“Growing up here, I’ve seen the growth,” he said. “It’s coming whether you want it or not.” And he doubts his former employer will be able to respond adequately to all that growth.
“DOT owns 40,000 miles of road and they can’t manage it all,” Rewis added.
This story was originally published October 23, 2024 at 12:55 PM.
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