Lexington County’s roads need work. Why a planned fix is getting delayed
Plans for Lexington County voters to have another shot at passing a penny sales tax to fund road work have been put off for an additional year.
Lexington County Council on Tuesday voted to postpone a planned referendum asking voters to approve the tax, which would add a one-penny-on-the-dollar levy on transactions in the county to fund road improvements.
A special commission had previously been put together to examine the county’s road needs with the goal of putting together a list of proposed projects in time to put them in front of voters at the November 2026 election.
But Lexington County is simultaneously conducting its own traffic improvement study that officials expect to be complete by next October — too late for any of its recommendations to be included in the plans set to go to voters weeks later.
The penny tax commission asked the county council to delay the planned referendum for one year, putting it on the ballot for November 2027. That proposal was adopted unanimously by the council on Tuesday.
“We can’t really move forward” without knowing what the traffic study might say, County Administrator Lynn Sturkie told the council.
This will be Lexington County’s third attempt to pass a penny sales tax in a little over a decade, after two previous referendums were rejected by voters in 2014 and 2022. County Councilman Darrell Hudson has said this will be the county’s “third strike” in getting the plan approved by voters, and on Tuesday urged his fellow council members to try to get reluctant voters on board before 2027.
“We’ve discussed ideas on how we can do that,” Hudson said. “We should focus on zip codes that have not been favorable,” like the largely rural Council District 1 that spans the southern part of the county from Pelion to Swansea. ”We’ll meet with key figures in (District 1 Councilman Michael Bishop’s) area even as they do the plan to get their input.”
Road work is needed in much of the county. A 2023 study showed that 70% of Lexington County’s road miles would be in “fair” or worse condition by the end of this decade, and county officials have said the funding the county receives for road repairs from the statewide gas tax won’t be sufficient to meet those needs. County council members last year discussed assessing a $30 road maintenance fee on all registered vehicles in the county, before dropping that plan in the face of public opposition.
Neighboring Richland County approved an extension last year of its own 1% sales tax originally passed in a 2012 voter referendum, despite concerns about how that program had been managed previously. That tax had raised around $1 billion for work improving Richland County roads over its 12-year life span.
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