Editorial: Columbia, SC, must use water, sewer funds first to repair water, sewer system
THE STATE Supreme Court shouldn’t have to waste precious time determining whether the city of Columbia can use water and sewer funds to pay for unrelated services.
We don’t say that because the issue isn’t important; it is. But it shouldn’t take legal action to get City Council to do the right thing. Council members can decide today to direct water and sewer funds toward their intended use.
Unfortunately, the council has made the same poor decision year after year, for decades, to siphon funds from the utilities account to pay for things such as police officers’ salaries, garbage pickup and fire station operations. Worse, there was a time when practically any idea for a new pet project led to a raid on the account.
In the meantime, improvements to water and sewer lines, many of which are more than 50 years old and need to be replaced, were put on hold. The sewer system fell into such disrepair that tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage spilled into neighborhoods and rivers over the years.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case today, and we don’t expect the justices to tell the city it must stop the transfers. But citizens who filed a lawsuit against the city certainly do. Their suit contends that between 1999 and 2010, the city illegally transferred $78.6 million from the water and sewage fund to use for other purposes and currently transfers more than $4 million a year.
Frankly, we don’t object to spending some of the money on legitimate city operations — after all of the water and sewer needs are cared for. But as long as there is a need for upkeep and expansion, the money should be spent on the utilities.
And the need is great. City officials say improvements mandated by the federal government will cost $750 million over the next decade. That doesn’t take into account the need to upgrade the water system. Once it’s all said and done, Columbia could spend well beyond $1 billion on its utilities.
The only way to generate that kind of revenue is through increased water and sewer rates. Strangely enough, City Council is wrangling over whether to increase rates. It refused to raise them last year despite the need to pay for the federally mandated work; even now, some council members are hesitant to act.
Yet the council continues to transfer $4 million a year in water and sewer money into the general fund even as it struggles to find ways to pay for system upgrades. We understand it would be difficult for the city to end the transfers immediately without making deep budget cuts or raising property taxes. But there’s no reason the city can’t devise a plan to phase out the unacceptable transfers over the next two or three years.
City officials have reduced the amount by $250,000 each of the past two years. While we commend them for that, we also urge them to speed up the process and wean city government off of water and sewer money so that those funds can be spent helping improve the utilities system.
That would send a clear message that the city doesn’t intend to gouge customers and also would end the practice of diverting money from an account that already lacks sufficient funding to fulfill its intended purpose.
This story was originally published April 6, 2015 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Editorial: Columbia, SC, must use water, sewer funds first to repair water, sewer system."