Road tax means more than pennies from South Carolina taxpayers’ pockets

Listen up.

If you’ve ever paid sales tax in Richland County, this settlement involves your money.

The South Carolina Department of Revenue, the Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority, and Richland County government have settled a dispute over how the county spent its penny tax transportation funds.

You remember the penny tax, product of the chaos that was the November 2012 election? Yes, that tax.

That was the year of a court-ordered ballot recount, long lines at the polls, too few voting machines and a myriad of other troubles. It was also the year voters approved the penny tax, by a vote of 52% for and 48% against, as a means of funding much-needed improvements to everything from dirt road paving and bike paths to road widening and sidewalk repairs.

Back then, The State endorsed the plan.

“Some ask whether Richland County can afford to increase the local sales tax by a penny to pay for improved public bus service as well as roads and other transportation-related projects, but if we’re going to move from good to great, we can’t afford not to,” we wrote.

In 2021, it makes even more sense. We all know good infrastructure makes communities attractive to both businesses and residents. It encourages investment and promotes a better quality of life.

The penny tax program remains an important one, but an audit of the program’s spending from 2013 to 2018 suggested the funds weren’t just going to actual transportation projects. They were also being used for public information campaigns and office supplies.

In the settlement announced Wednesday, the county has agreed to replace $15.5 million in penny tax funds with money from the county coffers to ensure that money collected via the penny tax — a tax on your Richland County purchases — goes strictly to the road and other transportation projects voters supported.

The settlement notes that from the beginning, the Department of Revenue was concerned with promoting “public accountability and transparency regarding the collection and expenditures of revenue generated by the penny tax.”

It continues, “from the inception, the Department’s primary concern was the absence of a uniform standard” to make sure the money collected was spent specifically on “transportation-related projects.”

That’s all we ask of our government. You collect our taxes, so spend the money wisely and tell us where it went.

We’re glad the parties here came to some agreement, and we hope that means the program will operate with as much transparency as possible from this day forward because by the time the tax expires in Richland County, it will have collected a maximum of $1.037 billion — and that’s a whole lot of pennies.

This story was originally published July 21, 2021 at 2:35 PM.