Title: Why the Haley Plan Would Make S.C.'s Roads Problem Worse | The South Carolina Policy Council
Headings: Haley Road Plan: Higher Taxes, New Debt, Fuzzy Numbers
Haley Road Plan: Higher Taxes, New Debt, Fuzzy Numbers
THE GOVERNOR’S PLAN IS A SHELL GAME THAT WOULD DO LITTLE TO IMPROVE S.C.’S ROADS
The plan is based on contrived assumptions, impossible predictions, and misleading promises.
The governor’s plan would transfer funds from maintenance to expansion
Haley’s DOT reform plan isn’t a plan.
How to Fix our Roads
1) Require maintenance work be prioritized over new construction
2) Make the DOT accountable to the governor
3) Devolve some state-controlled roads to local control
4) Abolish the Infrastructure Bank
5) Full transparency in DOT spending and construction contracts

Content: Even if implemented perfectly, then, Haley’s plan would take 6 years just to make South Carolina’s income tax rate competitive with North Carolina’s as it exists today. The governor’s plan would transfer funds from maintenance to expansion
In her executive budget, Gov. Haley proposes transferring an additional $105 million over last year’s appropriations to the State Transportation Infrastructure Bank (STIB), an organization that funds expansionary road projects by the issuance of public bonds – i.e. debt – typically to politically important counties. Without calling attention to it, furthermore, the governor proposed cutting the budget of an agency that actually performs road repairs and maintenance. In her executive budget Haley cuts overall Department of Transportation (DOT) appropriations by roughly half a million dollars. (Granted, in the press release announcing the executive budget, the governor proposes sending $61.4 million from the current sales tax on cars and trucks to the DOT for road maintenance. But a closer look at her actual proposed spending plan – leaving aside the talking points – reveals that other monies would be taken away from DOT, with the result that the agency would receive about half a million dollars less than it received the year before. Whether the governor intended this or not is impossible to say.) In other words, Gov. Haley’s roads plan would first divert funds from much-needed maintenance to new expansionary road projects, many of which are unnecessary. It gets worse. The funds the governor wishes to transfer to the STIB come from state gas tax revenues, which are the only transportation funds the DOT has complete discretion over.