South Carolina is a Red state politically, as Tim Phillips and Dave Schwartz of Americans for Prosperity noted in The Examiner last Wednesday. What’s redder still are our road budget and the resulting citizen anger — major problems that Phillips and Schwartz seem determined to ignore.
We accept much of what Americans for Prosperity stands for. But on funding our road system — the government’s largest capital program — user fees work. AFP’s sponsors depend on this critical infrastructure for their industries to function and compete.
For all practical purposes in our state, because of population density and traffic patterns, the government is the only entity that can provide roads and bridges. And our citizens get the connection between good roads and adequately set, fairly apportioned, efficiently levied, and dedicated road user fees.
This group is sacrificing political and public credibility and alienating their best allies with their patently false gas tax demagoguery. One of their own allies in the state Senate replied to their piece by posting online: “To all my conservative constituents and the rest of those in South Carolina who continue to receive the annoying robocalls from AFP that are telling half-truths or in some cases outright lies I apologize as do my fellow senators. We cannot control them. If you would like to call or email them you can do so at (name and phone number of the AFP staffer). I am sure they would love to hear from you. Ask them their plan to fix our crumbling roads.”
Staring at a road system that’s crumbling from decades of neglect and choked from growth, the tide of public outrage is not with “the system,” but with our state legislature’s fear-based inability to address the problem.
Our sister states have far better roads and bridge conditions, funded by gas taxes with rates more than double ours. Their economies are competitive and their politicians haven’t been thrown out of office because of it. But ours may be if they continue to avoid the inevitable and fail to do their job.
Screeches that revenues will be used for bike paths, walking trails, and mass transit couldn’t be further from the truth. Just because our Department of Transportation must adhere to federally mandated long-range planning and suffer the process of seeking all “stakeholder” input, this does not mean that any of it must be funded. Quite the contrary — the vast majority of our General Assembly opposes funding such unrelated programs, and it is highly unlikely they will do so.
Our DOT and legislature are among the best in the nation, with minimal diversions of these revenues to non-highway-related purposes. We are polar opposites of our federal counterparts.
South Carolina is not Washington. Political gridlock that prevents bad policy is good. But when it comes to highway gridlock due to political gridlock, citizens view that as government dysfunction.
It’s been a generation since our citizens agreed to pay more for the use of our road system. At that time it was brokered by the Reaganesque Republican Gov. Carroll Campbell, and led to tremendous economic development.
The road to prosperity is literally a good road system. Gov. Nikki Haley has inherited this situation, and wants to minimize the burden. But some net pain at the pump is necessary to eliminate it from our commerce and commutes.
This is the job of the people’s legislature.
Rick Todd is President & CEO of the SC Trucking Association and Bill Ross is Executive Director of the South Carolina Alliance to Fix Our Roads. Both are active in the Coalition for Road and Bridge Improvements. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions for editorials, available at this link.
