The Nerve

By RICK BRUNDRETT South Carolina will need almost $43 billion more by 2040 to fix its bad roads and handle increased traffic with projected growth, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave the state’s roads a “D” grade in its annual infrastructure report card. Meanwhile, the S.C. Department of Transportation continues to […]

    By RICK BRUNDRETT The S.C. Department of Transportation since 2016 has awarded 56 bridge contracts totaling $8.4 million to a company with ties to Sen. Hugh Leatherman – one of the state’s most powerful lawmakers, records provided to The Nerve show. The contracts with Florence Concrete Products, Inc. ranged from $50,164 for a […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Only three bridge projects have been completed in South Carolina with the nearly $2 billion in revenues collected under the 2017 state gas-tax-hike law, recently released transportation department records show. And although the S.C. Department of Transportation has identified 465 out of 750 “structurally deficient” bridges statewide to be replaced, other agency […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT A legislatively controlled committee has given five-figure pay hikes to a group of state agency heads, and a new law empowers the panel to recommend raises next fiscal year for certain statewide elected officials. The Agency Head Salary Commission (AHSC) on Thursday– the start of the new fiscal year – approved the […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Claiming that many lawmakers had little or no notice of a $550 million taxpayer-backed bond plan for projects at the Port of Charleston, a senator has proposed expanding the Ports Authority governing board to include the heads of the state Commerce and Transportation departments. Besides making Commerce secretary Bobby Hitt and DOT […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT In its latest annual report, the S.C. Department of Transportation claimed it patched about 679,300 potholes statewide during fiscal year 2020. Based on those numbers, an average of 14,767 potholes were filled from July 1, 2019, through June 30, 2020, in each of the state’s 46 counties, though the annual report, provided […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT The number of S.C. Department of Transportation employees making at least $100,000 has almost doubled since Christy Hall became the agency head, though the department’s total workforce size has changed little over the period, a review by The Nerve found. Last week, the legislatively controlled state Agency Head Salary Commission hiked Hall’s […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Some 37 years after the idea was first proposed, Interstate 73 in South Carolina exists only on paper. Yet since 2004, the state Department of Transportation has spent at least $77 million on the project – much of it for design costs and land purchases along the proposed route from North Carolina […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT In January 2016, a driver swerved around a pothole on Bate Harvey Road in York County, crossed the center line and hit an oncoming vehicle, court records show. The S.C. Department of Transportation last year paid, through the state Insurance Reserve Fund (IRF), $150,000 in damages and $26,592 in legal expenses to […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT The state transportation department hasn’t replaced one bad bridge with gas-tax-hike revenues collected for nearly two years – despite promises by lawmakers that the money would be used to fix South Carolina’s crumbling roads and bridges. And the Department of Transportation has completed relatively few bridge projects in recent years with other […]