The Nerve

By RICK BRUNDRETT In a rare move last month, attorneys asked a judge to order the “civil” arrest of prominent Hampton County lawyer Alex Murdaugh to compel him to pay their clients – the sons of a Murdaugh family housekeeper who died in 2018 after a reported fall in his home – from a multimillion-dollar […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Last week, the Clemson University Board of Trustees gave president Jim Clements a five-year contract extension and an $86,200 raise through the university’s private fundraising arm, bringing his total annual salary to nearly $1 million, according to media reports. About a third of his new salary – $318,781 – comes from the […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT When S.C. lawmakers in 2009 first approved massive taxpayer-backed funding for aerospace giant Boeing to build an assembly plant in North Charleston, the state estimated it would spend nearly $34 million over 15 years for worker training. But over the past 10 fiscal years, the state has spent $58.3 million – an […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Major repaving or road reconstruction projects in South Carolina could take on average at least a year and possibly more than two years to complete, The Nerve found in a review of state Department of Transportation records. But it’s unclear exactly how long it takes to finish road projects funded with gas-tax-hike […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Since 2017, powerful county legislative delegations have approved a total of more than $8 million in state grants for hundreds of local recreation projects in South Carolina, records show. And as of mid-July, the delegations, made up of state House and Senate members representing a county, collectively had $5 million more available […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT In South Carolina, county legislative delegations – made up of state House and Senate members representing a county – have considerable power on their home turfs. As The Nerve has pointed out, delegations make appointments to various local boards and committees, including school boards in some counties and most county transportation committees, […]

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 Out of this fiscal year’s $32.5 billion state budget, more than a third of it – nearly $12.3 billion – is made up of “other” funds. “Other” funds include such things as fees and fines, college tuition, lottery proceeds, state gasoline taxes, and part of the state sales tax earmarked for K-12 […]

    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 E.&J. Gallo Winery, a multibillion-dollar global corporation, will get at least $25 million in assistance from the state of South Carolina to locate a plant in Chester County – plus could receive tens of millions more in taxpayer-backed incentives over decades, records released to The Nerve show. And the California-based wine […]