The Nerve

    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 Stuck in a pothole. For the fiscal year that ended June 30, a special fund created with the 2017 state gas-tax-hike law had an $896.1 million surplus – a 50% increase compared to the end of fiscal 2020, records show. Total collected revenues also grew by about the same rate over the […]

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 Through March, a special fund created with the state gas-tax-hike law had a cash balance of nearly $824 million and racked up more than $26 million in investment earnings on surpluses since July 2017, records show. The $823.8 million surplus in the “Infrastructure Maintenance Trust Fund” as of March 31 represented nearly […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Over the past three years, the S.C. Department of Transportation denied a total of nearly 2,300 pothole-damage claims filed by motorists statewide – more than half of all such requests received during the period, The Nerve found in a review of agency records. Motorists collectively sought more than $4.8 million in 4,325 […]

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 In just one year, the surplus from state gas-tax-hike revenues grew by more than a quarter of a billion dollars, or 50%, to $752 million as of Jan. 31, records show. The Nerve repeatedly has pointed out the growing reserve that the S.C. Department of Transportation has been sitting on since the […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT 2020 ended with a first in the 3½ years of the gas-tax-hike law, though many South Carolina motorists probably won’t be happy about it. As of Dec. 31, more revenues were collected under the law, which took effect July 1, 2017, than the total estimated cost of all road and bridge projects […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to drive over pothole-free roads in South Carolina, you probably should choose a different goal. The Nerve’s review of recently released state Department of Transportation records found that since the gas-tax-hike law took effect July 1, 2017, through Nov. 30 of last year, the […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Despite lawmakers’ promises more than three years ago that part of the state gas tax hike would be used to fix South Carolina’s bad bridges, only one bridge project has been completed with that money, newly released records show. The Nerve’s review of S.C. Department of Transportation records found that through Oct. […]