DOT squandering money defending illegal actions

THE GOOD NEWS is that one of the people who was serving illegally on the commission that runs the state Department of Transportation finally gave up his seat earlier this year. The bad news is that two commissioners still serve in violation of state law.

The worse news is that the Transportation Commission voted earlier this month to use public money to fight a lawsuit that seeks to enforce the law. Only about $25,000 has been spent so far, according to The Greenville News. But while the total is unlikely to break the agency, that’s money that could have been spent paving potholes or straightening out deadly curves or resurfacing crumbling highways — you know, all those things we can’t afford to do.

At issue is a 1993 law that prohibits commissioners from serving two consecutive terms. It’s a straightforward law, which the attorney general’s office has explained to the Legislature in at least six separate opinions. But some legislators don’t like the law, and so they ignore it. They can do that because transportation commissioners are appointed by congressional district, and only the legislators who live in a given district vote on the appointment.

That means a handful of legislators who don’t have the votes to change the law can nevertheless outvote their colleagues and reappoint a commissioner, as they have done in fully half the congressional districts since 2003, illegally reappointing John Hardee in the 2nd District, Moot Truluck in the 6th District and Robert Harrell Sr. in the 1st District. (Mr. Truluck, the only one of the three not related to a powerful legislator, was finally replaced with a legal appointee earlier this year.)

The ease with which the law is violated is yet another reason this agency needs to be overhauled, and control for the day-to-day management given to the governor. But if we must maintain this parochial, unaccountable system, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that our legislators at least obey the law that they themselves wrote.

Greenville’s Ned Sloan, who has made a career of filing suits to force the state to obey state law, is trying to make that happen. Earlier this year, he took those illegally appointed commissioners to court, and the state Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. That led to such absurdities as Mr. Hardee arguing that the constitution prohibited the judiciary from ruling in this case because it involves a legislative decision. Of course this suit doesn’t ask the court to tell lawmakers what the law should be; it asks the court to tell lawmakers they must obey the law, which they are perfectly free to change.

But let’s set aside the silly defenses. The issue at hand is the gross misuse of public funds. One could argue that the commissioners shouldn’t have to spend their own money to fight this lawsuit, since it was legislators who appointed them, in violation of state law. But the fact is that those commissioners don’t have to join their legislative patrons in violating the law; they can — and should — resign. Then neither they nor the taxpayers would have to waste any money on this case, and we could use highway funds the way all those commissioners claim to believe they should be spent — to improve our highways.