The S.C. Department of Transportation has been in the news a lot recently. Chairman of the Commission Tee Hooper feels that mismanagement at the agency is so serious that Executive Director Elizabeth Mabry should resign. A subsequent report in The Greenville News says the agency hired relatives of two commissioners. The cepartment is also in the news because there is a move in the Legislature to give it more money.

The DOT commissioners have agreed to hire a consultant to look at the agency for management problems, but as The Post and Courier correctly pointed out, review would be far better coming from the independent S.C. Legislative Audit Council. While the Legislative Audit Council would be able to address questions of management, cronyism, and morale, it will not be able to solve the most serious problem at the Department of Transportation -- the way it decides which roads get built and where.

In truth, the DOT does not do transportation planning. Instead, new roads and road-widening projects are simply nominated on an ad hoc basis, and sent up to the state DOT. If the powerful mayor of a small town wants a bypass, he simply enters it on the list. If an influential landowner or developer wants a new road to serve his property, all he has to do is get a politician to put it on the list.

There is no requirement in South Carolina for road projects to be objectively analyzed to determine whether they will improve traffic flow or make it worse. No one is charged with looking at alternatives that could reduce congestion and eliminate the need for expensive construction. No one is required to even ask the questions, "Do we need this road?" "Should money be spent on this project versus some other more pressing transportation need?"

That is why a debacle like the bridge over the Santee Swamp keeps moving forward, even though it provides very little transportation or economic development value, and will do incalculable damage to one of the state's most pristine remaining natural areas.

Right now, the Conservation League can list several major road projects that are not needed and should not be built. These roads -- from the bridge over the Santee Swamp to the widening of Steed Creek Road through the Francis Marion National Forest -- are blatant wastes of tax dollars that will do immeasurable harm to the state's natural resources.

Further, these wasteful projects continue the drain on existing transportation dollars that should be going to maintain the state's existing roads.

The 20-year funding shortfall for highway programs, which includes maintenance, capacity, repair, safety, resurfacing and bridge replacement, is $40.9 billion. Of the state's 8,000 or so bridges, one-fourth are functionally obsolete or structurally deficient. DOT has stopped paving all the secondary roads in the states.

Put simply, DOT is starving our existing highways and bridges of needed maintenance and repair while binging on wasteful new roads or road-widening projects. For example, DOT has stated that I-73 is the state's top priority, but $25 million has been earmarked in the House version of the new transportation bill for the bridge over the Santee Swamp, the largest amount, by far, of any earmark for transportation in South Carolina. This means it will take longer to find the money to build what the state says is important.

To make matters worse, this agency doesn't even budget for maintenance and repairs when it plans to build a new road. The new Ravenel Bridge over Charleston harbor is ready to open in a month or so, but DOT has no money in the budget for its maintenance.

It is time to bring some coherence and accountability to transportation planning in South Carolina. The Coastal Conservation League is asking Governor Sanford to appoint a Blue Ribbon Committee to study how this state does transportation planning and to recommend reforms. We think these reforms should include the following, at a minimum:

-- A state "Fix-It-First" policy that ensures we are repairing and maintaining roads efficiently before we add more road miles.

-- An objective process by which road projects are analyzed to determine whether they are really needed, and if so, their relative importance to serving legitimate transportation needs. This process would remove political influence from determining which roads get funded.

-- An alternatives analysis that considers a range of transportation solutions to clearly identified problems, rather than assuming construction is the answer to every problem.

-- A process to coordinate transportation planning with other state and county planning processes so that we aren't encouraging sprawl into the same areas we are trying to protect or extending infrastructure where it is not needed or desired.

We absolutely should not entertain giving this agency more money until an independent review has been done of internal agency problems, and until we have instituted reforms so that we can trust that billions in our tax dollars are going where they are needed.