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COLUMBIA -- The chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee says it's "mind-boggling" that state transportation officials paid $108,000 to private consultants for an outline of a proposed transportation maintenance manual.

"It's just mind-boggling to me that we would go outside our agency to write manuals about what people inside the agency should have the most knowledge of," Sen. Greg Ryberg, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, told The Greenville News. "To spend $100,000 when they are short of money like they are, it goes to show why we had the Legislative Audit Council look at this agency."

State Department of Transportation officials disclosed Friday that they had paid consultants $108,761 for a report on what should go in a proposed maintenance manual to be used to help train young engineers. The manual is still under development.

The giant agency has been the focus of a year-long performance audit by the LAC at the request of lawmakers concerned by allegations of mismanagement made last year by DOT Chairman Tee Hooper.

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Hooper on Friday told The News that he has not seen the consultants' maintenance manual report but has heard about it. He said the payments appear to be an example of wasteful spending.

Joel Sawyer, a spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford, said he thinks the best possible source for deciding what should go in a DOT manual would be the employees at the agency.

"Here we have DOT making a very questionable use of taxpayer dollars to hire consultants to do the job of the agency," he said. "Unfortunately, it seems to be yet another chapter in what is becoming a book on DOT's questionable use of taxpayer dollars."

The News last year reported that the agency bought Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs for four of its executives; paid a highway commissioner $111,000 in between his board terms for public relations work that included writing letters for the agency's executive director; and paid Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer $130,000 for a tenth of an acre and a storage building, more than twice the amount it initially offered him.

The agency also spent about $250 million on two private consulting contracts for a seven-year accelerated construction program, The News reported.

The maintenance manual project was requested in late 2004 by the state Department of Transportation during its accelerated construction program, officials said, to provide recommendations on what should go into such a manual.

The consultants spent six months reviewing maintenance operations and interviewing maintenance employees in each of the agency's seven districts, DOT officials said.

The outline "focused on not only the typical aspects of highway maintenance such as drainage and roadway repairs but also on employee safety, environmental issues and human resources issues, to name a few," according to the highway engineer's office, which oversaw the work.

The report was done by the Flour System Technology group and Civil Engineering Consulting Services, officials said.

DOT signed a five-year, $23 million contract last year with CECS to provide management services, The News reported earlier this year. Some highway commissioners questioned this year why the agency had to go outside for management services.

DOT's disclosure of the project came as it announced that it had been chosen as the second most cost-efficient state transportation agency in the nation by a private foundation report.

The Reason Foundation report compared state-maintained road systems and each state's transportation budget. South Carolina ranked third most efficient last year in the study.

South Carolina trails all other states in the amount of state and federal funds received per mile, according to the report. The state's gas tax hasn't been raised since 1987.

"South Carolina has learned to stretch its dollars through innovation, careful resource management and effective planning," DOT Executive Director Elizabeth Mabry said in a statement announcing the results. "We have used engineering and local partnering to identify and prioritize highway maintenance and construction activities statewide so that clear goals are set and tax dollars are not wasted."

The report also noted that only four states have more fatalities per vehicle mile than South Carolina.

Ryberg said he believes the authors of the report should review their findings once the LAC report is issued.

The yearlong performance audit of DOT is expected to be made public in the first two weeks of November.