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COLUMBIA -- After several weeks, more than a dozen witnesses and thousands of pages of documents, lawmakers looking into the operations of the state Department of Transportation still want to know one thing: Who's in charge?

A lack of accountability has become a mantra among the three legislative committees that have spent a month peering into an audit report that alleged the agency had wasted millions of dollars, mismanaged contracts and violated state and federal laws.

"No one is really in charge, and that is because of the structure," said Sen. Chip Campsen of Charleston. "It's the poster child for the need for government restructuring."

What happens to DOT, lawmakers argue, is not a mere political issue. Members of the public are more likely to come into contact with the agency and its work than any other, legislators said at a recent hearing. DOT operates a $1 billion annual budget, one of state government's largest, and maintains more than 42,000 miles of roads.

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But the lines of authority and responsibility at the agency have not always been clear in the glimpses lawmakers say they have seen in legislative hearings.

A seven-member board oversees the agency, for instance, but doesn't always approve the agency's contracts. The board's chairman, selected by the governor, sets the agenda but only votes in the case of a tie and hasn't been able to compel a majority of members to meet to discuss the audit report. The board's other six members are elected by lawmakers in each congressional district.

The board is responsible for hiring the agency's executive director, who remains as long as four of the seven members approve of the director's performance.

DOT Chairman Tee Hooper, who has been openly critical of Executive Director Elizabeth Mabry, laughed when asked by Campsen at a recent hearing whether he could effect change in the agency.

"Are you kidding?" he asked Campsen. "I don't have any vote or authority."

Hooper went on to list the structural flaws in the agency, including the fact that whomever sits as executive director must answer to 170 lawmakers, each of whom wants something done in their district.

"I don't totally blame Betty Mabry," he told senators. "She is part of a system that breeds favoritism."

For Rep. J. Adam Taylor of Laurens, who sits on the House study committee looking into DOT, the questions about accountability are on a more basic level. Taylor said he was puzzled by testimony over how and why the agency negotiated two consultants' contracts in 1999 for hundreds of millions of dollars, increasing its offer of compensation to the consultants from 2 to 4.5 percent.

The Legislative Audit Council's auditors reported finding little to document negotiations on the contracts and concluded the contracts were not done in the best interest of the state, a finding denied by DOT officials.

"It looks to me that in the contract part is where I'm seeing a lack of accountability," he said.

Sen. Larry Grooms, a Berkeley County Republican who chairs one of the panels looking at DOT, said legislators' views on who is in charge at DOT depend on their experiences with the agency. Those that have called someone to get a road built or fixed have a different view than those who haven't, he said.

"The system has evolved to a point where there is one person in charge, and that's it," he said. "Even though there are seven commissioners who are supposed to govern what happens, if she has the ability to satisfy at least four of them so they don't ask any questions or look beyond their immediate concerns, then she gets to do whatever she wants almost without question. And I guess that is at the root of some of these problems we now have."

One frustration House members have expressed is that those appearing before the committee were not in their positions at the time of the events cited by the LAC. Mabry is on medical leave for all of December and hasn't appeared at this month's hearings.

Rep. Brian White of Anderson, who sits on the House panel, said DOT officials respond to questions by pointing to other officials who made the decisions and who are no longer with the agency.

"It's a large finger-pointing session," he said. "That's the problem people have with government anyway."

Campsen said some lawmakers are fooled into thinking that just because they are one of 20 to 40 legislators that elect a highway commissioner, they have some control in the agency.

"No one can make DOT do anything," he said. "Not members of the General Assembly, not the speaker of the House, not the president pro tem of the Senate, not the governor, not the chairman of DOT, can make DOT do anything."

Grooms said he wants his panel to talk to commissioners and ask each individually what they did about the issues cited by auditors and why they didn't act. The House committee examining DOT is scheduled to talk to the commissioners Tuesday, after the board itself meets to discuss the audit publicly for the first time.

One of the structural changes the DOT board has initiated is to create an internal auditor post that reports directly to the commission. The agency already has an office of internal audit but those employees report to the executive director.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of," Rep. Annette Young, who is chairing the House committee looking into DOT, said of the current arrangement.

Young said her committee will require in legislation that auditors report to commissioners. She said the panel will look at what some other states have done to revamp their transportation agencies before proposing more changes.

Gov. Mark Sanford has long called for the agency to be placed in the governor's cabinet, arguing that in most other states, governors either appoint the executive director or the board members for transportation agencies.

Grooms supports placing the agency in the governor's cabinet, though he said political reality may dictate some type of compromise.

Campsen said he understands the worries of some that placing the agency in the governor's hands is too much power. He said a better approach may be to allow the governor to hire and fire the executive director but place the responsibility for prioritizing road projects with the commission.

"That's my idea of something that is doable," he said.

Grooms also would like to create "stringent" qualifications for commissioners. Board members should have some experience in road building, engineering or management of large corporations, he said.

But he said any solution must win approval from factions on all sides of the agency.