COLUMBIA -- The chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee says he will ask for a state review of two consulting contracts totaling $250 million awarded for work on the highway department's accelerated construction program.

The Greenville News reported Sunday that the contracts were awarded in 1999 to two private firms rather than choosing to use the agency's 1,476-employee engineering staff to do the work.

Sen. Greg Ryberg, an Aiken Republican who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, said the contracts are "a high amount of money" and wants the Legislative Audit Council to review the details.

"The LAC needs to take this information and judge the contracts and the value and the amounts," he said.

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Elizabeth Mabry, executive director of South Carolina's Department of Transportation, told the newspaper that every penny of the fees paid to Fluor Enterprises and Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas was well spent and that the program the consultants helped manage has become a model for the rest of the nation.

An official with one of the firms said the companies' work saved the state about $122 million in design and construction costs.

Department of Transportation officials have said the agency's engineering staff wasn't large enough to handle the $1.5 billion worth of accelerated construction projects. They said it would have meant adding 500 to an engineering staff that has since grown to 1,633.

Agency officials have never publicly said what it would have cost to do the work using staff and didn't respond to questions posed by The News about the estimated costs of hiring the extra workers.

But budget records of the department's engineering staff indicate hiring 500 workers, based upon the average staff salary and taking into account benefits, would have totaled $168 million over seven years, or $90 million less than the contracts, according to an analysis by the newspaper.

Joel Sawyer, a spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford, said the contracts go "back to a lack of accountability in this island of government."

"We have some very profound infrastructure needs in this state and this situation raises some very legitimate questions as to whether or not those dollars are being used in the wisest possible way," he said.

Sen. David Thomas, a Greenville County Republican who chairs the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee, and Sen. Danny Verdin of Laurens, who sits on Ryberg's committee, said they agree the Legislative Audit Council should review the contracts.

"I think the Legislature should look at this," Thomas said. "This is unbelievable."

Thomas said he is especially concerned that there appeared to be no public analysis of options by Transportation Department management or the agency board before choosing to hire the firms.

Some current and former highway commissioners who approved the contracts now say they are surprised by the cost, and former Transportation Department executive director B.K. Jones calls the fees "outrageous."

Commission Chairman Tee Hooper, who was not on the board when the contracts were approved, told the newspaper last week he thinks there were other, less costly options open to the agency such as hiring some workers and outsourcing some of the engineering work.

Hooper said he thinks having the Legislative Audit Council look into the awarding of the contracts is "appropriate."

The highway department agreed to pay Fluor Daniel and Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas a total of $256 million plus possible bonuses for their consultant work, according to copies of the contracts obtained by the newspaper under the State Freedom of Information Act.

The agency has paid the firms bonuses totaling more than $536,000 as a result of performance evaluations required by the contracts, said Pete Poore, an agency spokesman.

Mabry told the newspaper she wasn't at the negotiations and doesn't remember who in her agency participated.

"I'm sure there was give and take," she said. "I wasn't there. I don't know that I was that involved in the process. But all consultant contracts are negotiated."