Thoroughly audit the DOT

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For eight years, Mabry has led the DOT. The agency is one of the state's largest, with about 5,000 employees. The DOT's primary responsibility is managing nearly 42,000 miles of roads and 8,200 bridges. Under Mabry, the agency has mostly enjoyed a solid reputation. Consistently, the DOT is rated as one of the nation's most efficient state highway departments.

Lately, criticism from within the DOT has painted a different picture of Mabry's leadership. Greenville businessman Tee Hooper, chairman of the state Transportation Commission, wrote Mabry in February — a letter that eventually became public — to criticize her management and DOT spending. Hooper questioned whether the agency is filing timely enough requests for millions of dollars in federal transportation aid and whether the department had spent lavishly on travel for DOT employees. He also questioned whether the agency should have spent $113,663 to give four top executives SUVs at the same time the agency had suspended its road paving program over a lack of funding.

Transportation commissioners proposed an audit last month to settle these questions. Last week, commissioners were weighing the audit's scope and mulling over who should conduct it. Here's what the commission should do if it wants the public to take it seriously. It should, first, ask lawmakers to enlist the LAC. Secondly, commissioners should insist that the audit include all agency operations. A narrowly focused audit by a company hand-picked by the commission — which has strongly backed Mabry publicly — would not be as credible as a comprehensive LAC audit.

The nature of these allegations argues for a thorough review of the performance and management of the DOT. The LAC should look into spending and procurement. But it should also examine other issues raised, such as the hiring of commissioners' family members. The LAC has vast experience handling such thorny public trust questions, and no one understands better this state's procurement and ethics laws. An independent auditor would have difficulty matching the LAC in this regard.

The LAC has audited Transportation four times. But it has been more than two decades since the LAC conducted a management and performance audit. It's time for another audit, one that would answer these critical questions raised about performance and management.