Budget cutbacks force patrol to ration attention

A South Carolina Highway Patrolman works the scene of a minor accident on White Horse Road. Staff/Owen Riley Jr. e-mail this story

The patrol has lost 79 troopers to retirement — including Col. Mike Kelley last week — since it began offering retirement incentives on its older troopers three years ago, according to the Department of Public Safety.

The thinning ranks have compensated by targeting the roadways with the most fatalities, but national watchdogs and legislators say the roadways are likely to become more dangerous with reduced enforcement.

Before his retirement on Friday, Kelley told The Greenville News that fewer troopers will enforce traffic on rural roads.

"We're going to put these guys where they're having the most violations and the crashes," he said. "Hopefully it will reduce these crashes so it will give these guys more time to do enforcement work."

Newly sworn-in Col. Russell Roark said attrition, plus a new fine and surtax created by the legislature this year, will help the patrol maintain what it has and possibly allow them to compensate troopers who this year didn't receive a pay increase for achieving rank.

Still, the budget that started out with more than $54 million in state-allocated money in Fiscal Year 2001 is now expected to total around $37.8 million in 2004, according to Don Royal, the chief financial officer for the Department of Public Safety.

Judie Stone, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a Washington-based lobbyist group, said it has become a trend across the country to cut highway enforcement.

"I think it's a shame because the last place you should be cutting is in public safety," Stone said.

Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association in Washington, said the reduction of officers is a real concern because high-visibility enforcement is the best defense against drunken drivers and people not wearing their seat belts.

"We are starting to see highway fatalities on the uptake," he said of national figures. "We think that's one of the factors."

The number of wrecks in South Carolina climbed from 100,165 in 2001 to 108,280 in 2002, according to the Department of Public Safety, while the number of fatalities have decreased each year from 1,064 in 1999 to 1,053 last year.

Drunken driving remains the state's biggest problem and the Highway Patrol's biggest target. South Carolina, Montana and Louisiana have the highest rate of alcohol-related traffic deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

State Sen. Larry Martin, whose home county of Pickens has seen a dramatic increase in DUI-related deaths this year, said new laws approved by the legislature this year will make a difference. Those include lowering the legal limit to .08 percent and fewer restrictions on when an officer can make a stop.

"It's going to make it a little bit easier to make an arrest stick for DUI under the new law than it has for the old law," he said.

The House and Senate also passed a bill that charges first-time DUI offenders an additional $100 fine. The patrol will also get part of a $25 surtax that will be split among law enforcement agencies.

The patrol is expected to make a total of about $4 million from both sources, Royal said. He said next year's budget is likely to be about $500,000 less than last year's.

"That pales in comparison to the total loss but they have tried to do some things this year to reinstate some money into the Highway Patrol's budget."

He said that the legislature has never included a line item for police vehicles though the Department of Public Safety asks for cars every year.

The patrol went from buying 300 cars before the cuts to 60 this year, Kelley said. He said they were rotating out of the fleet at 80,000 miles and selling them for about $6,000. Now they are rotating them out every 100,000 miles and making less than $3,000, he said.

He said the older they get the more maintenance they will require.

Roark said they have purchased cheaper, front-wheel-drive cars this year to see if they can endure the wear and tear.

The patrol was considering whether it would have to lay off or furlough troopers, Kelley said, but Roark said the budget on the table should make that unnecessary.

Kelley said the retirements were necessary. For the fourth time in three years, he said, they pushed retirement incentives to help reduce the budget. Kelley said they would save about $500,000 for every 10 troopers.

More than 20 have signed up this round, said Sid Gaulden of the Department of Public Safety.

Kelley said about 60 percent of the troopers have less than 10 years of experience.

Roark said he wants to keep those still on the force by compensating troopers who were denied rate increases this year that come with achieving rank.

"One of our main goals is to catch our salaries up and then work on a plan to pay the people we have better so we can maintain our seasoned officers," Roark said.

Most of those who retired were not road troopers but that it will have an effect, he said.

"The lower our numbers go the lower our tickets are going to go because our folks will be tied up on answering calls for service," Roark said.

The routine calls for service are likely to suffer, patrol officials said.

Kelley said he recently received a call from a state legislator on behalf of a constituent who had been in a fender-bender in Columbia and had waited 45 minutes for a trooper.

Kelley said the constituent was lucky it was only 45 minutes.

"That time is only going to lengthen," he said.

The number of tickets issued have been on the decline for the last three years. "Of course, it's going to decline when the numbers drop," Kelley said. "It's been about a 20 percent drop each year."

If the $100 fine is approved it will be the first time the patrol will receive revenue from writing tickets, Kelley said.

"We're going to get very few dollars — if even a dollar — off every ticket we write," Kelley said. "That's not a real incentive. The incentive is that the people who are committing the violations that are causing law enforcement to be out there to start with are going to be the ones who are going to be paying for it."

The legislators who decide the budget said they are aware of the Highway Patrol's problems.

"If these troopers are mainly covering the accidents, then a lot of the preventive work that they do is going to be neglected, whether that's in the metro areas or the rural areas," said state Sen. Dave Thomas.

But Thomas and Rep. Karl Allen said the law enforcement agencies and now health care and education are in the same boat.

"We've got to come up with creative revenue sources to take care of these individual agencies," Allen said. "Everyone's pockets are inside-out at this point so we're having to be creative in coming up with revenue sources."

Sen. Mike Fair of Greenville said he fears that the roads will become less safe but his attempt to create revenue by increasing taxes on beer and wine weren't successful. "It's not going to happen, ever, I don't think," he said.

Fair said he's still getting calls about the Senate cutting education but if those cuts didn't happen it may have meant cutting law enforcement in half.

Stone, who works with both U.S. Congress and state legislatures, said that although 95 percent of transportation fatalities are due to motor vehicle crashes, less than 1 percent of the U.S. Department of Transportation goes to NHTSA, it's safety agency.

Stone said what's happening at the federal level is affecting the states. "We've never really had enough money to address this huge public health epidemic," she said. "I really think it's misplaced priorities all across the nation."

Adkins said the Governors Highway Safety Association is trying to get the federal government to increase grant money that would pay for more officers and overtime for traffic enforcement.

In any case, highway safety really comes down to the motorists, said Daniel Rivera Jr. of Greenville.

Rivera's wife, Kathy, and two of their children, David and Dominque, died in a November car crash on McKelvey Road after authorities say another car crossed the center line and hit them head-on.

Rivera said no matter how many officers patrol the roads bad drivers will continue to drive badly once the police are out of sight.

"I believe it's all up to the individual," he said. "Do they want to make a change?"