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COLUMBIA -- Frustration boiled over Thursday as the state's highway commissioners argued over the direction of the state Department of Transportation amid cash-flow problems, deteriorating roads and an impatient public.

"We're in a mess," Tee Hooper, chairman of the state Department of Transportation Commission, told board members.

Earlier in the meeting, an angry delegation from Dorchester County, including Rep. Annette Young, confronted the board over what they said was a broken promise of $50 million to help pay for nearly two dozen local road projects.

Young said some board members and executive director Elizabeth Mabry promised local officials two years ago that the agency would provide the money in $9 million-a-year increments if the county provided local funding through a local sales tax increase. The county's voters approved the penny increase two years ago, she said, but DOT officials now say they can't commit to the $50 million.

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Reminding the board she was vice chairman of the House budget-writing committee, she warned, "We're going to have $9 million a year one way or the other."

Hooper and other commissioners said they were sympathetic but the agency didn't have the money. Officials said they were hopeful of providing $5.5 million for projects the agency had already planned to do in the county. The board decided the funding would be a high priority and they would research a response by the next meeting.

The agency, which operates an annual budget of $1 billion, has been squeezed financially in the past year, the result of rising oil prices, construction material shortages, flat gas-tax revenues and a "relative decrease" in federal funding.

Four commissioners signed a resolution Thursday asking lawmakers for more funding. The agency is mostly funded from federal revenues and the state's gas tax, which hasn't been raised since 1987.

Legislative leaders have said recently they are in favor of giving the agency added funding if it is coupled with reforms.

Later in the meeting, Hooper said a key issue facing the agency is leadership, telling Mabry that if he had the authority he would ask her to resign. He said the same thing in a February 2005 letter to Mabry that later surfaced publicly.

"As I've said before, if it was my call, Betty, I would ask you to resign, because one of the reasons we can't get everybody on the same page, including the employees, is a leadership issue," he said.

But Commissioner Marion Carnell of Ware Shoals called Mabry a "tireless, dedicated role model."