South Carolina predicts it can save $2.5 million or more a year if agencies keep state cars and vans on the road beyond their traditional life of about 100,000 miles.

The State Budget and Control Board has created a new program called Golden Cars.

Starting Jan. 1, agencies will pay discounted rates to lease high-mileage cars from the state fleet.

Some agencies cannot wait for the chance, given the state’s tight budget.

The Department of Revenue was the first to sign up for Golden Cars. That department has seen its budget cut by more than a third in three years, and its number of employees fall from a high of 800 to 535 today.

“We’re not that much into creature comfort,” Revenue spokesman Danny Brazell said.

The department spends $82,000 a year now leasing 11 Tauruses and two vans from the fleet. The plan is to turn in three of the Tauruses and one van in exchange for some of the older cars.

The savings would be about $12,000 a year.

“If it works out well, we may look into even more cars,” Brazell said.

The state owns about 18,000 vehicles, including school buses at the Department of Education, heavy equipment at the Department of Transportation and patrol cars for the Department of Public Safety.

The program would affect about 1,800 of those vehicles, the ones controlled by the S.C. Budget and Control Board’s Fleet Management office.

Those cars and vans are leased out to more than 50 agencies on a long-term basis. A big client is the Department of Social Services, which leases 653 vehicles for its social workers and other employees in the field. Smaller clients include the Department of Archives and History, with eight cars.

The Golden Cars program would spare the state the expense of buying new cars right away. The state would pass on those savings to the agencies through lower rates for older cars — about 40 percent less than what they pay now.

The state has a computerized system that tracks the history of every vehicle it cares for. If the car is breaking down a lot, it will be pulled from the program.

Gov. Mark Sanford’s Management, Accountability and Performance Commission recommended the change as part of its 190-page study on cutting waste in state government.

The commission projects the size of the fleet would shrink gradually as the state bought fewer vehicles — from 14,000 vehicles to 13,000 or so, with a one-time savings of $16 million. The commission also projects annual savings — $2.5 million — from extending the life cycle of the cars.

The Budget and Control Board already had been considering such a program, spokesman Mike Sponhour said.

“Just like families gotta drive cars a little longer because they don’t have enough money to buy a new one,” Sponhour said, “we’re making the same system available to state agencies.”

State Rep. Leon Howard, D-Richland, was a member of the MAP Commission committee that studied transportation. He has been helping fix cars for 20 years at his family’s garage.

He wants to be sure agencies use the program wisely.

“If you’ve got some executive or some director who doesn’t travel much, driving big Crown Vics that go to Wildewood or Lake Carolina, they’re not responsible for traveling some extended period,” Howard said. “Why not give the working folks the more dependable vehicles?”

Policies vary from agency to agency, Sponhour said.

Agencies decide what vehicles they need, when they need them and who is going to drive them.

Howard said he hopes agencies will designate older cars for in-town driving and newer cars for field work.

Overall, he said the program is needed.

“We’re in a bad financial situation. We’re trying to make the best of it.”

Reach Bauerlein at (803) 771-8485 or vbauerlein@thestate.com