S.C. DOT

We have a guilty little secret: We kind of like it that politics has much to do with S.C. Department of Transportation road-building decisions. The political nature of the agency's decision-making, now under assault from Gov. Mark Sanford and other S.C. heavy hitters, has been good for Horry County and the Grand Strand.

If transportation need alone drove the agency's decision-making, the agency's No. 1 priority statewide might not be building Interstate 73 between the S.C.-N.C. line in Marlboro County and Myrtle Beach. The agency's focus might be on expanding and refurbishing Interstates 95, 85, 26 and 20, and on upgrading roads in the more-populous parts of the state - the usual suspects: Charleston, Columbia and Greenville-Spartanburg.

The principal force that drove the S.C. DOT to focus on I-73 two years ago was the purely political notion that it's Myrtle Beach's "turn" for a modern road project - a way of thinking that we and many others in these parts promoted. We feel not the slightest bit of remorse that we encouraged the agency to reach this decision, unsound though it may be from an engineering perspective.

Politics at its best is about bucking the bean counters and engineers to remedy an injustice. Horry County for years had sat by as other parts of the state - the usual suspects - siphoned off its gasoline tax money for their own monster road projects.

It was our turn, doggone it. And now that our man in Congress, U.S. Rep. Henry Brown, has scored some federal transportation money for the project, with able assists from our U.S. senators (another fine example of politics at work), I-73 will happen. Money talks - especially federal money.

That's why we're not taking as much pleasure as some folks around the state that the S.C. DOT now must run the accountability gauntlet. A legislative audit last month found the agency to be wasteful of money, poorly focused and politically driven, giving Gov. Mark Sanford his best opening yet for bringing it into his Cabinet. At present, the successor to the old S.C. Highway Commission, the S.C. DOT Commission, runs the agency independent of the governor - though the governor's man on the commission is its reformist chairman, Tee Hooper.

Legislators, through special S.C. House and S.C. Senate committees, are studying the audit's findings. The House committee enlisted S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster's help in looking at the agency's spending patterns and practices.

Some legislators, including House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, support Sanford's proposal that the S.C. governor run - and be accountable for - the S.C. DOT, but not enough at present to change the law. The committees' findings could change enough legislative minds to bring about this change in 2007.

We've always supported Sanford's efforts to rationalize state government. Too many state agencies, the S.C. DOT among them, are run by commissions dominated by legislative appointees. For that reason, they lack clear accountability to the voters.

Our concern is that if the S.C. DOT does move under the governor's control, already scarce highway investment in this fast-growing part of the state, with its enormous economic potential, will flow to the usual suspects. Sanford sometimes carries rationalizing too far. "Politics" needs always to be part of the S.C. DOT's decision-making on building and upgrading roads. It's our fast-growing-but-still-politically-weak communities' only hope of getting at least some of the roads they need.